Last month my mom had a milestone birthday: she turned... 70. 70?? OMG!!
{not-a-great scanned copy of the invitation, created by me}
I couldn't let such a big birthday go by without some fanfare, so I convinced my mom to have a party. Now if I was a really good daughter, I'd have planned & paid for it all on my own and just had her show up ;-). But I'm an only child and I know my limitations. It all ended up for the best for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that one of my boys was in the hospital for 4 days and was discharged just 72 hours before party time. Luckily we have some good friends that jumped in and helped out with the final preparations!
My mom did an awesome job with the decorations. She was awash in a sea of patterned paper, glitter, and punches for weeks beforehand. Take a peek at some of her fabulous creations...
The centerpiece of the main party table was this beautiful faux cake that my mom created using cardboard, cardstock, dimensional stickers and loads of ribbon and fun embellishments.
For each and every guest, my mom made what she called an Honored Guest badge. She was burning up the lines on her Martha Stewart scoring board for days ;-). I'm not sure what she had more fun doing: creating over 30 unique badges or pinning them on the guests as they arrived!
Here's a shot of the table, all set, complete with white twinkie lights that may or may not be snowflake lights that my mom likes to leave up year round...
Throughout the house there were colorful paper pinwheels of all sizes and patterns. They added a touch of festiveness and whimsy, just the mood we were going for.
My contribution to the decor was an OMG 70! banner that was strung in the living room. Please pardon the poorly lit iPhone pics. I used some of the same patterned paper from the invitations on the front, along with ruffled crepe paper and a lovely pale seafoam mini ball fringe.
I backed the pennants with pages from a vintage children's magazine--published in September 1940, the month and year my mom was born.
Along with my lovely assistants (Ebby and My Cousin Laura), we put together these fun party favors.
We saw the idea at our local scrapbook shop and loved it. I purchased the specially colored "chocolate gems" at Fresh Market and we got the bags at our local shop. Once I did some research and made a paper funnel to slide the M&Ms into the bags, the work went pretty quickly. They are great favors and can be adapted to so many different occasions. If you're interested, here's some info on how to make them and here's a link to an online source for the 1"x8" cello bags.
Before we knew it, it was time to set up the desserts. I put myself in charge of making all the cupcakes in my mom's requested flavor combinations. We had four different cupcake creations: Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream, Chocolate with Chocolate Buttercream, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing, and Lemon with Vanilla Buttercream. They were all, dare I say, downright delicious.
I mixed and matched recipes from the Cake Mix Doctor books, I checked out 3 of them from the library. The frostings were all from scratch which is one of the CMD tenets.
My mom also ordered a cake from a local bakery which was a fun addition. And it gave us something to stick sparklers and candles in for my mom to blow out☺.
It was a wonderful party, full of love, laughter and lots of sparkle. When my mom declared it her best birthday ever, I knew we'd achieved success.
