Birds and Blooms Birthday

Hello, friends! We’ve had several lovely celebrations lately and I’m going to begin with the most recent which was a birthday party for my mother-in-law Bonnie! Since it was our moms who planned our birthdays and threw our parties when we were growing up, it’s always fun to return the effort and make their birthdays special for them now. Two of my mother-in-law’s favorite things in this world are birds and flowers, so it was only fitting for the theme of the day to be “Bonnie’s Birds and Blooms”!

I kept the table decor simple with some fall flowers, ceramic birds, and hurricane vases filled with birdseed and candles. I’ve used this simple trick for so many years for just about every theme/occasion. Coffee beans for a coffee theme (they make the room smell amazing!), sand and seashells for a beach theme, candy hearts for Valentine’s, candy corn for Halloween, etc. You get the idea. Just place a chunky pillar candle in the bottom of the vase and then fill in around the sides with your filler.

My go-to for disposable tableware these days is the following: Martha Stewart’s clear, gold-rimmed plastic plates from Home Goods, gold plasticware from Amazon, and cream gingham napkins from Amazon. I keep these on hand and whatever isn’t used up from one event just carries over to the next party.

I’ve used these disposable pieces for the last two years for everything from ladies’ luncheons to an engagement party to Father’s Day. They work with both elegant and rustic decor and everything in between and they match with a variety of holidays, themes, and color schemes. For instance, I found the floral paper placemats at TJ Maxx and they look really cute together, don’t you think?

And here is the birthday girl! The ladies in the family met for lunch. We three sisters-in-law brought an assortment of salads for a salad luncheon. We had chicken salad, fruit, broccoli salad, pimiento cheese, crackers, fruity herbal iced tea, and maple spice cookies for dessert. Following lunch, we spent the afternoon enjoying a couple of Bonnie’s favorite hobbies–crafts and games–followed by the guys joining us for a family dinner, cake, and gifts.

In my next post I’ll share the fall crafts we made together, so I hope you’ll come back!