Party Ideas Blog Post Fail

I am not a very organised blogger. 

I love those posts where people show you lots of great party photos, themed food and decorations, lots of ideas and inspiration. 

So when it was our son's 18th recently, and we had family & friends dropping in all day and evening I took the chance to photograph the things I prepared. i thought I'd make a nice "party ideas" post for you.

Well, it didn’t go quite as I had planned!

Sadly I was so busy putting food out, making drinks, chatting (imagine that!) etc that I took zero photos of any of the finished party ideas. I asked our daughter to take photos during the day and we have great shots of family & friends but none of the lovely table laden with beautiful dishes of goodies.

I'll just share what I do have and try to do better next time!

I did manage a Birthday Banner which you can see how to make here: birthday bunting banner. I WAS organised enough to manage some proper instructions for that - whoop whoop!

For the party we went for a Gold and Silver theme.

I bought 2 metres of inexpensive gold satin from our local market to use as a table cloth £1.99 per metre so that was almost as inexpensive as buying a disposable cloth but this one we get to keep.

I borrowed some nice silver platters for most of the food and had been looking out for some inexpensive gold bowls for crisps, popcorn etc. In the end I bought some clear plastic bowls, £2 for a pack of 3, and spray painted the outside with gold. 

By spray painting the outside you don’t need to worry about the food touching the paint but the bowls still look pretty. I just took mine outside and sprayed them on the lawn, the grass soon grew and the oversprayed gold paint was mowed away.

I made cup cakes using gold and silver paper cases, iced them with vanilla buttercream then sprinkled them with gold and silver pearls. 

I also made some little cupcake toppers based on all Joe's favourite things.

I simply took images from the internet and printed them out on thin card.

I've created a printable for you as this is a very personal list of likes, but if you do happen to like Heroes, Maths, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Spiderman, QI, your name is Joe and you are 18 - just ask and I could email it to you!

The square images were cut out with scissors and the others I punched with my circle punch. Top Tip - if you hold your punch upside down you can easily centre whatever image you are punching out.

The cut out motifs were then stuck to cocktail sticks with a little bit of tape.

So here are my party post highlights:

And let me show you how nice the table looked by late afternoon! I think the grape stalks in the foreground look especially fetching along with an empty glass and green plastic Ikea bowl! It's like the kids didn't know there was a sophisticated colour scheme! And we all know that a party isn't a party without a tube of Pringles on the table.

The birthday banner was free and came out pretty well, I've done a proper step by step on that now in case you fancy making one yourself. The cake was also a hit, I decorated each side with a retro game, all done using shop bought roll out fondant icing.

So now you know my secret, I’m no expert party planning blogger! I do love it when other bloggers share their less than perfect moments though so now you have seen just one of mine!

Julie

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties