60th Birthday Celebration

November 30th, 2010

Just a little over 1 week ago we celebrated our Mom’s (Joy’s Mom/my Stepmom) 60th Birthday by throwing a massive party in her honor.  Now ‘massive’ may seem a bit dramatic but when you do ALL of the planning, purchasing, prepping, decorating, cooking and cleaning for ~90 people with no ‘hired’ help it feels nothing short of massive.  Yet for this amazing Mom…totally worth it! 

Of course we had to try to out-do ourselves when it came to Cupcake Tower creativeness.  Instead of Cupcakes (don’t panic, this was just a temporary hiatus) we decided to demonstrate the Tower’s ability to show off just about anything your party planning mind can come up with.  Hence, pie in a jar:

 After stumbling upon this post from (new favorite blog) Our Best Bites we just couldn’t resist the challenge.  Well, it went more like this:

Joy: “Oh my gosh we have to do these”

Jennifer: ” Those are ADORABLE!  But that would be crazy to do for that many people…

Joy: “We have to do these”

Jennifer: “Seriously?  Don’t you think thatwould be too much work and too expensive?”

Joy: “We have to do these”

Jennifer: “…okay”

And just like that the ‘Pie in a Jar’ Tower was born.  If you’ve ever read our ‘About Us’ section you’ll see the trend in our relationship  

We used Sunflowers and blue balloons along with our take on some retro sigs to help display everything we laid out

We served a full homemade dinner and had quite the selection of drinks as well

“Wait,” you say “is that Boones Farm I see???”

Why yes…yes it is!  What the guest of honor wants…the guest of honor gets.  While her taste in beverage might be somewhat questionnable in many circles, her taste in food however is not.  She LOVES fresh, beautiful food.  The more colorful it looks (she dresses everything up with a sprig of parsley or two) the better.  So when I came across the Mixed Berry Charlotte recipe in Paula Deen’s Special Collecters Issue ‘Best Desserts’ (no coincidence that The Cupcake Tower was featured in the Kitchen Helpers section of this issue) I just knew it was our Cake Topper.

Not too shabby right?  (Hint: if you are on a budget DO NOT make this delicious recipe in the month of November when berries are insanely priced…)

The food was great, the Tower was beautiful, but the highlight of the party was definitely the slideshow.  You can see from the look on her face how beautifully it was done by our sister Jill

By the way, that’s my Mom with her arm around her.  Yep, they’re very close friends…how blessed are we as a family?  Seriously.  It’s no wonder Joy and I are so happy:

Happy Birthday Mom/Jenean!!!  We LOVE you.