Oh, The Places You’ll Go: A Graduation Party!

Though I may still be in a little bit of denial, we have our first high school graduate! We had a party a week after graduation, and what a party it was. I didn’t do a lot of DIY projects for this one, but I’m excited to show you all about what I did do and how it all came together.

My daughter chose the theme. When each of our kids started school, we bought a copy of Oh, The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss for them to have signed. I know some people do this as a surprise for their kids, but ours have always known all about it. They take their books to school each year and have their teachers sign them. Even throughout high school, my daughter took her book to all of her favorite teachers and staff members, and the notes they wrote to her are priceless. I was thrilled that it made as much of an impact on her as it apparently did.

In addition to choosing the theme, Sam also created a shared note with me for all of her party ideas—even down to her outfit. So a lot of what I did was *add to cart*, and then I knew that whatever I added on my own needed to be pastel-colored.

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Decorations

Amazon has a TON of Oh, The Places You’ll Go-themed decorations. I think we bought most of it.

We split up this banner to hang across our fireplace mantle and between the lights over our kitchen island.

This table runner looked adorable on our kitchen table.

When I realized I was ordering confetti, I was apprehensive, but this confetti is HUGE! It is definitely not the kind that’s going to get everywhere and be a pain.

We set up this photo backdrop and added these photo props. (I wish we’d called more attention to this setup.) I ordered the biggest size I could find for the backdrop, but there are smaller sizes to fit whatever space you have. It has grommets, so we used Command hooks to hang it.

These hanging hot air balloon lanterns are adorable! There were a bunch of them to choose from on Amazon, but I liked the colors of these best. 

I envisioned having colorful pompoms hanging from pretty much everywhere, and these were inexpensive. They were also, however, a lot more work than I had bargained for. As it turns out, they’re just like the truffula tree tops—with some of the work done for you. The whole family had to get involved in this, and some of us were more dedicated to getting them to look more spherical (ahem). Don’t be like me; give yourself plenty of assembly and hanging time!

Okay, so truffula trees aren’t from Oh, The Places You’ll Go. But they ARE Dr. Seuss’s creations, and I thought they would make perfect party decor. They are made from tissue paper and pool noodles. Check out my tutorial HERE!

Some of the other things you might see in the photos came from Pop Shelf. My husband was there by himself and found some really cute things!

Tableware

We used an assortment of colors from Party City for plates/napkins/flatware. We used clear plastic cups from Walmart (our usual red Solo cups didn’t go with the theme). Party City has cups in all colors, though.

Food and Drink

The cake came from Walmart. I didn’t even do any research on this one, but I have to say, it was one delicious cake. Of course it fit the theme perfectly.

Cotton candy truffula trees

As it turns out, these were much better in theory. They were adorable… at first. But even though this was an indoor party, the heat and humidity were apparently too much. I had the kitchen window open, and that was probably the main issue. Unfortunately, I don’t even have a photo of them looking their best.

If you’d like to make your own cotton candy truffula trees, all you have to do is form a cotton candy ball around the end of a straw. I cut straws in half, and we used this holder for them.

We also had an assortment of pastel-colored candies on our sweets buffet, and we had a big tray of iced cookies in a bunch of different colors.

Though it is not specifically Oh, The Places You’ll Go or Dr. Seuss-themed, we also had a mocktail bar. Sam had chosen some mocktails that looked good, and her brother was kind enough to be our bartender. I think there’s a lot of potential here for creative names. For this party, we could have renamed the mocktails after travel locations or Dr. Seuss books—the possibilities are endless!

Little personal touches

Sam didn’t want a second copy of the Oh, The Places You’ll Go book, so I ordered the coloring book to have party guests sign. She used sticky notes to mark the pages that had the most space for signing. I hope she’ll take it to college and color it when she needs a little break or some words of affirmation.

I ordered these hot air balloon cutouts without knowing exactly what I wanted to do with them. We decided to ask people to write travel advice on them with a Sharpie. When they finished writing, they stuck them on the wall with tape.

Sam’s dress came was another Amazon purchase, and it was perfect! I LOVE the colors, and it looked beautiful on her.

We turned Sam loose with sticky notes to label everything because that’s her thing. The girl looooves her sticky notes. A tiny thing, but something that was very *her.*

We had a slideshow of Sam photos running on our TV during the party. The photos were from birth to graduation, and oh my heart…

It had been a long time since we’d had a good themed party, and this was a fun one!