Neon Party in the making

I love everything about parties.  I love the process of planning, the hunting down party supplies and then putting it all together.  I shared about a month ago, when I was planning Olivia's Scooter themed party, about how I like to gather supplies for quite a while before the party.  We had decided on a Neon theme a few months ago and I had the inspiration.  So, the hunt for all things neon pink began.  It was actually harder then you think to find fluorescent party supplies.  But, I think I found some really great things.

The color palette for the party started with the fabric.  What's more neon then glow sticks? So, those went in the gift bags.  I also put Chiclets, a neon pink lip gloss from Forever 21, and a pair of hipster/nerdy glasses from Target in their goody bags.  We had purple striped paper straws and I made a neon pink Happy Birthday banner for the cake topper (I'll share how I made that later this week).  For decorations, I used washi tape from Paper Source, a string of pom poms for Michaels, and neon pink surveyor's tape and mason's line from Home Depot.  My Home Depot finds are my favorite.  The tape was under $2 and the string was about $5.

Sometimes I buy party supplies knowing exactly what I'm going to do with them, but more often then not, I figure out what I'm going to do with them in the last couple of days.  My advice for party planning is to buy, buy, buy when you see something that might work and keep your receipts.  You can always weed out and edit things before the party, then return the unused supplies when it's all over.  Last minute trips for supplies are not fun, it's so much better to be prepared way ahead of time. 

You know, neon is totally weird to photograph.  I tried all kinds of light settings, changed my aperture and fiddled with my camera a lot.  For some reason the neon just blurs and looks like it's glowing in all the pictures.  If you have any experience with neon in pictures, I'd love some advice or suggestions.