50th Birthday Party

A more appropriate title for this post might be, In Which I Pretend to Be a Party Planner. A good friend of my family celebrated her 50th birthday this weekend. I offered to help with the party, thinking I might make the invitations...maybe bring a plate of food...and ended up at the helm. This was a fun adventure for me. I've never hosted a party for 70. I admit I'm a total novice, but I sure had a good time pretending to know what I was doing.


The birthday girl wanted a medieval/royal/jewel-toned event. A crown with jewels became the decor element of the evening. If you click on the first photo above, you'll see that she penned a creative invitation to fit her theme.


Aside from the theme, the only other major request from the birthday girl was that she have a dessert buffet. One of the walls in the party room was covered in red velvet. I thought the dessert table would be placed in front of that wall - the red velvet making a nice backdrop - but no, the dessert table was set towards the back of the room. So please ignore the stacked chairs and tables in the background. Also, no need to watermark these photos, eh? No one's going to steal them. The lighting was terrible. This is the only somewhat decent picture I have without people in the background (who might not want their pictures posted).


Even with my bad photography, you can see how amazing these chocolate tortes are. The pastry chef who made these was also a guest at the party, so I wanted to give her credit for her talented work. Yes, these bundles of chocolaty goodness tasted as good - if not better - than they looked.


Colorful fruit tartlets.


I'm lovin' the candy-filled apothecary jar trend right now. Aren't they cute?


The birthday girl loves all things chocolate. So we dressed up a few chocolate staples from See's Candies: chocolate lollipops and...


three flavors of chocolate candy bars. I saw more than a few ladies tuck a bar into their purse. I'm with you ladies - a little now, a little later.


The place cards. Yes, I adhered every rhinestone on every crown by hand. For days and days, while my son did his homework, I sat at the table beside him, gluing my little heart out. Between invitations, placecards, and food labels, I used over 700 rhinestones, all glued one at a time...by hand...with tweezers.


The menu tickets. Guests were offered a choice of three entrees. Each person took a tag to indicate his or her preference. I overheated my new Silhouette making these. *sniff, sniff* Fortunately my friend Heather came to my rescue and let me finish cutting on her machine. And for what it's worth - I give the customer service department at Silhouette America a big thumbs up. Response time was speedy and they didn't give me any trouble about returning my machine.


Finally, here I am beside the dessert table. The sweater disguises my prego belly well, but if you look closely, you can see all five months' worth of the sweet little girl growing inside of me.