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| PAR-TEE! For my father-in-laws' 80th birthday, my sister-in-law, Yvonne, suggested we have a golf theme party because it is his favorite pastime and because she had seen hole in one cupcakes that she wanted to use. I agreed that was the perfect theme for my FIL and I am sharing some of the projects we did to make it a special celebration for a Golfer Dad. |
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| INSPIRATION OVERLOAD. When we decided our theme, I headed over to Pinterest for cool inspiration pics and created a party board you can see HERE (you might follow us on Pinterest while you're there fyi. ) From the pics, we took the large numbers and a golf figurine for the cake ideas from the first one. I took the idea of a runner with golf clubs and ribbon to make it golf themed from the second picture. The third picture had too many cool ideas to name. It's a little boy's party and his mother went all out for it. If you ever want to do a golf party, then I definitely think this would be a great place to start looking for inspiration. The fourth and fifth pictures gave me the idea for centerpieces. We were going to keep things as simple as possible so we wanted easy centerpieces. Using inexpensive clear glass containers filled with golf balls (many of which we took from my father-in-law's collection and just supplemented with a few packages of new balls as a gift and practice balls which are very cheap), white tees and green paper grass and photos kept it economical. The last picture inspired our cake table setup. |
Sources:
1. http://decoratingforevents.squidoo.com/how-to-make-a-centerpiece-for-a-golf-themed-party
2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/williprobstbakery/9871361236/in/photostream/
3. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/216032113348873742/
4. http://blog.chickabug.com/2012/03/golf-party-games-noah.html
5.http://www.pinterest.com/pin/216032113348870697/
6. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/216032113348870725/
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| THE SWEET LIFE. The cake and cupcakes were purchased from a bakery. My sister-in-law, Yvonne, is a great cook & baker and considered making the cupcakes herself, but she was very busy at the time and wisely chose to lighten her to-do list by having someone else make them. The golf poles are made from lollypop sticks and the golf flags are made from fruit roll up material so they would've been easy to make, but a bit time consuming to assemble. Something to consider if you take on this project. The figurine was from a bakery shop. The white golf tees were purchased at Wal-Mart. The runner was cut from a large roll of astroturf which Yvonne found at a home improvement store. Both Home Depot and Lowes should carry some. The green and white ribbon was purchased from Michael's. |
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| THE CENTERPIECES. The centerpieces were my main project for this party. My sister-in-law, Suzanne, had a large collection of tall clear glass vases which she offered for the party. Both my SIL, Yvonne and I had some more vases this size so between all of us, we'd have plenty to use for centerpieces without buying any new ones. Originally, I wanted to use large square or round vases, but once I started assembling a vase, I decided the taller ones were the way to go for us. It took many more balls, tees and grass to fill up one vase than I thought it would. Since we had to make quite a few centerpieces and we wanted to keep the party easy peasy/low key, it wasn't worth the expense of buying all those new vases and all the extra supplies it would take to fill them. But, yes, I do think the wider vases would have looked marginally better because they'd look more like buckets of balls. The Golf Flag idea is from Pinterest. I made the flags from green felt, and the numbers from white felt. Hobby Lobby carried white felt numbers pre-cut, but they were not large enough for the flags I wanted to make to be proportionate to the height of the vases so they didn't work for me which was a bummer. It would have saved time which would have been great. The poles were cut from thin dowels I bought at Home Depot for a few dollars and spray painted white. I found the thin green ribbon to attach the flags. I curled stiff florist wire in to hold the photos and green and white scrapbook paper to frame the photos all of which I found at Hobby Lobby. |
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| MEMORY DECOR. As I mentioned in the entry discussing decorations for my mother's 80th birthday party which you can read HERE, I am a fan of using photos to decorate a birthday party. For this party, I went through my in-laws' photo albums and picked out some great photos to show my father-in-law at different stages of his life. I tried to use photos from his infancy, his childhood, his time in the military, photos of him with his wife, his kids, his grandkids and engaging in many sport activities because he is very athletic. I took the photos to Wal-Mart and made tons of copies of the photos to use in the centerpieces. I adhered the photos to green and white decorative scrapbook paper as a frame to finish our the pics. The photos and frames are double sided so the guests would have something to look at on both sides of the table. They are held up by hard florist wire that I curled at the ends to hold them. The process was a bit time consuming, but it also helped me be able to create a couple posters for the party. |
