Hello!!
This weekend we celebrated my two most favorite human beings on the planet… my two daughters! It was their annual big birthday bash! My girls are two years apart, with their birthdates two weeks apart in the month. We throw their party together because it makes the most sense for family and friends to come to one big party rather than two back to back.
Also, we really enjoy having almost every person we love at our house at one time!
This year our girls chose a vintage 1950’s theme. Super awesome!! I was super excited to make this happen for them.. but where to begin? Well, first I took what they told me they wanted. Our oldest told me she wanted to dress like the Pink Ladies from Grease. Which I was pretty excited about, because as a tween, way way back when, I think I can say without a doubt, that I had watched the movie Grease about 2000 times, every day after school. I was definitely a super stan!
After we settled on who they’d dress like, I went on to look up some vintage photos of the era. Everything was ultra modern, and graphic with simple colors. So I decided the color schematics of the party were to be… baby pink, light blue and mint with black and white checkers. The overall look was fifties modern, like a diner. I wanted to make and find elements to scatter throughout to really hit home that we were in the 1950’s.
This is what I came up with…
The decorations… My husband is a huge help when it comes to these events. He is the art and execution behind my ideas and thoughts, we work so well together. This party theme was a joy for us. We buckled down one night this week with a 1950s music channel blaring as we created all the signs. Out of cardboard and electrical tape he took my drafted ideas and made a large diner sign for the entrance, that looked like metal and neon! Super cute! Then another fake neon sign for the food table. These signs came out so good! He also chalk art penned my chalkboard signs for the food table to look like neon too. I just loved them!
Each oblong table was dressed with a different colored base- pink, green or blue, then topped with a black and white checker board round table cloth. The centerpieces were made out of these cute cardboard vintage late 50s model convertible cars that I saw online. These are actually food trays, and are pretty expensive Which is a big expense because I’d have to buy 50 cars… just for folks to eat a burger off them and throw away. But, I loved these the second I saw them, which meant I had to buy them somehow to get them integrated into the party. Which is how I came up with using them as planters! One night I went to Walmart to buy candy, and found these cute mini mum plants for $1.27 each. I thought to make them part of the centerpiece inside the cars. Score! I had also bought a pack of fake vinyl 45s that I used on the tables with the cars, and with a tuck of a tissue paper flower from their party last year, Mexican Fiesta, and done! A fun vintage themed centerpiece.
The outfits… The girls wanted to dress up like the Pink Ladies from the movie Grease, as I mentioned above. I had planned on the girls wearing capri or skinny leggings with a collared top or tank top under the pink jackets, with cat glasses and a pair of saddle shoes* we had made. Well, Mother Nature answered my calls to her for hot weather on this weekend; we had an 86F day! So, we had to switch up their outfits. I think it worked out pretty well, but the heat really did influence these outfits.
For myself and my husband, we went into our closets to see what we already owned that could work. My husband had it easy, he owns a ton of rockabilly shirts, but for me I have nothing vintage looking. I also made a pair of saddle shoes for myself, and couldn’t figure out what to wear with them. Then I had an aha moment with a dress I recently bought on a whim. I grabbed my daughter’s headband from last year’s Halloween costume, half victory rolled my hair and voila..a 1950’s Mom!
If you look closely at my dress you will notice a familiar shape all over. š
*I made us saddle shoes out of cheap sneakers from Walmart. Which actually turned out to be such comfy shoes!! With a little Sharpie marker magic, I turned plain white lace ups into cute saddle shoes.
The food… Unfortunately, I didn’t take many photos of this food table when it was actually set up with the food! For the menu, we thought diner themed. But instead of serving breakfast all day, we opted to make it easy… grilled burgers/hotdogs with a side of fries (baked) and salads. Then followed by cake with candies, cupcakes, and cookies. Also, we had sodas, wine, sangria, beers and lemonade. We even grabbed two cases of glass bottled Coca-Cola (Mexican Coke, which is the best coke..).
Initially, we planned on having me play waitress. Taking orders with a note pad then serving, this way everything could be given out hot and crispy, but to wrangle fifty people to eat sitting down all at once is not as easy as one thinks to do alone .. and not at our parties! What I ended up doing was to place the burgers and dogs into their own food trays, so they could be grabbed easily as is. Then the fries and salad would go on another plate. This worked out really well. My husband is a great grill master! (Seriously, awesome job, love!)
The cake… We had so many ideas for the cake! I had wanted to bake a cake to make a standing jukebox, but then I was nervous about it staying straight up, so thought to make one laying down. My husband was on board but then we realized how hard that would be on our timetable. So, I wanted to make a flamingo, then a pair of dice, thought of a car, and then what we ultimately decided on together was… a record player!
Very simple design. We had an extra record from the decorations, so we popped out the old inner label and replaced it with one we printed. Then we crafted the needle with arm and volume knobs to finish the look. A simple blue and white buttercream cake plus plastic bottle caps and cardboard, we fashioned a record player!
Super cute, right?!
It was a great birthday! Lots of our friends told me how much they loved this theme, compared to our previous ones. Which surprised me, because of the simplicity. The best part is our girls enjoyed the entire day, and loved all the details. Which is all I could ask for! I love these two girls!
And, I look forward to what theme they choose to challenge me with for their next birthday.
Hope you enjoyed all the vintage fun, too!
Some more pics…
Valeria Out Loud 