Looking to add a personal touch to an end-of-summer bash? It’s easy with advanced planning, the latest gadgets and good friends
When our daughter Millie’s 11th birthday party rolled around, we wanted to make the invite list large while keeping the budget reasonable. The result: a wave-pool party that meant a bit more planning (we booked the venue more than two months in advance) but also kept the mess out of our house. Most importantly, our guests had a great time and our daughters talked about it for days after.
Here’s how we pulled it off.
Choose a venue
The Ogilvie Splash Wave Pool is one of three City of Ottawa wave pool facilities. Photo Credit Tracey Tong
We booked a birthday party at the City of Ottawa Splash Wave Pool at 2040 Ogilvie Rd. One of three wave pools in Ottawa, the Splash Wave Pool has a graduated entry point, timed wave feature and a water slide. The price was right – less than $250, which included a private party space for two hours and 20 wave pool passes (with the option to purchase more).
We’ve hosted kids’ parties everywhere in the city – Bubblesea Adventures, the Flying Squirrel, Starr Gymnastics – but for value, fun and ease of organization, the pool was one of our favourites in recent years.
Pick a theme
By all means, let the guest of honour choose the theme, but make it easy on yourself and ensure it’s one where you can find accessories or from a place that offers delivery. Millie chose a beach theme, which wasn’t mind-blowing in terms of creativity, but was simple enough for this busy mom to execute. From there, we found reusable spiral straws with sea animal charms and compostable paper plates, napkins, cutlery, tablecloths, balloons and banners in tropical colours.
Order some eats
Pizza is a children’s party staple for a reason – easy to hold, easy to eat (cutlery optional), universally liked by kids – and we ordered from Domino’s Pizza the night before, so we could cross that item off our day-of-event to-do list. We estimated five slices of pizza per guest (hey, you never know – they are swimming, after all) and added a few more pizzas for parents who decided to stay for the festivities (the more the merrier). Earlier that week, we gathered half a dozen party-sized bags of chips from Costco (conveniently located next to the wave pool), bags of apples (washed and placed back in the bag for transportation) and a personalized slab cake (also from Costco).
Drinks
Our daughter and her friends wanted fancy drinks with umbrellas and cherry garnishes. Fortunately, there’s an abundance of recipes for virgin cocktails online. Our resident mixologist made Shirley Temples and Sunrise Mimosas to order.
Personalized glasses
Personalized glasses we made for Millie’s party at the last minute using the Cricut Maker 4. Photo Credit Tracey Tong
Our personalized drinkware doubled as the souvenirs for the event and was the talk of party. Using the Cricut Maker 4, we created vinyl designs (we found out what each party guest’s interests were and found the graphics, free of charge, on Cricut’s Design Space) and printed them out the evening before the party. We applied these permanent designs to these unbreakable highball glasses from Amazon.
The Cricut Maker 4 was very simple to use and the results were stunning. Available in Canada on Cricut.com and Michaels in two new colours (Seashell and Sage), the Cricut Maker 4 is twice as fast as the previous generation and sells at a lower price point. It also offers an improved user experience in Design Space and includes tools (the Mini Weeder and Light Grip Machine Mat) and materials (Smart Vinyl, Cardstock, Smart Iron-on and Transfer Tape) to help us get started quickly (we’d left this task until the last-minute).
We were able to personalize our glasses further by ordering vinyl in colours and textures to go with the party theme (from Cricut’s well-stocked sale section).
The kids loved the glasses. They were great icebreakers (“you like dance, too?! Do you do gymnastics?”) and knowing whose glass was whose prevented germy mix-ups.
Personalized glasses made with the Cricut Maker 4 prevented germy mix-ups at the party. Photo Credit Tracey Tong
A glass for our guest, Ethan. Ethan plays chess, so we found chess graphics on Cricut’s Design Space. Photo Credit Tracey Tong
More party favours
As parents ourselves, we dislike useless party-favour clutter, so we opted for a few nice things the kids could get use out of. We picked up some fruity Mentos, festive sunglasses and beach-themed stickers, all of which fit inside the personalized tumblers.
Say thank you
My mom always emphasized the importance of saying thank you, so I made it a priority to sort through the photos to send to our guests as thanks. I just send them by email and text, but if you’re feeling fancy, you can design a thank you postcard or poster on Canva.
The author’s daughter, Ellie, at the Ogilvie Splash Wave Pool. Photo Credit Tracey Tong
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