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| POSTER COLLAGE. In the process of doing all the memory themed decor for the party, I ended up visiting many different print shops. I made the invitations as seen above at Walgreens, the RSVP cards at Office Depot and the photos at Kinko's and Wal-Mart. After all that, I decided to make a couple poster collages at Wal-Mart because their charge for the service was a lot cheaper than the other places and basically too good a deal to pass up. I don't know if the other places offered more options with their posters, but it was just a last minute impulse project so the collage offered at Wal-Mart's print shop was fine for me. I mounted the poster above on foam board and I framed another one for the entrance to the restaurant where we were having the party and tied some balloons to give to direct the guests upstairs to the party room. |
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| COVER BOY. This is the photo I used for my father-in-laws' folded party invitations. Isn't he a cutie? Reba used our mother's childhood portrait for some of her birthday parties and I copied her idea here. Reba hooked me up with Walgreens which has an awesome online invitation site where you can upload a photo to use for the cover, write your party info on the inside page and order the invitations to be ready within a few hours. They look as great as invitations done at much fancier print shops. These are normally $1.99 each but I think they were running a special at the time I ordered so they were a little less. A link to order your own is HERE |
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| COLLECT MEMORIES, NOT THINGS. My husband and his siblings all hosted the surprise party for their dad and they wanted it to be special, but not complicated so it was decided to forgo gifts and ask all the guests to contribute a letter, photo or postcard instead of another present. To make collection easier, I got my niece, Makena, to design postcards to be included with the invitations. Makena studies graphic design and I think her cards came out FANTASTIC! I was so pleased when I saw them. I sent along a plain piece of paper explaining that we were collecting photos and postcards to put into a memory album for my FIL. I stamped all the postcards and placed clear address labels on them for people who couldn't make the party to return. I was very pleased by the response we got from the out of town guests who couldn't make it. Additionally, I bought scrapbook pages for my husband's immediate family members to bring their photos and letters before the party to tape them quickly together and insert them into the album for some more personal pages. While I thought about a picture book from Shutterfly, I found the plastic sleeve album system that they sell at Target very user friendly and quick which fit more into our tight time frame so I can recommend it as a great alternative in a pinch to a Shutterfly album. |
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| THE BIRTHDAY BOY AND HIS GIRL. This was a surprise party for my father-in-law. He thought we were taking him out to Sunday lunch at his favorite Mexican restaurant to celebrate his birthday a few days early. He only expected to see my husband, our daughter and myself. He was totally shocked to see not only all his nearest and dearest from in town, but also cousins from all over Texas who came into town to celebrate his birthday with him. Above, the birthday boy is sitting back and taking it all in with a limed cool beer and a plate of his favorite Mexican food to munch on. |
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| CAKE TIME. My FIL was pretty amused when he noticed we had used some of his old golf clubs for decorations and had pulled down his childhood portrait from his study wall to use for his invitations all without his notice. |
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| PLENTY OF SMILES BEFORE THE VIDEO SLIDESHOW. I don't have it to share, but I felt the big highlight of the party was a video of photos from different parts of my FIL's life set to music which my niece, Makena, prepared for the party. She was very busy when we were doing the party and her postcards were already a big contribution, but I mentioned to her that I would have loved a video for the party and she came through in a big way. People were clapping, laughing and sometimes crying (especially when deceased family members came up in photos) throughout the video and everyone gave a massive round of applause for the end. It left everyone in a good spirit (although the margaritas helped too ;) haha) and closed the party on a high note. |
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THE CAKE TABLE. My SIL, Sonia, brought my FIL's favorite pies to offer as an additional dessert and I have to say they were a big hit. My father-in-law and his taste, hobbies and life were all over the party which was great. My husband has a big family so it took awhile to agree on what to do for the celebration and there was plenty to do, but I thought it all came together really well in a short period of time to give my FIL a really nice birthday celebration.
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WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE
