Why Hello there...

Missed me? I know, it's been like what...2 years? So, I really kind of suck at this whole blogging thing.

Anyhow, I decided I'm going to try & do this blog thing better and I'm going to start off with some parties. I love throwing them, I love themes (even before the advent of Pinterest) and maybe I can help inspire someone else. At the very least it will help me to relive them! We'll go backwards in time, for the first one we'll do the most recent..

 M's 9th Birthday Sock Hop  

(excuse my mom peakin in the side of this picture...I love parties, I'm no great photographer)

Not sure where we came up with the idea for this one, maybe watching Grease one day? But M was down with the theme from the beginning.

Invite

I originally had grand ideas for the invite, but was running short on time & found cute record invites at the party store on clearance! We have a winner! I did add to the invite, wording around the edge "Pony tails & poodle skirts, cuffed jeans & white t-shirts - the 50's were the time to bop, hope you'll come to the Sock Hop!"

Venue

With having an itty bitty house and 18! children invited, we are quite lucky our good friend Shannon lives in a community with a club house with plenty of room, best of all, besides security deposit it is free of charge! Let me tell you now, while I love to throw a good party, I love a good deal & getting the best bang for my buck!

 Decorations 

We opted for a hot pink and aqua color scheme, with a good dose of silver, black & records thrown in. I got quite a few good ideas on Pinterest along with some of my own. I loved the records that I picked up for .25 - .50 each at the thrift stores, along with the glass straw dispensers from Amazon.

I scored this cd player for free from a friend. Couldn't get to to play, but it looked great with the theme.

 

 

These record bowls were so easy to make!

Arrival

Instead of going with the popular photo booth, we went with a photo "car" as I was lucky & able to get a hold of an old car for the kids to take their picture in front of as they arrived. I later used these pictures as part of their thank you cards.

 Food

I wanted to give the kids the feel of being at a diner, so I made menus that they were able to order from. I donned a pen & pad and took each child's order. I had help from friends & family in the kitchen helping get the orders out. We put the food in food boats instead of paper plates to help add to the diner feel. For dessert, instead of cake, I did "milkshake" cupcakes, using Cool Whip frosting so that it was light like real whip cream but would hold up. I was able to pick up the little glasses at the Dollar store for .59 each

This was unfortunately the only shot of the menu I got. 

Enjoying their "Hound Dogs" and root beer floats

The super popular milkshake cupcakes

 Games

I wanted to keep with the time period so we did Freeze Dance to 50's tunes, Hula hoop contest and a bubble gum blowing contest. Oh yes, we also taught the kids the Hand Jive and an impromptu game of Simon Says started, who am I to argue with Simon Says!

Favors

I used old fashioned cardboard cars from Mel's Diner to put the favors in. I looked around online and they were definitely the cheapest at Mel's, no shipping either! I then filled them with candies that were around in the 50's. Most I was able to find at the Dollar store with a few filled in from Smart & Final. Added to the candy I included the glass from their cupcake!

Thank You Cards

I didn't get a picture of the Thank You cards, but I was pretty impressed with myself. I took all the pictures from the night and using the playlist I already had, put together a slideshow on a dvd for them. Then using the pictures I took of the kids with M in front of the car as they arrived, I used each one of those for the "album" cover, along with the wording "Thank you for coming" and in smaller type "The best hits of January 2013". Slid those into the cd case and had Madison jot a quick note on the inside.

Where I got some of my ideas:

R's Poodle Skirt
Record Bowls I so wanted to do the tiered record platters, but ran into many issues like - most of the records were too floppy to put much weight on & also the cupcakes were too high. Instead I just laid most of the ones planned as tiered platters around on the counter
Milkshake Cupcakes