party ideas – P Squared Events

A Harry Potter Halloween Birthday

Phew, this year, I mean… am I right? 2020 has taken us all for a crazy spin.

I for one was feeling sorry for the folks having birthdays in March-April, and how bad it would be to not get a chance to celebrate…. because obviously my kids in September and October could have the blowout party they want! Welp! Not so much.

So maybe because of that I felt the need to overcompensate in decor this year, and I’m not regretting it!

We are big Potter fans here, and with my son reading through the books, and his birthday so close to Halloween… it seemed like the perfect match!

We only had a handful of kids come to play outside and celebrate how we could! Masks and sanitizer everywhere. But that also meant less baking for me, so I’m not complaining.

Can anyone put a value on a bucket of dry ice at a Halloween party? It was immensely popular.

I loved this cake! The rectangle bottom was actually a dummy cake because I didn’t want to have 3 tons of cake leftover… but it was fondant and buttercream for decoration.

Paul got to help with making wax seals for the invitations! He was stoked.

Enjoy!

Ice Cream Party!

Our little baby Sophie is 2!! We were so excited to celebrate with her this weekend.

This also means mama gets to go all out on the decor and sweets. So who is really having the best time here?

One day, she will decide what her party themes are, but for now, I get to take advantage and do the decor I’m hoping for!

Cue the Ice Cream Shoppe theme. I think this is such a cute set-up!

From sprinkle bottle favors, to cute ice-cream shaped cakepops, we enjoyed every minute of bringing this theme to life.

For this cake, we had a vanilla cake with buttercream confetti frosting. We used the Wilton frosting mold to make the stripes on the bottom layer, and threw sprinkles everywhere! You can find a big Jug of sprinkles here.

For the topper, we used a 3-inch styrofoam ball (cut with a little flat bottom so it stayed in place), and covered it with melted white chocolate. The cool thing about it was that the chocolate didn’t need to be perfectly smooth like I’d normally hope for a cake pop! Bumpy was ok, and even helped with the ice cream look.

I put down the styrofoam ball on a sheet of wax paper, and let the chocolate drip down from it. It created the perfect “melted ice cream” look I was going for. Top that with some sprinkles and a waffle cone, and voilá!

And these cake pops, OMG. I can show you a tutorial on how to make these, just send me a message and I’ll send it to you! You can find the mini cones here.

The cupcakes were so simple. Just a vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. But add a chocolate sauce and a wafer cookie and Bam! Ice-cream themed.

Birthday girl took it upon herself to taste test a tiny bite of EVERY french macaron. It’s her party. So she gets to do things like that. Sorry for everyone else who had to enjoy a partially eaten macaron.

These super cute ice cream balloons can be found HERE.

Hope you enjoyed this sweet birthday!

You could put this party together too! Here are some of the products I bought to make this party extra special:

Minnie Mouse 1st Birthday

Here’s another one of our favorites! 1st birthdays are so special, and you have the opportunity to really go all out without anyone judging you 🙂

Minnie Mouse is a common theme for 1st birthdays, it’s cute and classic, and everybody loves it. I particularly like this version where we use the pink and gold color scheme.

Check out this adorable cake topper that we bought online here, it added such a beautiful touch to this cake!

My favorite fondant of all time can be found here. Satin Ice has the best consistency and taste, and they come in so many different colors and in large quantities too.

The party took place at the Burien Community Center, and they have an amazing space that is a complete blank canvas! So great to set up parties here.

We made the centerpieces with our Silhuette Cameo machine, and they turned out great. Guys, if you’re on the fence whether or not to purchase your Silhuette Cameo machine, just do it. The possibilities are endless and if you do parties often, you get that money invested back effortlessly.

The time came for us to really make an organic balloon arch, and we loved every minute of it!

Some of the desserts included French Macarons (obviously), cake shooters, sweet popcorn, cake pops, and meringue cookies. We also brought back the brownie bites that were such a huge hit at our last party!

