Surprise party!

Yesterday, my neice and I threw a surprise 50th birthday party for my sister. We've been planning it for awhile now, and were worried about pulling it off. We held it at church; my sister thought she was showing up to a scrapbooking get-together for the youth group at church. Boy, was she surprised! There were around 45-50 guests. One of her oldest and dearest friends flew in from Florida, which was another wonderful surprise. They usually only see each other about once a year. She cried. We kept it fairly simple, but, I thought I would share some of the pics and other details.

First, we ordered some adorable invitations from Etsy. You can see a sample here. I thought they were so pretty and I love the wording on the invitation. Our decorating theme was "black, lime green, and polka dots". For the table centerpieces, my niece wrapped boxes in brown craft paper, painted black and green polka dots on them, and tied them with ribbon. She also did a whole stack of boxes to spell out my sister's name (Kathy) as well as a huge banner to display near the food table. The cake was white with black and green polka dots and there were round polka dot cookies. We took some old photos of my sister and had them made into 8 x 10's. We placed them in black frames and sat them around the tables.

I made the little black and green cards. We asked the guests to use them to write messages to my sister -- either advice for turning 50, sharing a special memory or funny story about my sister, or just a birthday greeting. They were fun. My son, Connor (9) wrote this on his card: "Kathy is a great ant because she lets us swim".
ant.....how cute is that!

((Blogger seems to be acting up and will not let me post pictures????? I will be back later to post more pics.)))