We partied from 6pm 'til 2am, by which point my voice was completely gone, so I spent all of Sunday whisper-croaking to John between naps and cups of hot tea. It was a long week just finishing everything for the party, so I'm still bone-tired - but also way too excited to wait any longer to show you THE GOODS.
John and I've been working to photograph and video every last detail for you, so I hope you're ready for a pun party barrage. Despite only having a little over a month to work on this, we still managed to cram in a bunch of builds: decorations, games, a custom scavenger-hunt, the works!
::eyebrow waggle::
Shall we start with the house tour?
The boat is open on the right side, so you can walk behind and through the falls to the room beyond.
Beside the boat is the most labor-intensive thing we've ever made with our Cricut, our Skipper Menu:
Our boat has a wheel that turns and a throttle that moves, for those exciting action shots:
This makes a great spot for big group photos... assuming you remember to
take any.
::guilty side-eye::
Turning around, here's a
look at the front door and front sitting room:
WHAT.
Listen, sometimes when you're a couple of grown adults you have to dress your life-sized Jareth the goblin king cut-out in a pith helmet and mustache and make dik-dik jokes. It's the law. Somewhere. Probably.
Because our house isn't huge - about 1400 square feet - and we like to invite a lot of people to our parties, we have to use every square inch of space, and this time we also requested staggered arrival times. By spreading folks throughout the house and deck we comfortably fit about 35 people, and with the staggered arrivals (some people arrived while others were leaving) I think we could even host up to 50. Good thing, too, since this was our cut-down list. So to everyone I couldn't invite: next time!
With that many people, I also make it a priority to have one designated quiet room for folks with anxiety. Having friendly cats in there is a nice bonus for anyone feeling panicky.
Random pic of the boat cruising over Jareth's way:
Right. Now let's head through the waterfall to the back room. (Awwww
yeeeeeah.)
This room has the most dramatic day-to-night transition. First, some daytime
shots:
This room isn't too different than how it usually looks; we just moved the
furniture around and brought in tables & chairs to create 4 separate
seating areas.
I can almost hear Skipper Claptrap back there announcing "And
now, the 8th wonder of the world: The backside of water! AAAA!"
John spent a week hunting down large fake plants on FB
Marketplace, and he cleaned up, y'all. This 8 foot bamboo tree was
only $20, and like new! So tall it touches the ceiling tiles, and so cool,
we're definitely keeping it.
John also found some enormous hanging plants for $5 each, which we
turned into those wall plants and extra hanging ones for the deck. The wall
planters themselves are from our
DIY Toy Bin tutorial, remember that? (So glad we hung onto those!)
I'll share more
detail shots when I post the Scavenger Hunt, but for now here's a pretty
vignette:
Art by Bianca Roman-Stumpff - who was there, and I can't wait to show you her costume, omigosh.
We already have a fantasy/adventurer's vibe back here, it just
needed more plants and a little more dramatic lighting.
Speaking of, let's shift this room into PAR-TAY TIME NIGHT MODE:
I'd forgotten our
circle shelves
even HAD a rainbow mode, so we switched those on, then added these
fantastic LED floodlights
in each corner, also set to a rainbow fade. That side of the room is now
constantly shifting color, and combined with the warm Edison lights,
candles, and stained glass, it's positively dreamy.
The new flood lights are also staying. We're keeping the rainbow room
year-round!
More remnants from the Labyrinth party.
Our last
big gathering area is through these stained glass doors:
...which lead to our backyard deck:
This deck was probably the most work, since it needed so many
repairs. (We hadn't used it since before 2020.) We had to replace several
rotted boards, jack up a sagging section, replace the legs on all the
benches, sand everything down, re-paint the house walls, etc. That's one
reason I like hosting big parties, though; it makes us take care of house
work we wouldn't do otherwise.
Daytime shot:
We removed the old hanging bench and replaced it with a game I
named "I Wet My Plants." (Full disclosure: I actually started with
the name, then made up a game to fit it.)
The object is to knock off these roses using a squirt gun, and
so long as the wind wasn't blowing them over first, it was great fun. We
made everything ourselves: the rose "stems" are PVC pipes, and the roses are
ping-pong balls with petals hot-glued around them. The roses are attached to
the stems with ribbon, so they don't fall too far.
Basket of squirt guns. These come in packs of 3 at Dollar Tree, so we
bought a bunch to cut down on re-fills.
It was so windy even
packing tape and duck tape could barely hold our table cloths down, bah:
Even though the tables don't look ideal, I do love the flower
arrangements John helped me make last-minute:
We used more scrap pink foam board as the bases, then jammed
in $10 worth of flowers and ferns from Walmart, plus plastic LED candles I
already had.
Due to the wind we ended up hot-gluing these straight to the
plastic table clothes - which totally worked!
