Backyard tune-up
Harrison's first birthday
After hearing from our structural engineer that our backyard project will likely be delayed 3-6 months for permitting, we knew we’d be able to host Harrison’s first birthday as an indoor-outdoor event. Since it will be the end of July it will be HOT, and we don’t have A/C downstairs. Luckily for us, our yard is almost completely shaded, so it usually feels about 15 degrees cooler.
Right now our yard looks a little sad. The outdoor dining table and benches are warped from not being covered, the cushions are stained, and the seating areas are a little odd. When we first moved in, our yard was the best part of our house, and now it’s the worst, which feels like huge progress. Here’s everything I’m doing to prepare the space for Harrison’s London-themed first birthday.
Securing all of our outdoor seating. Over time screws and nails just come loose, so I’ve got my drill and hammer and am making sure everything feels stable.
Make all seating areas comfortable. I’m borrowing Camilla & David’s power washer to clean all of the cushions.
Re-spray our outdoor storage tables. Okay . . . so they aren’t really outdoor, but we’ve used them as outdoor tables for years and they work well! These probably will get donated when we renovate, but for now, we can re-spray them so they look a little nicer.
Add shade sails to give our side yard more shade! If you’re installing shade sails, I highly recommend you buy a ratcheting tool to get them really tight, and some quick release anchors so you can remove them easily and put them back up after storms. I just installed by hand, which was very difficult and they aren’t as tight as they could be! I also bought this battery operated fan for outside.
Create a kids’ play area: we are moving baby jail outside, adding waterproof mat, a water table and bubble maker. I also tied twine around each corners of our baby jail and used ground stakes to secure it in place.
Party supplies: I purchased a raised drinks cooler and going to make it into a little project so that it is on theme! I’ve made a play English telephone booth for the kids, we will have bunting banners, flags for the cupcakes, a balloon arch, striped napkins, I’ll be serving the fish and chips in these baskets with these newsprint wax liners, and I strung up Harrison’s monthly pictures and got him a birthday boy crown.
I bought all of our flowers from Trader Joe’s and arranged them in some shallow plastic vases I had left over from another event. I sourced all of our cheese and charcuterie from Costco, our cookies and cupcakes from Happy Bakeshop, and the fish and chips were from Acova.
This is where I got the idea for the meatloaf “cakes.” But I used this recipe for the actual meatloaf and tomato glaze. I thought that it would be easier to spread the mashed potato icing when everything was cold—similar to how you would do it with a cake, but I think this was a misstep because of how mashed potatoes harden when they get cold. Also, I should have thoroughly blended my potatoes. I used an immersion blender and it didn’t get all of the tiny lumps out. Those tiny lumps got stuck in my icing nozzle, and thus they looked as sad as they did. Harrison still loved his :)
We managed to get a few pictures before all of our balloons popped in the heat! Our matching outfits were: Quince button down and Rails shorts for me (they aren’t for sale anymore but these are similar) and MiniOlie shirt and Janie and Jack shorts for Harrison.
Psst! I used my convertible carseat boxes, electrical tape, and blue foil squares, to make our telephone booth:
