Last year, as we gathered round our Thanksgiving table, we began making plans for the “Jeanapalooza 90th Birthday Party Extravaganza.”  This year, Thanksgiving at our house again will usher in the three day celebration.

My incredible Mother-in-Love deserves a “palooza”.  At ninety she is computer savvy, drives, teaches knitting and meets her friends for wine time.

And the party?  Two days after Thanksgiving… our house…for forty.

I always begin party planning with decorations in mind because I find it the most fun and creative.  Do you?  One day while sitting somewhere waiting for something, I grabbed a piece of paper in my bag, turned it over and began to sketch.  It helps me to visualize what I want to incorporate into the party.  This is where I decide on colors too.

I wanted to create a true birthday party feeling not a left-over Thanksgiving theme or a pre-holiday theme.  Pink and orange is fun, girlie, retro, and definitely ‘party’, so that’s where I started.

Thinking of party favors, I’ve always wanted to order custom m&m’s so I found a perfect photo of Jean from a 4th of July party at our house two years ago.  Love the tiara of stars.

I cleaned it up in Photoshop eliminating the background and sent it off in the rest of the order. 

For the m&m colors, I chose dark pink, light pink and orange.  The images turned out better on the lighter colored surfaces.  The orange m&m’s were almost day glow and it clashed with the pinks so I called m&m’s just to give them some feedback on how the colors were represented on the web.  They were very nice and offered me a refund of 25% off the total.  That was a nice surprise.

So much to do still but loving every minute.

..and yep, disco balls are involved too!

More later!

My heart goes out to all those in the east who have been so displaced with the one-two punch of the storms.  You are the most resilient people on the planet.  Sending you peaceful thoughts every single day.