Home Fest

I absolutely love planning little events. Getting out my notepad to plan the order of how to do things and check off my lists.

2020 was going to be our year. We have spent so many summers abroad so we thought that this year we would tour the family festivals and stay in the UK instead, until we visited DisneyLand later in the year. Well, obviously we have a bit of a spanner in the works and by no means are we ungrateful that we have our health and happiness but we could not let it stop us having our fun.

I knew straight away that I needed to plan some fun things at home. I needed to be by myself and go wild and completely over the top with what I had. We couldn’t hire anything so Amazon needed to become my best friend.

I discussed with the children what they would like and they gave me a huge list including some really bizarre things which were impossible so we worked together and searched though the internet to see what we could find.

They told me they wanted glitter tattoos, colourful hair, balloons, singing and dancing, a slush, popcorn, games and camping.

So the first area we have as they walked through the door was the entrance. I wanted something bright, colourful and fun. Something realistic As if you was walking into a place of fun. I bought a longish bed sheet and we decorated it as our sign. I was gifted the accessories to make a balloon arch via @balloonsbykoko which I made the night before. I used one of our little £5 ikea tables and painted it with chalk paint (this will then go in their craft room). I ordered wristbands from Etsy by just typing in festival wristbands and scrolled until I found something. I created the tickets using the Canva app and then printed them off using the free prints app. I ordered something throw away cameras so that they could document their journey as they both are completely obsessed with photography. We were gifted lots of decorations via @onthewallparty so I used the glasses and hats so that they could choose a character.

The place they would visit next after checking in would be the festival makeover area so that they could get ready for Home Fest.

I used our old bathroom mirror and decorated a chalk board for our sign. I ordered a glitter tattoo set, hair chalks, face glitter and embellished gem face thingies from amazon. I was going to put some face paints on too but they didn’t fit on the table. The children absolutely adored this area as they got to choose what they wanted and later on in the day they got to give Mummy and Daddy a makeover too.

The next area was the mud kitchen, which is always there but I put some water beads in and added some fresh flowers. The aim was to create nature paint brushes and make fairy wands and wings but we were so busy we never got chance so we did the activity a couple of days afterwards.

The next area is what I’d like to say is the most important. The food area.

We had a popcorn machine we purchased from Amazon. It’s so cute and has a carnival theme. We had to plug it in over the side of the garden when we used it as I didn’t actually think that one through properly. You pour in popcorn kernels and then it pops the corn and flies out the bottom so you have to be super quick.

We purchase our slush machine from a place online called IWOOT and the strips are just general slush syrups from Amazon. The slush puppy machine requires a bit of forward planning and doesn’t actually make that many cups but the children were so excited that they got to have slushes at home. A little tip – put the metal compartment in the freezer before hand to make it work faster.

I purchased the cups, table cloth, napkins and donut wall from a party place online. I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact one but a lot sell similar. The cute pineapple garland was a gift from @onthewallparty. The burger, hot dog and chip holder cone thingies were from home bargains. My sweet jars I already had and the bags and fillings were a last minute purchase from Asda as I’d realised I’d forgotten about those. P.s the onion rings were the beer battered ones from Asda and they are amazing!

Our next area was the yoga and meditation area. I’ve always done yoga and the children have often joined in but lately we found some fun yoga on YouTube by Cosmic Kids which has special themes such as Pokemon yoga so the children have really got into it. It’s a fantastic way to exercise and relieve stress so I’m really happy about that. As you can see from my sad looking rose tree that I’m just not very skilled at gardening. We used our gifted @chalkola pens to create a sign, and set up this lovely area. Some of the @myga-yoga items have been gifted such as the Jurassic yoga mat, the children’s yoga dice, the chakra stones and the singing bowl. The other items I purchased myself.

The children really need to relax after such a wild time having so much fun. This was perfect was starting to wind down. We played some music through the speaker to help them calm down.

I loved the little meditation area which I set up. A Himalayan salt candle , chakra stones, singing bowl and incense stick burning sandalwood. We explored the chakra stones to find out they can help us.

The next area which we did earlier than the yoga area, (but I’m going clockwise around the garden) was the games. I purchased tin can alley which you can put water in for extra fun, a giant bubble wand and an inflatable ball game which gives opportunity for different fun ideas.

As we go past this area we get to the dance floor and stage area. We made this using some hardboard I found left in the garage and painted this with half chalk paint and half acrylic. (I’m going to put this on the garage wall with some pipes so it’s half a chalk board and half a water wall). I added a basket of glow sticks, bubble wands, ribbon wands and a mini bubble machine for some extra fun.

The dance floor was directly in front of the ‘stage area’ which is the steps from our conservatory. We thought it would make the perfect stage area for everyone to perform on karaoke.

We decorated this using some gifted items from @onthewallparty and I added a children’s karaoke which was gifted from @vtech. The children had a fab time putting on a performance.

Overall I’d say it was a huge success and the children will have lots of memories of a fun filled day. It was hard work. It took a lot of planning and hours of setting up over a good few days but we had so much fun. We are going to use the things to have lots of mini garden parties, mini festivals and family movie nights.