Y'all know how I
struggle with flower arranging, so John had to get me started: he added most
of the florals, then I came back and "fixed" them. We made 2 large and one
small, one for each table:
Oh, and we found the outdoor rug on the curb!
The bathroom.
We made this sign using a $3 thrifted
frame and our trusty Cricut.
We didn't have enough time this
party to go ALL out, so unfortunately the bathroom didn't get a life-sized
animatronic elephant trunk emerging from behind the shower curtain to
squirt people in the face when they were least expecting it.
I
know, it's tragic.
Here's what we did do, though:
Over the throne we have my
DIY Huffle-Plants
and a Trader Sam's Hair Tonic display:
I've been meaning to add a vintage label to this old bottle
for years, and considering John usually handles the graphic design
I'm really chuffed with what I cobbled together on my own. Just needs a
little more aging; the paper's too clean:
And since John kept Herman's head I sculpted for our Beetlejuice Halloween display, of course he had to come out and play, too. I just "re-potted" him into a votive glass.
Across from the throne we have more Jungle Cruise themed art, this time by John:
To save money on custom printing we tile-printed the art on our home printer, taped the pieces together, and popped it into a thrifted frame. You can barely see the seams, though, right?
The small print reads, "Inspiring Explorers To Boldly Go Since 1937."
Now, I know what you're thinking:
"Hang on, a Star Trek joke in a Jungle Cruise bathroom?!"
That's right.
WE CROSSED THE STREAMS.
Don't worry, Suki is hear to give me pained, judgemental looks in your
stead.
:D
Also in the bathroom, a couple of
Bowtruckles sneaking around our exotic plant display:
Nothing new here, just a pretty angle of our
dragon faucet:
As always all the Amazon links in this post use my referral code, and anything you purchase through them gives a little back to help support my dreams of building animatronic elephant trunks and dressing up Jareth to fit the season, so thank you. You can also bookmark the Epbot Amazon shop for easy access, or to browse my lists of favorite things.
Or hey, if you're not an Amazon shopper but want to throw a few dollars my way for making you laugh, you can support me directly through Paypal! Or by sharing this post with your friends! You know, the cool ones. The ones who are pro-ridiculous. The ones who say, "Hey, you're a garbage can, not a garbage CAN'T." Yeah. Bring me those friends.
The butterfly is brilliant! You need to make more for John's man cave ;^}
ReplyDelete~SM3
Thx! We have several more visual puns tucked around the house; I'm saving the rest for my Scavenger Hunt post. :D
Delete"The lights had probably gone....so had the stairs!"
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that this lavatory isn't disused... ;)
DeleteLove the Jareth game. Nice touch.
ReplyDeleteIs there a filing cabinet in the bedroom?
ReplyDeleteOh my word, I know I say this every time, but I LOVE you guys and your content always inspires and makes me happy. I want to live in your universe. I'd also enjoy a good hour inside each of your brains. This party looks so fun and the decorations are fantastic! I think my favourite is that boat- which blows my mind -and as always your lighting, lighting makes such a difference! Well done!
ReplyDeleteBack in the day I lived in the Mojave desert of SoCal where the wind blows 24/7 360 days a year... one trick we used for outdoor table clothes was buying the cheapest cotton *fitted* sheets, finding the colours we wanted or dyed them the colours we needed; and then if necessary we would take up a side/length seams to make an even more tight fit around a table. The elastic holds the cloth to the table in strong winds without clips or tape. If you want length you can add it by putting the fitted sheet on the table top, marking and then adding strategically placed velcro strips to the edges of the table (corners definitely, but also in center sections to prevent sagging) where you can then wrap another piece of flat, pleated, or gathered cloth by just velcro-ing it to the edge as a wrap around.
Brilliant! Thanks for the fitted sheet idea!
DeleteAnd yea, I caught the H2G2 reference in the sign! Bravo, kudos, and may you always know where your towel is! š„°š„°š„°
ReplyDeleteI'm not really a party person, but every time y'all throw one, I wish I could be there. This looks AMAZING and I'm so happy to hear everyone had fun
ReplyDeleteSame! Being around even half that many people would be overwhelming for me but dang, I wish I lived there and was your friend and could hang out!
DeletePLEASE make that inspiration falls image available. It'd be PERFECT for my cheeky nature themed bathroom.
ReplyDeleteFrom now on all my red cups will be labeled. I LOVE it!!
ReplyDeleteI dream of having as awesome of parties as you do someday!
ReplyDeleteHITCHHIKERS! OMG! That made my day, I've actually been wanting to put a "Beware the Leopard" sign on my bathroom door for years, but I could never figure out how to do it in a way that matched the decor...
ReplyDeleteThe backside of water made me grin like the Cheshire Cat. You both did a fantastic job with the decorations, pictures, and video.
ReplyDeleteO-2-H! O-2-H!
ReplyDeleteHHGTTG! I love Beware the Leopard!
ReplyDelete