We threw a camp themed party and filled it with DIY personalized merch, homemade marshmallows, friendship bracelet napkin rings, and a tuck shop with nostalgic candy. Whether it's a bachelorette weekend, a girls trip, or a multi-generational gathering with your closest people, here's how we created something that felt nostalgic, intentional, and surprisingly doable.
Quick Look
- 📋 Party Theme: Camp Themed Party for Adults
- 📅 Season: Summer
- 🎨 Color Palette: Green & Gingham
- ⏲️ Vibe: Nostalgic, Intentional, Details-Driven
- 💡 Difficulty: Moderate (significant prep, major payoff)
- ⭐ Top Tip: The personalized merch and custom details are what make guests feel special.
Why You'll Love This Party
- The details are the star: personalized logos, custom pins, friendship bracelet napkin rings.
- Elevated food that actually delivers (homemade marshmallows, savory s'mores, flame grilled steaks.
- Works for bachelorette weekends, girls trips, or multi-generational family gatherings.
- Nostalgic without being cheesy, everyone remembers what they loved about summer camp.
Jump to:
I grew up camping at our family's lake trailer up north with my family. Later, Girl Guides and summer camp taught me what camp really meant: friendship bracelets, s'mores around the fire, and gathering with people you love. When my kids were little, we camped as a family. And then moved to a yearly cabin rental on a beautiful beach just an hour from home. This year both of our adult daughters are joining us and it seemed like the perfect moment to lean into that camp magic intentionally and throw a camping themed party.
The inspiration was simple: I wanted Parent Trap camp vibes. That nostalgic, slightly glamorous summer camp feeling. Think Camp Walden aesthetic with green, gingham, wildflowers, and the kind of details that make you feel like you're part of something special.
If you love camping you might also like our camping themed birthday party here, or the s'mores pizza, or the s'mores trail mix recipe.
YouTube Long Form Video
The Setting/Decor/DIYS
The moment your guests arrive, the details tell them this matters. You're not just throwing a party, you're recreating a feeling. Every element from the welcome banner to the table setup works together to make the space feel intentional and nostalgic.
Welcome to Camp Banner
We created a simple welcome banner on a drop cloth using the Camp logo in green. It hangs at the entrance and immediately sets the tone. The banner becomes a photo moment and a keepsake guests can see in pictures for years.
To make it use our free logo, just subscribe below for instant access to our Free Resource Library.
I made the banner using my Cricut. I cut out the logo out in iron-on vinyl and added it to a simple banner that I made from a drop cloth, and added brass grommets to the corners. You could also have it printed as a poster or a sign at a local printer.
The Table Setup: Gingham, Enamelware & Wildflowers
Our party table really set the stage. We used a green and white gingham tablecloth, layered it with simple white camping plates on real wood round chargers and vintage black and white enamelware mugs. Fresh flowers and wildflowers in mason jars became the centerpiece. And we added lanterns, a deck of cards ready for the next game, and a few special pieces like a real antler, some wooden mushrooms, some vintage trophies, and a vintage compass. It's the kind of table that makes people want to sit down and stay there.
Friendship Bracelet Napkin Rings
Instead of traditional napkin rings we made friendship bracelets with letter beads spelling out each guest's name and "CAMP" in green and white beads. They double as place cards and party favors. We made them ahead of time, and guests wore them during the party and took them home. It's a small detail that people still talk about weeks later.
Personalized Camp Merch -T-Shirts, Tank Tops, Hats, Hoodies
As well as being inspired by the classic Camp Walden uniforms in Parent Trap, I found myself scrolling through bachelorette party ideas on social media and loved the personalized merch angle. But I wanted something different. Instead of a bride-specific logo or cutesy bachelorette sayings, I chose just "Camp." It's simple, it's timeless, and it works whether you're celebrating a bride with her bridesmaids, gathering friends for a milestone weekend, or bringing together family across generations. It's also very wearable after the party.
At real camp, everyone wears a uniform but in different pieces, one person gravitates toward the t-shirt, another to the hoodie, someone else prefers the tank. We created custom camp logos and used our Cricut to apply them to shirts, tank tops, hoodies, and hats. Everyone chose what worked for them, so we matched without being identical.
If you're not up for the DIY version that I made, consider ordering matching pieces on-line as another option.
Custom Camp Pins
My days as a Girl Guide taught me that camp pins matter. At camp, you'd wear your camp hat decorated with pins and badges you earned or collected each year. It was like wearing your own little camping scrapbook. Every pin told a story.
I created eight custom pin designs: Happy Camper, Fish, S'mores, Life is a Party, Camp 2026, Roasted Marshmallows, A Bear, and A Compass. We made them at our local library's maker space (25mm size), where they have a pin making machine that you can use for free and just have to pay for the pin supplies. You can grab our free designs in our Free Resource Library.
Everyone chose some to take home, so they each ended up with a personalized mix. The pins become party favors, keepsakes. and conversation starters long after the weekend ended.
The Tuck Shop: Custom Branding & Stickers
When I was a little girl, our family camped at a rustic trailer up north with no running water. Every few days we'd drive out to the little shop at the main gate to refill and visit the camp shop. They carried essentials like bug spray, instant coffee, and matches. And of course, candy. We were allowed to pick out a treat once in a while. My sister and I still remember that shop, and we still remember the candy. Sometimes we'd choose taffy, and bring it back to freeze in the tiny freezer of the propane fridge. Then we'd slam the whole box on the table and crack into pieces.
