party prepping

I started planning Peggy’s 50th birthday party about a month ago. But first and foremost, I needed to thoroughly clean the entire space so that the guests were not put off by the presence of dirt anywhere.

That is why I thought I would look for professional floor and Window Cleaning service providers to clean the places that had a lot of stubborn stains. But then I decided to do it on my own. So I washed as much as I could and decorated the rest of the space to draw our guests’ attention to the beautiful styling.

Anyway, as with any party, the first thing the host needs to decide on is the theme. Well, 50 was the theme but a color scheme is what I’d build the party around. I decided on pink and gold. Pink because Peggy is such a beautiful sweet girl and I’m sure she was a girly girl when she was little. And if not, she sure is now! Gold because she is the gold standard when it comes to friends. You know the song… “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.” She is Gold to me!

I believe this is the first time I’ve emailed a formal invite instead of sending it by snail mail. I’m glad I did because I was able to put so much more info in the email than I would have on just the mailed invite.

For instance, I was able to let invitees know that “The attire is casual-elegant – whatever that means – just wear something comfortable – weather permitting, we’ll be outside.” Turns out that was an important thing to let people know considering it actually snowed here only three days before the party.

I could also let people know that “The ‘theme’ is Elegant 50 ~ no ‘over-the-hill’ shenanigans!”

Once I had my color scheme, I went to town to carry it out!

Anne and I got together on a Sunday to make pink and gold Moroccan candle jars.

We used pink enamel paint for the inside of the jars, then a gold metallic puff paint to create the designs on the outside of them.

Below are Anne’s creations ~

And next is mine.

You may remember my post about our neighborhood Treasure Sale. I made a pallet sign for that.

I repainted it for Peggy’s party, to help direct guests who hadn’t been to our home before. I tied pink and gold balloons onto it and had it out in front of our house.

The only problem was, that I forgot there was an arrow on it and had it pointing across the street to our neighbor’s house. Peggy’s poor parents went knocking on their door! And I hadn’t even been drinking yet! How embarrassing!

From that same sale, I reused some IKEA plastic picture frames that we’d used to identify sale categories, as seen in the fuzzy photo below.

I spray-painted them gold and used them to showcase photos of Peggy throughout her 50 years.

Then I set up “Party Prep Central” in the third stall of our garage. It had been full of crafts from Thanksgiving and Christmas overflow for months and months!

I finally got it all cleaned out, with the intent of giving it back to Connor to park in when he comes home on the occasional weekend. I took a photo of the cleaned-out space and sent it to Connor on a Monday. He was so excited! Then three days later, I sent him this photo…

… and said, “I’m sorry, I’ve reclaimed your parking spot for Peggy’s party.”

I was even able to use the huge bike boxes as a table. Dave and I gave them to each other for Christmas, but have not even taken them out of their packaging yet. This week! I’m going to assemble them this week and we’ll be riding them on the weekend. For sure!

Anyhow, this is where I collected everything for the last three weeks. It is also where I set up my “mock dining table,” laid out the linens, etc. More on all of that tomorrow…