50th Birthday Party*

About 3 years ago I had an idea - have a big birthday celebration for my 50th birthday. I had ideas for a theme - wigs and wellies, a colour scheme or even complete fancy dress.

Finally my 50th birthday came into plan-able sight. Annelise and I started talking about the logistics last year. With help from family and friends and a few logistical upsets - moving house, being on a waiting list for an operation that was likely to land on my birthday - the party eventuated.

I would have really loved everyone to wear pink and I would've been as chilled as the pink champagne a lovely friend toasted me with but pink is not everyone's colour so I settled for black and white with a dash of pink if anyone wanted.

Pink Champagne. Cheers!

The party guests started arriving at 2.30 in the arvo  Some wore black and white, some wore pink . One added a pink bandanna, another a pink scarf. Dad had a pink face-washer hanging from his belt! And then there were some who didn't read the invitation at all - they came in whatever colour took their fancy. :)

Dad with his pink accessory.

If you think that having 83 guests arriving at any time, and not knowing when, between 2.30 and midnight is a bit tricky then try feeding them. It happened, with a little help from our friends, almost smoothly - I totally forgot to buy bread rolls and I forgot to put out the lollies (not a great loss) after dinner. So, we started with nibblies, then we fired up the barbecue for dinner (bring your own meat) with scrumptious salads, followed by desserts and birthday cake. My gluten-free dairy-free birthday cake failed the first time, the second one baked that morning and a success, sat on the kitchen counter under a tea-towel, un-iced, until about 7.30 when Caitlin and a few other helpers decorated it.

Cake by Caitlin.

Eventually, whoever was around at the time sang/sung (help me!) happy birthday to me and I blew out the "50" candle that we had saved from my Mum and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary celebration cake - little does Chris know how he contributed to my 50th birthday celebration!

Did you notice the black frame? I had a photo with all of my guests (not at the same time) in the frame. It was a nice idea and we got some lovely photos. But there were some a lot of duds as well and it would've been better to have a good photo and then add the frame digitally, in focus, in the right place than to have less than acceptable one-off photos of disappointing quality. Oh well. We live and learn.

Framed - Annelise, Moses and Alan with me.

We (Annelise and I) learnt a few things about the invitation too...
Keep the email short - make it easy for people to read it all.
Tell people to read the attachment - cos they might assume that the concise info on that is the same as in the email saga.
Make the font on the invitation simple - curls and scrolls make the address extra unusual.

My pink accessory.

So, all in all, I had a bonza birthday party. Now to plan my 60th birthday party!

Letter box for cards and contributions. Made by Annelise.

P.S. I'm writing this blog post on my new computer - my family and friends contributed so generously towards it instead of giving me 83 (or 35 - there were a lot of kids) very beautiful individual presents. I also got a lovely set of luggage from my sister, four gorgeous mugs from a friend, and a fabulous, health-giving plant from another friend. What more could I want?!

*Well, actually it was not my fiftieth birthday party. I can remember only a handful of birthday parties in my half century of life. This one was the best birthday party ever.