40th Birthday Party | Party Planning

Back in November I shared with you the party invitation I designed and sent out for my husband’s 40th birthday…and now I can reveal all the party details as we celebrated his big 4-0 last weekend!

This year has been a whirlwind of stuff going on for my family and I feel like I’ve not stopped all year – I can’t wait for 2013 as it’s going to be a quiet one in comparison!

By the time my hubby’s 40th (and Christmas) has rolled around, I feel spent – creatively and emotionally, and the week (yes, week!) leading up to his birthday party I was in panic mode to get all the ideas I had in my brain, down and done!

There were something that I already had started – like his gifts from me, one of which was based on an idea I saw at The Dating Divas of a round-the-world trip, without actually leaving the country!

So I created passports and tickets and itineraries and put everything together in a cute travel box to give to him on his birthday. I also, as a surprise, booked us a weekend to Bruges, Belgium in the new year! And we are going to Orlando next summer as well, so that was two months taken care of. The rest of the months are filled with dates with ‘visits’ to countries and places that he wants to visit, and I’ve planned date days/nights with those in mind.

Here he is, opening this gift and wondering what on earth I had bought him!

Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t share these ideas with my blog readers, so look out for those in 2013!!

The other gift that I made for him was an box of 40 memories – an exploding photo box. I shared the tutorial with you a few days ago.

And a final homemade gift was a photo poster that I had printed up and I mounted in a frame – I sneakily scanned a bunch of photos of him from his child (and adult) hood, and used those in the montage. I love how it turned out!

With the gifts sorted, it was onto the party planning – I had originally planned a 70s theme, but I knew my brain just wouldn’t be able to cope, so I went with no theme, other than using the colours of blue, red and gold that I had used in his invitation!

We moved all the furniture around to make more space – with a corner suite which takes up a lot more room than a regular 3-piece suite this was a task in itself – we had to hide the corner piece in our bedroom!!

Moving the sofa around made one wall look really empty, so I I made a banner that I hung across the bare wall in the living room.

I then made some napkin rings and wrapped cutlery in blue napkins and held them together with the paper rings and ’40’ toppers I made.

To make my life super easy, I ordered the food in – I just wasn’t able to handle to the stress of making all the food for 30+ people. I have no regrets!

I bought the food from Marks & Spencers, you really can’t go wrong with a Mark’s sarnie!

I bought lots of canned soft drinks, and pulled our alcohol out from the shed – which is our drinks cabinet haha!

One thing I did make however, was his birthday cupcakes!

But I did buy ready-made gateaux from Iceland ^_^

His birthday cupcakes were retro black forest. Chocolate cupcakes filled with cherries and topped with buttercream, chocolate sprinkles and a cherry – they were lush! I made 40 of them and added 40 toppers using photos of hubs, as well as 40 candles!!

Another idea I saw online was hanging photographs from balloons – I thought it looked fab, so I went and ordered 40 helium filled balloons in red, blue and gold and printed off 40 photographs (actually, I did more, and they’re what you see around the kitchen walls!). Hubby came with me to collect all the balloons – we had to make 2 trips in the car to bring them all home!! But he didn’t know what I was going to do with them all…it was a lovely surprise for him when he came into the room and saw them all :)

Having all these balloons hanging in the air looked just awesome! I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out, but I was more than pleased with the results! Sure you had to dodge hanging photographs, but such a cool idea right?

The next day, before they all completely deflated, I took hubby into the back garden for this ‘Up’ inspired photo :D

Ask anyone born in the 70s and one thing they will remember from their childhood are penny sweets! So I thought I’d create a tuck shop at home with lots of childhood favourites!

We had a candy buffet at our wedding which went down a storm, and this retro tuck shop was no exception!

I printed off a sign and labels in a chalkboard style, provided candy stripe bags (left over from our wedding!), and put all the sweeties out into plastic baskets and whatever else I could find to house them! I love the way it turned out.

I also set up a photo booth (of sorts – I just don’t have the room at home!) in the hallway corner with props I printed and attached to skewers, as well as some hats and other accessories I had at home.

I designed a poster which I put up and also bought a nice big frame, which I removed the glass (actually, it was plastic) from so that people could hold that up in the photographs.

My sisters and I had a little bit too much fun with the props!! Such a fun idea (again, which I’ve seen online so many times) and I can’t wait to be able to elaborate this idea in the future!

I had been planning this party since the springtime, but I didn’t actually do any of the finer details until the week before! I don’t know, I must thrive on pressure or something…but for doing this all in a week, I’m chuffed with the way the party turned out, and I know that everyone, especially my husband, enjoyed his 40th birthday party!

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