A very merry unbirthday!

Posted on Aug 21, 2011 in Everyday | 2 comments

I have to admit that I am still in love with my 30th birthday party. Of all the parties I’ve thrown the past few years, this has got to be my best and most favorite [yes, narrowly beating out last year's Ice Cream Social and my 28th Mini Golf Invitational] party to date.

This was a real labor of love. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trolling the Internet looking for the perfect invitations. Since it was my 30th birthday, I figured I mail actual invitations instead of the usual Evite. Originally I had planned on making the invitations myself [see: glutton for punishment] but after searching through countless templates and inspiration pictures, I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. Enter: Etsy. After a quick search, I came across this invitation suite from Aidensmom37 that made my heart stop.

I had a torrid love affair with these invites, which I had printed through CatPrint [who, by the way was awesome to work with and I HIGHLY recommend using them. I plan on using them for all my future fancy invitation printing needs]. I think they set the mood perfectly for the party.

The vision I had in mind was one of a mismatched tea sets, much like in the animated movie, so I spent several months stalking a few different Goodwill stores looking through their collection of housewares for the perfect teacups and saucers. It took a while to gather all of the settings I would need [and then a backup when I found out my Mom had accidentally broken one of the tea cups...and I was already short at this point with a week to go!] but I actually had fun hunting for them. The original plan was to buy them [I paid no more than $2 for a full set of a cup and saucer] and then donate them back to Goodwill but now that I have them, I plan on keeping them. You never know when you’ll need 20 tea sets again!

The menu wasn’t typical of an actual tea party, with heavier items since it was a “high tea” and I invited boys. Knowing that tea sandwiches never satisfy MY hunger, I decided to serve something more substantial to appease everyone, especially them. I ended up serving steak & provolone cheese sandwiches, thai turkey sliders, meat pies, and mini quiche along with sweet iced tea.

My dessert table was highlighted with my awesome topsy turvy three-tiered cake [the flavors: the top was s'mores, the second tier was chocolate and the bottom tier was funfetti] and flanked by purple velvet mini cupcakes, banana tartlets and my go-to favorite vanilla bean sugar cookies. With a cake like that, how can you NOT be excited about turning 30? I’ll tell you how: it’s impossible. I was so excited to finally get a professional cake like all those Food Network Challenges I overdosed on for years.

Even though I always get a little nuts for the details, the main point of celebrating my birthday with these crazy parties is too celebrate with friends and family that I love dearly. I always have a good time with my friends and I strive to make sure everyone who attends does so as well. When it comes down to it, even if I had managed to stage a party with the precision of a magazine spread, it wouldn’t matter if my friends didn’t enjoy themselves. But from the looks of these pictures, I’d say this party was a huge success:

I had so much fun with this birthday that I haven’t even thought about what I want to do next year. I’m still enjoying this year [and we all know how quickly I start looking for ideas for the next party]! Thank you to everyone for making this an awesomely amazing birthday.

Note: The really awesome photos are by Abe Arriola. The other not so awesome ones are mine.