Black and White Birthday

A good friend of mine just turned 30. She has 4 kids and her birthday just happens to be sandwiched in between 2 of the kids' birthdays. And thus - no big birthday bash for herself on her agenda. So we offered to do one for her!

We went with a black, white and red color scheme - it's a favorite for both of us - and just took it from there. It doesn't take much to throw a good party for adults - a few cute touches and good food and they pretty much entertain themselves.

The invitation:

Decor:
-Happy 30th Birthday banner. I know we've seen these all over the place in blogland so of course I had to try one myself. Loved it! If I could get away with using it again for the next party I'm doing, I would. (my husband turns 30 in January. He'd like the black and white floral damask and polka dots right??)
For mine I used my largest circle cutter for the background, my scalloped circle Nestabilities for the mat, and just printed out the lettering from the computer and cut that into circles and layered them all together. Punched holes in each side of the circles and tied them together with ribbon and tulle.
-We wanted to do photo holders for centerpieces. And can you believe I couldn't find what I wanted ANYWHERE? But I did have all these leftover wooden cubes so we painted them up, added some patterned paper and had the hubby drill a few holes in the top. Then we took some wire (Home Depot, hooks and photo hanging section, thickest kind they had) and twisted it up into the shape we wanted. Then just used a little hot glue to hold the wire in the cube. We had her mom and sister send a bunch of photos that we stuck in the ends of the wire. We placed these in the center of each table, as well as on the gift and cake tables.
-Black and white polka dot fabric. Cut it down into 2' squares for the center of each table and larger sections for the food tables.

Food:
-a nice variety of soups. She's vegan so we went with meatless chili, minestrone, and chicken noodle (yeah not vegan, but most of the husbands would have protested the complete lack of meat)
-rolls
-caramel apple cider (yum!)
-yummy chocolate cake from Costco
We had a TV and movies, along with coloring stuff to keep the kids occupied. Didn't work very well. That's my one complaint about big parties for adults - you just can't keep the kids from running (literally) around unsupervised. Drives me nuts. Short of hiring a sitter to keep track of them all or having someone run activites for them I don't know how to avoid it. Anyone have a better solution to this problem?

But all in all, a nice party for someone who certainly deserves it. Happy Birthday Cheri! Thanks for making the drive up here for it :) And a big thanks to Alisha and Beau Dee, my co-conspirators.

Now back to our regularly scheduled holiday programming, for at least another week or so.