A Suprise 80th Birthday

If you have ever had the privilege of being kissed by a shaving cream face, being served endless amounts of candy, sweets, and amazing root beer floats, wrestling or getting a piggy back ride, being taken on incredible vacations full of laughs and memories, being chased with dentures, hearing stories of a missing finger, or just sitting and enjoying a man full of love and life then you are as blessed as I am.

{most of those memories are only reserved for the elite group of grandchildren... and now great grandchildren}

This Saturday, after months of planning, cooking, decorting, and baking, over 70 people surprised an incredible man. Known as Papa to many, daddy to several and Fred Jr. to others, we all gathered to celebrate 80 years on this earth and in our hearts.

When my mom and my aunt Janna decided on throwing Papa a party, my nosey, party-planning self butted my way in on a few of the details I had found via Pinterest. Once we saw our main focus to the party, we/they hit the ground running. These two did such an incredible job on every single detail.

{I am so thankful I have inherited their attention to detail.}

inspiration and credit

Janna's baby, the incredible 80 made of many, many pictures!

inspiration and credit

We recieved well over 80 memories from family, friends, and old classmates.

Thank you all for taking the time to recognize this wonderful man.

Now, to my favorite part of party planning... the dessert table!

Jars displaying snowballs, peanut brittle, lemon drops, and white chocolate pretzels.

Devils food mini cupcakes.

White chocolate popcorn cups.

Cake.

Marshmallow pops, dipped in yellow tinted white chocolate.

And our fabulous mustache pops inspired from Papa's memorable mustache after returning from China.

(I was not alive to witness his mustache, though)

An awesome lunch was served consisting of brisket, pinto beans, potato salad, and rolls.

{Thank you Dodie, Belinda, and Billie for the beans}

The souvenirs for the guests were mini Lambrusco bottles.

Gray and yellow accents filled the gymnasium that Papa and many of the other classmates/guests had grown up in. Signature cups displaying Papa's initials and gray barber striped straws completed the look on the beverage table.

Each table was decorated with five different themes. Bowls filled with golf balls, tee's, domino's, cards, and corks with gray, yellow, and white balloons attached inside. Janna also made canvas photos to compliment each table with different images throughout Papa's life.

The moment he walked through the door and we all saw the tears falling from his eyes, we knew that this party was a complete success.

 A former classmate that hadn't seen each other in over 60 years.

 The two party planning daughters.

 Grandkids and great grandkids, minus one grandson and one great granddaughter.
(I have no words to exlpain why I look the way I do... I blame my kids.)

Siblings

Happy 80th birthday to the man we all love!

Preppy Pink Crab Party

It's a PIRATES life for a 2 year old!

And so begins my new love for party planning.


Hunter's 2nd birthday party was an absolute blast to plan.
I started planning, researching, ebay-ing, and Etsy-ing a good three months prior to his party.


I knew I wanted a pirate theme!
Inspiration: party blogs; including Owen and Mason's 2nd birthday and hostess blog.


So, here's what we did.
For a few activities we had a treasure hunt, plank walk, and pinata.
In theory, when everyone arrived they would get decked out in their pirate gear and grab their black gable boxes(labeled with their new pirate name) and start their treasure hunt. Their boxes were stocked with a treasure hunt check list and a telescope.

The sand box was full of jewels, necklaces, rings, pirate bouncy balls, and alligators.

Here are the food tables we had set up, minus the main dish table.
(I had pictured this party in my head for so long now and how I would take pictures of everything pre-party guests, but once it got close to party time we were just trying to make sure the presentation for the guests was perfect.)
Plus, Oklahoma weather is not always the most cooperative. Today, it gave us an enormous amount of wind!

The desert table:
A local, and old, high school classmate made the cakes.
She did an amazing job!
We also had cake box cookies and cake balls to snack on.
For the edible decor we used swedish fish "sea bass", white chocolate covered pretzels "pirate bones", and red gum balls "squid eggs."

Just for detail purposes, our main dish foods were:
cheese burger and jerk chicken sliders
black bean mango salsa
with tortilla chips
fruit kabobs
cape code potato chips
and for the kids there were fish shaped pb&j's packaged up and "Pirate's Booty Aged White Cheddar Popcorn"

Drinks:
izze soda
lemonade with raspberries
tea
water bottles
and juice boxes

All the kids seemed to stay entertained and full, which is exactly what I wanted, but they were all a little young for the treasure hunt.
Luckily,the treasure chest pinata was enough for them.
It was loaded with gold fish, raisins, ring pops, and smarties.

Here are just a few action shots from the party.

A huge, gigantic THANK YOU to my family for helping with this party. I know I am several months late posting this, but after going through these pictures I am remembering how hectic it was before the party started.

My fabulous helpers:
Janna and Rachel VanHoozer
Nana and Papa Calaway
The "grill" guys
And my beautiful mother that made the banner, labels, treasure maps and much more!