We created this minnie silhuette with hoops and floral, and it was such a great addition to the table.

Enjoy!

You can find the links to some of these items we purchased online, to recreate your own amazing dessert table:

Popcorn Boxes

Gold Sequin Table Cloth

Balloon Garland Kit

Sequin Balloons

Vineyard Wedding charm

Folks, there’s nothing quite like a summer wedding at a vineyard. Late sunsets, warm afternoons, and cheery people! Especially here in the PNW, these are welcomed feelings.

Let me set the stage for you.

Gilbert Cellars winery, a few hours outside of town (Seattle), will feel like a whole new world! If you’ve never been, please go there one day. It’s so charming and lovely! As we cross over Steven’s Pass, we already feel like a million miles away from the hustle of the city. Yakima welcomes us all with open arms and sunny skies.

Cue our lovely, amazing, handsome, boujee couple, B&P. #bandpsittininatree are pretty much the loveliest people you’ll meet.

I don’t have a wedding planning background, I have to be honest with you. But I love it, and I love making dreams come true! Because that’s exactly what this is. The stress and workload that comes with it, it’s all for one goal. To make the couples dream a reality.

Cue in incredible photographer Matt Rommel , who can capture the most amazing candid photos! The essence of that day can be seen through his lenses, much much farther than what you’ll see in choreographed poses and rehearsed timelines.

So much detail! So much intensity captured in the moment.

I have to be honest again, if you’re a local, you’ll know that the most common thing we will see in the summer in the Pacific Northwest is the massive amount of smoke from the wildfires surrounding us. And it was a very real thing we were concerned with for this amazing summer August day. But you know what? Somehow, miraculously, the smoke cleared out for the wedding, and the little that stayed behind helped bring some drama to the photos! The day after the wedding, it looked like we were on a different planet.

And now, the desserts. Grooms wanted to focus more on variety on the dessert buffet then actually serving cake, so we went hard on the bite-sized options. French macarons, Brazilian Truffles (Brigadeiros), amarula cupcakes, meringue cookies, chocolate cake shooters, and cake pops for days. Check it out:

You ready for the cake? ….

We wanted to go with something modern and different. And this is what it came down to! The tall first layer gave us the opportunity to make a rare design with rice paper and edible gold. The ragged flakes of sheets reminded us of the mountain range that surrounded us from all sides.

Second layer brought in the bold navy blue of the wedding theme, as well as gold leaf as an accent.

And the top final layer was simple white fondant with thin gold stripes to add the modern touch. The flavor was vanilla with an Amarula buttercream (South African groom needed a touch from home. If you don’t know what this is, please stop what you’re doing right now and go buy it.)

Also, have you seen these amazing Protea flowers? Native to South Africa, we wanted to incorporate this in the decor to honor one of the groom’s heritage. Talk about unique and striking!

And as customary, here are a few more shots from this magical evening:

1st Birthday, Vintage Carousel Style

Well, the day finally came. I have a baby daughter, and all bets are off! I must throw a party fit for a princess.

Funny how it reflects so strongly on me. I work on parties all year, for years now, but as soon as my daughter was born, the first few questions were related to her first birthday. “What’s going to be theme?” “Where will you do the party?” “What does the cake look like?” “I bet it’s going to be EPIC!”

The pressure!! Now I know I have no way out of this. My daughter’s first birthday has to be memorable. I have to give it my full attention, and hope I can find a theme that’s not too mainstream, but still classic and beautiful. Et Voila. The Vintage Carousel has been on my mind for quite some time! Check out what we did:

We must start with a cake smash! Obvi. I did this at home and baked the cake. If you plan on doing this yourself, a word of advice. Use very well whipped frosting, and keep the colors light! Dark colors look like your baby has eaten a wild beast and it doesn’t come out well in photos.

Also, make sure you’re prepped and ready once you place her in front of the cake! That means the camera is ready to shoot, lighting is just right (this was mid-afternoon and the sun was coming in from the opposite side of the room), and you have cleaning material handy for when she’s done! I even had a bath running and ready to dip my buttercream covered child in it right away.

We had the tutu especially made from L-Z Bee Embroidery

Now for the party.

First and foremost, I spent hours and hours looking for some real horses to add to the theme. Surprisingly, these are very hard to find, and if you find them, they are incredibly expensive! However, I was able to find these perfect horses here. They were PERFECT.

Aside from that cake that I absolutely loved… we had many many other dessert options.

Strawberry cake shooters are one of my favorite things to add to a table, because they are so posh and easy to eat, portioned, and no plating.

These Brownie Bites were so easy and added such an adorable touch to the table. I bought the flowered parchment paper here, and baked the brownies into mini-cupcake size.

And this ferris wheel cupcake holder!!

Our cake pops had chocolate carousel horses attached to them to add to the theme.

Here’s a full look at the table!

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And a few more photos from the party below. It really was a dream come true, and I had such a blast putting it together! If you have any questions on how anything was made, just send me a quick note here!

Havana Nights Party

Wow. I’m SO LOVING THIS theme! It was creeping up on me as I aimlessly navigated through Pinterest, until I saw this amazing concept, and I immediately started dreaming of hot summer days, mojitos, and dancing.

So I decided to try out the theme first on familiar grounds, and created our Annual Summer party in this theme. So fun! Too bad this is Seattle and we can’t ever depend on the weather being great. But guess what, there was tons of rum and everyone had a blast. So in your face, moody Seattle!

Let’s start with the star of the show, this Mojito Bar we set up! Make your own cocktails with mint leaves, coke in glass bottles for the Cuba Libres, and plenty of lime for everyone.

Then, the dessert table which I had to put a lot of thought into! Trying to keep with the tropical theme, I went with Coconut cupcakes, pineapple cake shooters, flan, and the goods.

And the cake! OMG, this cake.

A few more photos for your enjoyment. Message me for more ideas on how to get your party to come to life like this one!

Garden Party

So colorful!! This was for a 1st birthday for a super precious baby girl. Instead of opting for the usual light pinks, princess themes, this mama decided to go bold with bright colors and beautiful florals. I love it!

We lucked out with their wall in the dining room, as it was painted red, so instead of adding a backdrop, we incorporated our colors to their interior decor, and it couldn’t have been better.

With some beautiful paper flowers to brighten the space (you can find these flowers here: Tissue Paper Flowers

With all the colors on the table, we decided to keep the cake nice and simple. Buttercream rosettes are perfect for this kind of set-up.

On this next photo, you can see some cute Hello Kitty Cake Pops! We wanted a small incorporation of Hello Kitty here, that wouldn’t take away from the garden theme. Great idea!

Here’s a close-up of the cake pops: Hello Kitty Cake Pops

And last but not least, Yours Truly cutting the cake like I own the damn place.

Check out our Pinterest Page for more close-ups and ideas for your next party:

Pinterest – P Squared Events

Spring has Sprung!

This was such a lovely party to set up! An adult birthday, so we did our best to keep things classy without looking too girly or childish. We received one screenshot from our customer of the “vibe” they were looking for, and we rolled with it.

Starting off with creating these lovely wreaths for the backdrop… this was my favorite thing to create for this party! It created a minimalist look with very little effort.

Our tall Eiffel vases were a great addition to keep the eyes moving up and down on this dessert table. Elevation is key.

Meringue cookies in the jars, mini red velvet cupcakes, and chocolate cake pops complete the vibe.

And that cake! We opted to stick to buttercream for this one to keep the romantic look. Love how the ombre colors came out on this one.

Fresh locally grown flowers completed the look we were going for. We made the topper with our handy dandy Silhouette Cameo machine. It does wonders!!!

What did you like the most about this set-up?