Let me say... it was definitely not what I had daydreamed about. I had intended to have tables in the grass, complete with fabric and flags in the trees. The first thing that went wrong was the fabric... I had A LOT less of it than I thought, so I defaulted to streamers because truly you can make streamers look amazing if you have enough yardage of them. So I bought about 1,000 feet of streamers in white, soft orange, and aqua to adorn the trees with and create a canopy with.
No. Go.
The wind was about 20mph last Saturday and I have never been so frustrated. Everytime I hung another, the wind would gust them up into the trees and tear them down. I may have cried. My husband may have had to console me. All in all, I had to give up on putting anything in the trees. It just wasn't happening. This is what it looked like when they finally all fell (this is after every other tree had already been wrapped a dozen times and by this point had unwrapped itself...)
So then Logs, my sister and I started setting up the tables and quickly realized that the ground was so uneven that putting the (delicious) cake my sister and slaved over on a table that unsteady would be a death wish on the cake. So. Logan sweetly suggested we move it to the patio, and that ended up working out better because it felt more intimate instead of a couple scattered tables in a huuuuge yard.
That being said, we don't have the very best of patios to work with. It's great - I mean I love it and I spend time on it whenever I can, but it definitely wasn't made for entertaining. Here's a picture of it after we got the tables up there:
So it turned out to be quite nice, and the house more or less helped break the huge gusty winds from knocking everything over.
Melly and Jeff (my in-laws) got there early to help figure the details out, and the party ultimately went off without a hitch! I learned a lot, since it was my first party at our apartment (we've only had individual couples over so far), and I'm grateful to my family for being so sweet about my first go at a get-together.
Here are the preparations I did the week-of:
I put together the flower arrangements for the tables the night before - I LOVE LOVE LOVE Kroger's "Build Your Own Bouquet" section (3 bouquets for $12 that you arrange yourself!), so I picked up six little bouquets of springy flowers and used some of my mom's decorative vases and the vintage soda bottles we had left over from the wedding to put them all in. It was a great contrast of decorative/nice with vintage/fun. I loved the way they turned out! The bunting flags were really easy to make too - I just strung together cut scrapbooking paper with some twine I had leftover from our Save-the-Dates from our wedding. :)
The decor I thought went together just perfectly! Complete with glass Cokes and orange striped straws. :) Oh, and my sister made a Williamsburg Orange Cake with teal icing, strawberries, and oranges on top! :) She's a wonderful baker!
I used my old dorm sheets and pillowcases for the table cloth on the cake table and centerpieces. I thought the Pottery Barn teal paisley brought everything together quite nicely if I don't say so myself!
I think everyone enjoyed themselves... It was such a blast and I hope my mom felt the love that went into throwing her a fun, intimate birthday celebration. (Speaking of, her REAL birthday is today - love you Mom!!)
Ohh! And I forgot the BEST PART! After all the clean-up and goodbyes, I had all the vintage soda bottles left (since I let Mom take home her vases with the flowers in them), so I made a GREAT centerpiece for our dining table! I. Love. It. So. Much!
Okay - I hope you enjoyed! And soon to come, I'll elaborate on the birdhouses I made her and how I antiqued them! (You can peek at them in the bottom left of the first "decor" collage!)Enjoying my lunch,
Jilly.
No comments:
Post a Comment