Sunday, March 10, 2013

The 90th birthday party and some celebration ideas...

Greetings from The Perch! Well, we are finally back in NC, having returned on Thursday from the festivities in Florida. Below are a few pictures from the week.

Packed and ready to leave home with auto hooked up to motor home...


The party was last Saturday, and went really well. After appetizers and drinks, we served a Honey Baked Ham along with a fried turkey, cooked by my son-in-law, Shawn. Side dishes were made by various members of the family.

Before serving the cake, this is what we did. Remember the tags that I had sent out with the invitations (you can see them here)? Well, I had directed those invited to write down a few memories of time spent with my dad and return them to me. I tied them with ribbons that matched the Legacy Book (you can see it here). I took out the tags and told my dad that we were going to have a little fun with him and play a game in which he was the only contestant. The name of the game was "Just what do people REALLY think about you, and who said WHAT?!"  I read the tags one-by-one, leaving out any names and identifying information, and asked him to guess who wrote the comments on each tag. Now, you have to know my dad to appreciate this. He is as sharp as a tack and can remember every joke that he ever heard since about 1930. Would you believe that out of about 20 tags, he guessed 18!

Here are the tags...


...and here I am reading them to Dad...


The next day I put all the tags in the pockets of the Legacy Book for him.

Here is the cake, which was a delicious
Hazelnut Cream Cake made by the bakery
in Publix (a wonderful grocery store in the
South)...


And the blowing out of the candles...


This is the first time that the complete four generations of our family were together in almost forever, as my brother's whole family came out from Seattle and NY.

The oldest and youngest members of
the family, Dad and my newest grandson,
Jason...


Something that I put together the last week before we left is this little book called "Roaring Twenties". During my quest for party ideas, I came across a website called The People History, website here. The owner of this site has done a wonderful job of amassing a wealth of information on previous decades, and provides all kinds of facts on the fashions, homes, appliances, etc., of each. So, I printed out a bunch of the pages and pasted them into the little booklet shown below. If you click to enlarge you can see what kinds of things you will see on the website. Also, for $1.95 they will customize a summary of the highlights of the year of the person's birth, and personalize the top of it as you wish. They then send it to you in a PDF format for you to print out.  I used this for the first two pages of the book, also shown below.

When I was preparing for this party, I had pinned various ideas to one of my Pinterest boards. I am showing these pictures because there had been a lot of re-pins of the 90th birthday party ideas that I found. Those of you trying to plan a birthday party for a senior know how hard it is to come up with some suitable ideas. It's not like we can use a Star Wars or Miss Kitty theme now, is it? I gave this book to Dad along with the Legacy Book. (Sorry for the bad photography, but I took these in the motor home where the lighting was not great.)










For the part of the book below, I did a search on eBay
under "newspaper 1923", found headlines of the year
in old newspapers that were for sale, copied and pasted them
into a Word document, adjusted the sizes to be similar,
and pasted them into the book. (I hope this was not illegal,
as they were only for this book and I will not profit by this!)



A good time was had by all at the party! To protect the innocent (!!), I did not show photos of all who attended, but we had about 20 people.

Thanks for spending some time with me. Time to go out and do some yard clean-up...nice weather is finally here for a few days!

15 comments:

  1. Sue, all your hard work paid off in spades!! I'm so pleased for you that your father enjoyed his party and all the work that went into planning it. To have all 4 generations of family there will have been a huge gift for him -- the love we give is always best! But the book and then copying other ideas for a roaring twenties book...that will give him much pleasure. We think we'll remember all the special moments or things from our youth but it isn't until we see some of them that a memory comes flooding back. So pleased for you that all you thought of, all you worked on came true. (and I love Publix whenever I'm in the south -- one of THE best grocery stores!).

    ReplyDelete
  2. enjoyed reading your blog and have gotten some ideas. Our family has 2 celebrating their 90th and 2 others that are 87 & 86 so the 20's will apply to all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for reading my blog. Lots of luck with your party planning!

      Delete
  3. My dad's 90th birthday is in November. You gave me some great ideas.

    Isn't it wonderful we have the opportunity to spend this special time with our dads?

    Again, thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the compliment! I hope that you can use some of the ideas. Yes, it is wonderful. My dad is still talking about that party! Lots of luck with yours. Drop me a line and let me know how it goes!

      Delete
  4. Mom's 90th is in November also. You gave me great ideas also. I ordered the thing you mentioned... well worth the $2.95. Thanks for great information~

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are so welcome! I'm glad you found the info useful. I hope that your mom's celebration goes well!

      Delete
  5. Wow! So glad I found you! M father will be 90 in April 2014 and we children (6) needed ideas. Thanks so much for the info.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are welcome! I hope you all have a great time at your party! I'd love to hear about how it went!

      Delete
  6. My Dads 90th birthday is approaching, this has been very helpful, I love the idea of the legacy booklet. A lot of respect for the effort you put in for your dads 90th. R

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Richard! It's hard to believe that our party was a year ago today! I appreciate your comment so much! Sue

      Delete
  7. I love all of your ideas! My dad's 90th birthday is approaching and I would love to do the memory tag idea but I am having trouble finding the tags. Can you share where you got yours?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Laura. Thanks for your compliment. I can't remember where I got the tags. I had them long before I started planning the party, I do know that they weren't any kind of special order, so I must have gotten them at Michaels or some scrapbook store, likely when I was still living in Florida. I would think that Hobby Lobby would be a great place to try. I'd love to hear about your party. My dad just turned 92 and he's still talking about that day! Good luck!

      Delete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Happy birthday to your dad. You did a great job in celebrating you dad’ milestone birthday. The invitation writing ideas is best. I liked it and planning to have this idea in my mom’s birthday party that will throw her at one of Seattle venues. She will surely like it.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to comment on this post!