For this party, we recreated that tuck shop feeling. We set up a wood crate display with another canvas sign that says "Tuck Shop," and filled it with nostalgic candy (the kind that actually existed when we were kids - garbage pail kids candy, McIntosh toffee, and chocolate bars). It was simple, nostalgic, and brought so much sweet joy to our camping party.
The details matter here. The handmade sign, the specific candies you loved as a kid, these are the moments people photograph and remember. Don't skip the small touches. 😉
The Food
Sophisticated camping food is the whole point. We started with savory s'mores around the campfire, moved to dinner at the table, and finished with a beautiful s'mores board back by the fire. Nothing was complicated, but everything was intentional, and a foodies dream.
Drinks
With dinner we had simple bottled soda pop. And I went for nostalgic classics like coke in glass bottles and pop shop varieties. We served them in a galvanized metal tub with ice, don't forget your bottle opener. 😉
And later when the evening cooled off we made some hot chocolate and tea to enjoy in our antique enamelware mugs around the fire with our sweet smores.
Savory S'mores (Appetizer)
We started with savory s'mores as the appetizer around the fire. Picture melting cheese over the fire, then sandwiching it between two crackers with a little meat and other fixings like chutney or jam added. Yes it's as amazing as it sounds. It's unexpected, it's delicious, and it sets the tone that this camp party is a little more intentional than typical camping food.
Our favourite combos were:
- Babybel cheese, salami, fig jam, and crackers
- Swiss cheese, prosciutto ham, sweet mustard, and crackers
- Bocacini cheese, tomato jam, flaky sea salt, and slices of baguette
- Cheddar cheese, fresh apple slices, hot honey, and crackers
The beauty is that guests can customize their own, so everyone gets exactly what they want. See our full savory s'mores post here.
Main Course: Flank Steak & Salad
The main course was simple but elevated: marinated flank steak grilled over charcoal, roasted potatoes, all served over a fresh salad, with a homemade balsamic vinegar dressing. We prepped almost everything at home so there was minimal cooking on-site. We roasted the potatoes in the cottage. The steak was the hero here. Good quality meat, great marinade, cooked well over the fire. Slice it thin over the salad and serve it with warm crusty, cheesy garlic bread and let that be enough. Simple done right.
Homemade Marshmallows
You can't having a camping party without having marshmallows to roast over the campfire, and since we were doing elevated camping food we made three varieties of homemade marshmallows. Marshmallows are actually quite easy to make, just a few steps and a little waiting time involved. For this party we made: Chocolate Marshmallows, and Oreo Marshmallows.
Homemade marshmallows taste completely different from store-bought. They're lighter, fluffier, and actually worth the effort. Each flavor has its own post with the full recipe if you want to make them yourself. Find the chocolate marshmallows recipe here, and the Oreo marshmallows recipe here.
Sweet S'mores Board (Dessert)
For dessert, we created a beautiful s'mores board with the homemade marshmallows, homemade graham crackers, graham cracker crack -you know your old favorite Christmas crack the toffeed crackers that are so popular and so good? They just got their summer makeover and they taste amazing -like can't stop eating them amazing. We also had multiple chocolate varieties, and here's the difference between regular smores and amazing smores: the chocolate. Get the good stuff, the Tony's chocolate, the Lindt chocolate, the stuff you usually reserve for Christmas. This is their summer appearance. 😉 And we also in some Nutella, and some Pistachio cream. When I say these smores were gourmet, I'm not kidding.
Each guest can build their own s'more exactly how they want it. This is where the homemade elements really shine. The combination of quality chocolate, fresh marshmallows, and homemade graham crackers transforms a classic campfire treat into something really special.
The Activites
The thing about camping is the activites just happen, without too much planning our effort. Some people sat in Muskoka charis (as we call them here -or adoronda chairs) and talked or read a good book, there was a card game, and a dominos game or two before dinner and swimming in the lake.
When I was a kid, my sister and I used to spend all day in the water on old tire inner tubes (our dad was a mechanic). For this party, we had personalized camp floaties with our logo on them. The floaties are nicer than inner tubes, but the feeling is the same: you're in the water with people you love, no phones, no agenda, just being together.
There was no itinerary, no forced activities. That's the magic of camp, you create the space and people fill it with exactly what they need -quiet, connection, laugher, play, and memory making.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely. The camp feeling comes from the details and the intentionality, not just the location. You can recreate this in your backyard with a fire pit, some lawn games, and the same personalized touches. The key is creating zones, a table area for dinner, a fire pit area for s'mores, comfortable seating for hanging out.
We planned about a month out, which gave us time to design the logos, make the merch on our Cricut, make the friendship bracelets, and create the pins at the maker space. The food prep happened the week of. You could do this faster if you simplified the merch, or ordered it instead of DIYing it.
No. The s'mores board works beautifully with store-bought marshmallows. The homemade ones are special and worth making if you have time, but they're not required. Same with the graham crackers. You can use store-bought.
You can roast marshmallows in your oven or over a grill.
More Camping Inspiration
If you throw a camp themed party or try any of the ideas from this post, I'd love to hear how it went in the comments below. Thanks for visiting today!
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