A couple weekends ago, I hosted a small college graduation party for my baby sister. {Side note: am I allowed to use the terms college and baby in the same sentence?}  It was just our direct family attending, but with my parents, husband, three sisters and a toddler, it was still a pretty lively event!  Since we were at the graduation ceremony for most of the first half of the day, we had the party catered so we wouldn’t have to worry about being in a rush to pull together a celebratory meal afterwards.  K had to catch a flight back to San Francisco that night so a dinner out at a restaurant was also out of the picture.  I forgot to take a lot of photos of the graduation party decor, but I did want to share a few of the photos I took.

Since I didn’t have to worry about pulling together a big meal for the graduation party, I decided instead to focus on making my own decor for the party.  “Baby Sister” M’s school colors were blue and yellow so I decided to use this as the theme for the decorations.  I took a page from K’s party decor for our family reunion’s Fourth of July luncheon last year and used a paper punch to create handmade paper garlands to hang up around the kitchen and dining room.

I have a pretty large supply of decorative paper and card stock and I went through my stockpile to find some cute yellow card stock and a roll of Paper Source dark blue polka dotted paper that I had from leftover from my wedding.  I used my scallop punch that I bought to make the favor bags for T’s 2nd birthday party and punched out ~100 large scalloped circles.  I then used double-sided tape and affixed them to some blue twine (I stuck two of scalloped circles together with the twine running up the middle between the two circles.)

I then took some blue and yellow washi tape to create tiny flags between each of the scalloped circles.  I stuck together a long piece of washi tape around each string of twine and then snipped the edges to create a tiny flag.  I then used masking tape to hang each string of garland from the ceiling (I tried using the washi tape at first, but they all fell down within minutes.)  I love that I can reuse the paper and washi tape garlands again for a future party.  I carefully took each one down and stored them in a ziploc storage bag for future use.

I also took her graduation announcements (one from the school and one my mom had made on Tiny Prints) and placed them in small white frames on the buffet table.  My mom had picked up some blue and yellow jelly beans that and we served those in cute little polka dot candy cups that I had bought at Shop Sweet Lulu awhile back.  T insisted on getting a cake for the party so we picked up the little graduation hat cupcake from Whole Foods.

My mom also made a project similar to the silver flower pot party favors we made for T’s baptism a few years ago.  She painted three terra cotta pots yellow and planted blue/purplish flowers in each pot.  I also bought some yellow daisies for the party and placed them in two mason jars tied with ribbon.  We then placed all five flower decorations in the middle of the dining room table for our tablescape.

I also printed off a few of these 2013 graduation party decor printables from Catch My Party that I found on Pinterest (most notably the foldable labels to write down the types of food that were being served.)  I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of these and the food because I was way too excited about trying all of it.  Our gluten-free menu included Thai shrimp spring rolls with spicy chili sauce, chicken mango curry, coconut rice, Thai steak salad, and coconut flan.  (For those of you living in the Boston South Shore area, I highly recommend you check out The Fresh Feast in Cohasset where we ordered the food from- so delicious and very reasonably priced!)

Do you have any favorite ways to make your own decorations for parties?