Party!

This weekend we threw a big 60th birthday party for Kevin's mom.  We had been planning it for a while and were able to get family from NY and Florida to come. It was a lot of fun, here are some of the pictures!

The bar:

We had lots of wine, beer and cocktails... it was a fun night. I made a ribbon garland with different gold shiny ribbon to decorate the front of the bar. I created the actual bar on our kitchen table using 3 wooden wine crates from the wine store. I set them up on the back of the table and covered it all with a black tablecloth. This worked well to display the wine and keep it out of the way before it was used. The gold foil number balloons were a favorite of mine, they came from Party City.  

The dinner buffet:

We had a ton of food as always, but everyone ate a  lot and really enjoyed the spread. The menu was:

Vegetable tray with Knorr spinach dip

Hummus and pita 

Baked brie with crackers and apples

Bruschetta 

Pigs in a blanket

Mac and cheese bites

Buffalo chicken dip bites: Buffalo chicken dip in phyllo cups

Chicken nuggets and sweet chili sauce

Penne alla vodka from Daniel's

Chicken Marsala from Daniel's

Sweet barbecue meatballs

Glazed ham biscuits

The dessert bar & cake:

The cake came from Simply Cakes in Apex and turned out really beautiful. I sent them a picture of what I wanted and they made it look perfect! The bottom tier was double chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and the top tier was Oreo cake with Oreo mousse. It was covered in vanilla buttercream and had gold fondant decorations. We also had cupcakes and mini fruit tarts available.  Yummm. You can also see in these pictures one of the DIY tassel garlands that I made from tissue paper. These are super easy, check out a tutorial here.

The flowers: 

I bought flowers from different grocery stores the day before the party and arranged them all. I really loved the Bells of Ireland (from Whole Foods), fresh white tulips (Fresh Market) and hydrangea (Trader Joe's). 

The photo collage:

I secretly collected almost 150 pictures of Kevin's mom from family and friends from throughout her entire life to make this photo collage.  I had copies made of all of them into black and white with a white border around each picture (this helps them not blend together when they are laid next to each other). Then, I taped them to a cut out piece of poster board to arrange each number. It was a lot of work to get the photos to look right, but in the end, I think it was really great decoration for the party. In these pictures, you can also see the dot garlands that I made with scrapbook paper and my sewing machine(tutorial here or here). 

Opening the memories from everyone:

Kevin's sister Marielle collected memories from a lot of people in her life and gave them to her as a present at the party. I think we nearly had 60 envelopes all together.  It was a nice way for everyone, especially for those who couldn't make it, to show their love and share some memories they had of her. 

I love this picture, I think the cake looks great and the glow of the candles is really neat! It was a fun party!