All the details on my perfect birthday party

My birthday party this year was the first one I’ve had in five years. I usually prefer just having a nice low-key day but this year I changed my mind sort of last minute. I wanted to do something cute with a few of my closest friends in town that would be uncomplicated and affordable. By keeping true to exactly what felt nice to me, my friends/family and I ended up creating such a special time. I’m going to give as much info as I can so you can replicate the vibes or get some inspo if you want!

Venue

First and foremost, I hosted the party at an apartment complex lobby, which was free! I know this isn’t an option for everyone, but if you or someone you know has a building with a nice common space you can set up in, I highly recommend this! We were lucky enough to have access to an outdoor grill, mini kitchen, and plenty of seating.

Something that was so nice to have at my party was my own music. I’ve had the same JBL speaker for so many years and it still works perfectly. My friends and I made a Spotify jam too so everyone’s music was featured. That was a fun icebreaker for people who didn’t know each other too!

Activities

As an introvert, party activities are so important to me… activities during any gathering actually. I wanted to make sure there would be something for everyone, especially since not everyone already knew each other and since (other than BYOB) it was a dry party.

My sister had a great idea to have everyone create name tags for themselves. We didn’t have actual name tag stickers at the time so we just used paper. But for next time, I’m definitely going to have actual stickers so that it’s a lot more intuitive for people (as opposed to tearing off a piece of paper that you’d tape to your shirt).

Speaking of paper… I covered all the tables in blank white paper from huge rolls we got. This was not only to keep things clean, but also for people to draw / write / doodle on! I loved how this turned out, I still have the messages and things people left! For art supplies, I brought over some of my gel pens, acrylic paints, paint brushes, paint pallets, crayons, paint pens, and regular markers. I also used extra little solo cups we had laying around for paint brush water.

Another big element of the first half of the party was GAMESS! We love board games and card games. The apartment lobby had a poker table also (so we brought our chips) but most people wants to play board games!

Some of our favorite games which we brought were Hues and Cues, Block Party, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Rivals of Catan, playing cards, Uno, and Jenga. Hues and Cues and Block Party are some of our newer favorites that we absolutely love. Those games always win over a crowd and you end up having a fun time no matter who you’re playing with (even between strangers).

Now for my FAVORITE part of the party! We had a make your own bouquet bar!! This was so magical and something I’ve been wanting to do for so long. I love flowers and thought it would be so cute. We got our massive tub of flowers from a local flower farm about half an hour away. I’d never been to a flower farm before and it was so fun picking out everything.

We set up the tub of flowers on it’s own table with my hoard of cleaned out recycled glass jars (and the lids for people to reuse their jars once their flowers died) along with some scissors I find good for flowers. It was so much fun to see what everyone did with it and a huge crowd pleaser (IMO).

The second half of the party took place in the theater. This is when we had the cake and I opened some gifts. We ended the night playing jackbox games on a switch we hooked up to the screen. As always, we had so much fun doing that!

Decorations

For decorations, we kept it pretty minimal. I made a banner out of cut up old tee-shirts that I knotted together which was cute! We also made balloon clusters from misc balloons we had laying around that we blew up ourselves and put together after watching about fifty TikTok tutorials.

With the art supplies, games, and flowers there was already a lot going on and I am not a fan one time use decorations that just end up in a landfill. I did look into more sustainable options for party decorations but it was too expensive and not needed anyways!

Food

Thanks to my sister, the food was amazing. She made barbecue chicken skewers using a recipe I love and she also put together a gorgeous salad inspired by recipe pins I sent her. She made everything ahead of time and just heated up the skewers on the grill once it was time and she brought salad dressing for people to add as they wanted.

For serving everything we had metal baking pans, leftover unused plastic silverware + paper plates, and some cute napkins. Later on there was an amazing cake too, it was store bought though so no recipe.

Final thoughts

Thanks to my amazing friends and family this party was not only incredibly fun but also so doable with no stress. The elements that I think made it such a success were sticking to things I enjoy (as opposed to trying to guess what might make other people happy), keeping the activities / entertainment to things we already owned (mostly), having options for people + allowing ways for guests to mingle, and having such good company.

If you’re trying to plan something for an introvert or just want a low-key / creative get together, I highly recommend keeping things simple with a variety of options. It’s great to have more opportunities for guests to keep themselves engaged and happy while also taking pressure off of the host.

Thank you for reading + hopefully you found something interesting or helpful in here! Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to share about your birthday party!