My sweet sister in law recently turned 50! Her husband planned a small cookout for her at my mother in law's house for her closest friends and family and I was in charge of the decorations.
Most of the premade decorations in our local stores were for small children or all black with "Over the Hill" on them. While 50 is a big milestone birthday she certainly wasn't ready for a "tombstone and depends" birthday party. I wanted something that fit with her girly, bubbly personality.
I found some 50 & Fabulous party supplies online and decided that was perfect for her. Instead of black and white or black and gold I would use black, pink and white as my main color scheme and went from there.
When guest first arrived the first thing they saw when they entered the backdoor was this sign.
I had the aluminum sheets already on hand from my shop. I added vinyl lettering and a favorite photo from her school days printed on card stock and attached with clear vinyl.
Since it was casual they decided to set the food up on my MIL's enclosed back porch/utility room that is just off her kitchen. The room is a small rectangular shape with one long wall of windows on one side and another almost empty long wall on the opposite side. On the empty wall I hung a large 50 & Fabulous banner I made with my cutting machine, vinyl and cardstock.
(As I mentioned this is also a utility room and has her washing machine and dryer in it. I used pink and black plastic table covers to disguise them.) I also made the centerpieces the same way I made the large banner. I used 2 complete scalloped circles for each one (so they could be seen from both sides) and hot glued them to dowel rods cut to different lengths. I added black and white curly ribbon and stuck them into a Styrofoam brick I covered in coordinating tissue paper.
I made a sheet of small pink, black and white confetti 50's out of cardstock and sprinkled them around each centerpiece.
On the odd window wall I printed out a bunch of small black and white pictures of the birthday girl through the years with friends and family. We taped them to a heavy sheet of clear plastic that we attached temporarily across the whole row of windows. In the middle we added a fun fact sheet from the year she was born.
This gave everyone something to talk about and enjoy while in line for food or when they were mingling before and after food was served.
In the main room where everyone gathered and spent most of their time I stuck with only decorating the fireplace area which is the main focal point of the room.
I made dot garland out of cardstock dots glued to cross-stitching thread. We hung the garland from the ceiling just over the fireplace. For each end of the mantel I made 2 medium tissue paper pom poms and 1 circle. The large 50 in the center I made by covering (2) 11x13 canvases with tissue paper and gluing small squares of tissue paper to those to form the 5 and 0. I also added a pennant banner to the mantel ledge to finish it off.
On top of the fireplace we put a sheet of poster board and added the leftover pictures from the window in the shape of a 50.
The birthday girl and guest loved the decorations and they didn't cost us a lot of time or money to make!
