A 60th Birthday Surprise

Winter parties can be tricky. My father's birthday is December 5th and he was turning 60.  Of course we were going to host his party here but truth be told our outdoor setup is much more party friendly than our indoor. 

The party was going to be before the holiday's but I didn't have to get too crazy with decorating since my holiday stuff was going to be up.  I did kind of go with a black and red color scheme to make it less Christmasy. 

We had a cocktail party versus a full blown dinner because with the amount of people that were going to be packed in here having a whole dinner buffet wasn't going to work. So heavy appetizers (and drinks) and dessert it was! 

Although the party was going to be indoors and did not necessarily have a specific theme like my kids parties often do I still wanted it to have a little something extra that made it special, unique and memorable. On Pinterest I found all kinds of 50 and 60th birthday parties that included photo collages and "walk down memory lane" types of decor.  However, one post stuck out the most.  This girl for her father's birthday had blown up faces of him from various times in his life and glued them to some paint sticks.  When her father entered the party he saw a sea of his friends an family all with their faces covered with these make shift masks of his own face.  Genius!!!!  I got my brother on the horn and put him to work.  He's into photography, media and all that jazz so this was the perfect job to delegate to him. 

Now this was supposed to be a surprise party but my mother is the worst liar on the face of the planet so my dad totally knew that night he was coming over for a party.  He had no clue about the masks though and was shocked and thought it was hysterical when he walked in.  They made for a great topic of conversation for the night, everyone asking him how old he was in one particular picture or another.  They were the talk of the night until the gift opening where he received let's just say a "special and intimate"  item from one of his long time buddies.  All in all the night was a blast. I did not get overly crafty for this party but it still was a hit and memorable for my dad, which is always certainly the most meaningful part of hosting. 

Happy 60th to my sweet and silly Dad.