Genny's Purple Party

My friend, Genny, is joining me in the AARP demographic this year. That deserves a party! And a party commemorating such an awful, excuse me, momentous occasion, needs to be all about the birthday girl. Honestly, it wasn't my idea. Genny's friend, Emilie, called and wanted to know if I would like to help with a party. By help, surely she meant take over and take it over the top. We secretly met with G's husband (who is an AWFUL liar. Great for Genny's marriage, but required lying remediation from me), and their daughter. I was able to wrestle control and do what I love...plan a party. (Emilie, you are a wonderfully patient person. Your background in social work surely made you recognize this crazy flaw in my personality and you work with it well).

Genny loves all things purple. In high school, her ENTIRE room was purple. She even went to a college whose colors were purple and white. I've noticed that purple lovers are serious about their color. Of course, the party had to be purple. I had done a Pinterest search and noticed she had been pinning a lot of Greek food. The party almost planned itself (but I probably wouldn't even let the party plan a party for itself).

We began with the perfect invitation. Evites???!! Surely you jest, Paul (non-lying husband of the birthday girl). Pick them up at Target??! NO WAY! These had to be invitations that no one had ever laid eyes on before. Stratospherically wonderful. I tend to burn pretty hot in the planning stages, so if you don't know me well, this is all said without the least bit of sarcasm. I'm telling you, I was on FIRE. My co-worker/friend's daughter/New York tripping friend, Cassidy, was pulled in for this one. She has a Silhoutte Cameo and was not afraid to use it. My little grasshopper has been trained well. She said, "How hard can it be?" 3 different paper types, 2 blades and 3 weeks later, she figured, pretty hard. But she's not a quitter and we ended up with a fabulous invitation.

pictures do not do it justice

I love the lace look. We printed all the important information on another piece of white paper, using the same flower pattern as the cut out. I really liked the look of the glassine envelopes from Helena's birth announcement, and ordered some of those. I still had a LOT of vintage stamps left from her announcement (need to buy some?) and was able to pull out all the purple ones to use.

We had her mom pick out pictures we could use. The plan was to scan, print and frame them for around the house. After seeing the sweet words her mom wrote on the back of each picture so many years ago, I instead made a book and used what she wrote as captions under each picture and then used the book as a guestbook. You can see it by clicking on the blue "guestbook".

On my trip to New York in February, a stop was made at economy candy and we bought all the purple candy we could find. I made crepe paper roses (one of the very first things I ever pinned) and did circles for the windows like the ones for a previous shower, but in a purple ombre. I made purple fringe from tissue for bunting on the table and used purple flowers from my yard, in purple and clear vintage bottles, for the arrangements. I had purple striped baker's twine to tie on my wooden spoons for the individual rice puddings and hand stamped purple flowers to match the invitations. I also ordered purple striped straws to make homemade pixie stix (don't try this at home, friends!). I found a wonderful purple vintage "Liqueur" sign for the drink table, which held flutes of grape juice tinted prosecco. This part required us to have a testing night where we tried various purple drinks to tint the prosecco. In case you're interested, Welch's grape soda works much better than grape juice, kool-ade, or grape Snapple. Ended up taking a whole bottle to get the right shade of lavender. Who says perfection isn't fun?

For food, I tried to make things that she had pinned. On the menu was hummus, tzatziki, pita (didn't turn out so great), spinach pies, greek tomato dip, rice pudding and had tons of olives. Emilie brought a grilled veggie and meat platter and a beautiful cake. We also had a s'mores station outside for the kids.

We had friends from work as well as old friends from high school. We even had one friend join us via skype from Florida. Totally pulled off the surprise! She walked in the house, ear to the phone, discussing business with her boss. We put the brakes on that! There were hugs and tears and the best time ever. Even though the party was in the middle of the week (to enhance the surprise factor), folks stayed till LATE. I laughed until I was hoarse. Such a great time.

I love parties. There is nothing more satisfying than having friends over and seeing them all have a good time, where life can be put on hold and nothing but being together and talking and laughing and making memories is going on. That night was especially sweet, being with women, some who I haven't seen since high school, having a good time. Life has had its ups and downs for everyone there and some were in the big middle of the downs right then, but you couldn't tell by the laughter. Relief from the realities of life and embracing the realities of friendship.

a few of the party girls, birthday girl at 1 o'clock.