* Products were provided by Oriental Trading, all opinions are my own*

Summer Slump [suhm-er sluhmp]: noun. When the novelty of not having to get up and make school lunches every morning wears off, and the reality of spending every waking moment with your children sets in.

Anyone else there? No? Just me? Don’t get me wrong, I am LOVING my kids not waking up until 9 (ok not the newborn), not having breakfast until 10 and not being dressed until noon (shhh don’t tell my hubby who leaves for work at 5:45). But by 2-3pm every day i’m ready for some *space* from these always-angelic (err… or something..) little human beings I created. We were in major need of a *summer pick-me-up* and Oriental Trading gave us the perfect excuse and inspiration.

Decorations:

Perusing Oriental Trading’s site I quickly came up with the “Feelin’ hot hot hot!” party theme. I wanted to stick with *lemon lime* decor as I wanted to feature our new favorite summer time treat: frozen lemonade (more on that later)! So I designed a banner and 8X10 print to jazz up our party a bit-

 This was a relaxed backyard affair so nothing too crazy, but something to make it feel like more than the average “playdate”. The lime green gumballs and yellow lollipops are from Oriental Trading.  Like I said I was sticking to the *lemon lime* theme so I knew I wanted lime green & bright yellow.  Did you know you can actually search for candy by color on their website? It made finding the right color candy for my centerpieces so easy.  I just stuck them in glass milk bottles (Ikea) with some lollipops poppin’ out the top. Then just throw in some fresh lemons & limes scattered around and you are set!

You can download the banner & 8X10 print with the buttons below:

Food

Now having just had a baby, I’m on myself a little healthy-kick right now. Oldest thinks its a real *kill-joy* and keeps telling me things like “just stop your diet, eat the brownie, and then start your diet again Mom!”. I am really diggin’ his logic, anyone else? *sigh* But anyway, I wanted to focus on healthy, yet refreshing & kid friendly food options for our little get-together.

I’ve been wanting to try those watermelon popsicles I’ve seen around a bit:

Word to the wise: you have to pre-slit the watermelon rinds with a knife before you stick in the popsicle stick.  And it took me 4 or 5 to get the hang of it before I started to get into a rhythm. So don’t give up if the first couple turn out all skiwampus 😉

 Definitely passed the kid test.  Is she not the cutest watermelon eater you’ve ever seen? Yes, yes she is.

To go along with our watermelon popsicles we made guilt-free frozen lemonade. Now you’ve had the amazing chick-fil-a frosted lemonade, no? Its amazing. So I was on a mission to make a version that I could enjoy without the guilt. Especially since we have a freezer full of lemon juice from our lemon tree. But no worries if you do not have a freezer full of lemon juice you can still make this! (but you do need to buy fresh lemons and squeeze the lemon juice, you just can’t get the same results from bottled lemon juice).

The super-cute perfect kid-serving size milk bottles are from Oriental Trading. Along with the lime-green striped paper straws. Nothing jazzes up a party like paper straws, in my humble opinion.

All you need is 3 simple ingredients! I used Blue Bunny vanilla bean frozen yogurt, Great Value stevia sweetner, frozen lemon juice, and water.  If you are using lemon juice that is not frozen, just substitute ice for the water. Put it all in my handy-dandy vitamix (LOVE THAT THING, use it at least once daily) and voila!

I can’t tell you how much I love this stuff.  Every time I have it I just think “this is SO refreshing!” Serve these on a hot summer day when your kiddos are out playing in the sprinklers and you will be Queen of the Neighborhood. I’ll crown you myself. I made a little recipe card for your convenience, print out a few extra and keep them out at your party. Because someone will ask you for the recipe, money-back guarantee 😉

Have I mentioned how much I love the milk bottles from Oriental Trading? I’m so excited to use them for other events! So many possibilities… You can download the recipe card below:

The adorable sunglasses were from Oriental Trading as well.

 And I totally forgot to put out my frozen yogurt-banana popsicles that I made over on my insta-stories! Oh well, refreshing treat for another day I suppose.

Games/Activities:

Our main activity was our water bounce house, which sounds more idyllic than it is (its kinda a pain) but the kids enjoyed it, I think?

Yea, I think so. Then we had our awesome sunglasses from Oriental Trading. I was hoping they would make for cute photo ops and a fun little favor. Mission accomplished.

They were a bit big on our 1-4 year-olds but fit great on our 5-10 year-olds.

And lastly we had our Oriental Trading “color your own cups”. You know the best part about this activity? Preparation-free. Just open the box and grab your crayons and bam- fun activity for the kids is ready.

Each cup came with three different patterns you could color.  So you can pick one to color, or color all three and change up which one is showing. Oriental Trading had a whole bunch of “color your own” activities to pick from, I even saw color your own beach ball!

Once they were done we filled them up with frozen lemonade:

And wouldn’t you know it they started eating my lollipop centerpieces!? Never saw that coming 😉

The kids had been asking all summer to throw a party with their friends so now we can cross that off our list thanks to Oriental Trading! We are so lucky to have such great friends to share these long, summer days with:

I think we’re missing a few from our group shot, haha. Hey, real life baby. You try getting a picture of 12 kids 10 and under when there’s bounce houses, color your own cups, swing sets, trampolines, and most importantly good friends. I LOVE SUMMER!

Shopping List:

To make it easier for you I’ve compiled a list of everything needed to throw your own summer bash, links included:

• milk bottles
• cool neon sunglasses
• color your own tropical cups
• lime green striped paper straws
• yellow plastic tablecloth
• large lime green gumballs
• yellow swirl lollipops
• vanilla bean frozen yogurt
• lemons & limes
• stevia
• watermelon
• popsicle sticks

If you are looking for more ideas of what to do with your kiddos this summer check out our huge summer fun kit!

And make sure you are following along on FB for all the latest and greatest free printables.