80th Birthday Party ~ welcome

Last week we celebrated our mother's 80th birthday! My sisters and I surprised her with a red and white Swedish themed party. 

My chalkboard made a perfect welcome sign.

I had a desk that was given to us by our great friend PB and now that the kids are grown I decided to repurpose it. I eventually plan on painting it but for the party I asked the hubs if he could just sand it a bit to take off some of the finish. I thought it turned out great and it was perfect for decorating the porch. I draped an old handed down tablecloth over the top, added a cute sign of Miss E's and made more DIY tissue paper pom poms to coordinate with the decorations inside the house. 

I also had help hanging the rod above the desk. I had planned to hang it over the table inside however  decided it might be too heavy so this was a perfect alternative. 

We had a fun Polaroid Guestbook table in the entry. I gathered red and white paper from my stash and trimmed it to different sizes to use for photo mounting and embellishments in the scrapbook. A ramekin full of red, white and gold washi tape was used to attach the photos and decorating the pages in the book. We continued the photo theme on the wall behind the table by using my nieces cute burlap covered bulletin boards to make a picture collage of old photos we collected of our Mother.

Snowy trees were a major theme of the party. There were framed trees, yarn trees, trees made of string and even 3 edible trees which included a strawberry tree, gingerbread tree and donut hole tree. 

I made a practice gingerbread tree several weeks before the party which my family enjoyed. It was really cute however I decided it needed to be taller so I doubled the cookies for the party tree. The taller tree was perfect however I noticed it was leaning a bit so was able to fix that as you can see in previous posts. 

Our Mother, the guest of honor, sat with Dad at the head of the table. I draped a quilt she made over the back of her chair. 

The Red Plate is a favorite tradition at our house for special occasions such as birthdays. 

We surprised our mother by setting the table with her mothers china and crystal. We didn't have enough china pieces for all 26 guests however I was able to rent china that was very similar to complete the table. It all looked great and we enjoyed the fact that we all were able to sit together at one big table. It was perfect!

For more 80th Birthday Party details go 

here: crafts, games, crown

here: menu

here: dessert table

Have a wonderful day!