Luke's Animal House

I often refer to Luke as an “animal”. He has a crazy amount of energy and quite literally, eats like an animal. It’s become somewhat of a running joke in our house so I thought, why not turn this into the theme of this birthday party this year.

It’s hard to believe that 7 years has gone by since that “wild” ride I took Luke on to be born. He has proven to be a wild man at home but a complete and utter gentleman when he’s with friends, family and at school. I’m so proud of the little guy and just love watching him grow up.

Since Luke was born 2 days after the 4th of July, we throw him a huge pool party in our backyard every year as a way of celebrating both his and America’s birthdays. This year was different and pretty exciting because it was our first official party in our newly renovated backyard…

To decorate the space, I hung tissue poms all through the new trellis over our outdoor kitchen; I sprayed toy animals white and lined them along the tables with greenery, flowers that I snipped from my garden and boards of crudités and fruit for our guests to snack on throughout the day.

I always find setting up a photo booth to be a huge hit so Maggie designed a backdrop for me and I added tissue poms all around it. Natalie found the most adorable animal themed headbands that we set out for the kids to pose with and we used a polaroid camera to take the photos. Once the photo was snapped we slipped it into a glitter (snow globe type) of frame for our guests to take home.

To eat, as we always do every year, Seasons of Southampton came in with a lobster bake including full lobsters, BBQ Chicken, corn, potatoes, mussels, coleslaw, garlic bread and watermelon for everyone to enjoy. Their staff is just wonderful and they set up a beautiful, delicious spread. I love working with them year after year.

Tending to the new bar that we built into our deck was Charisse. I have been working with Charisse for so many years now I feel like she’s family. She is the hardest working woman I’ve ever known. She was on top of every guest, knew what they were drinking and made sure that their glass was always full. She kept everything tidy and ran a tight ship with all desserts and leftover food.

At the pool was our favorite lifeguard Cat. I think having a lifeguard at a kids pool is the most important thing that you can do. I had parents coming up to me all through the day thanking me for keeping their kids safe. In addition to the lifeguard, I had 3 of the counsellors from Luke’s camp counsellors at the party who were incredibly helpful in manning the water slide that we rent every year as well as getting in the pool with the kids and making sure everyone was kept safe.

As an added bonus this year, I brought in Gavin’s DJ Teacher, DJ Natalie of Baby DJ School to rock out with the kids. Truth be told…she stole the thunder at this party and KILLED IT. The music was AMAZING. She played games with the kids and they were SO INTO IT and she gave aways prizes. She was unreal.

For dessert we served 2 cakes. One for Luke and one for DJ Natalie as it was ALSO her birthday! We also had a whole lot of cake pops to pass around all made by the amazing Angela of Making that Cake.

As a final send off we sent the kids home with “Party Animal” water bottles so they could spend the summer hydrating and a package of fun temporary tattoos.

It was an incredible party, our renovated backyard proved to be perfectly designed for entertaining and the rain held off ALL DAY! Happy birthday to my sweet baby boy who completed our family 7 years ago…can’t wait for the next big bash.