It's a SURPRISE!!!

My hubby turned 30 on Monday and we spent the entire weekend celebrating!  30 after all, only comes around once! 

I have been DYING to tell you all about the surprise party I was working on but I went to every extreme to keep this a secret so my blog readers were left out of the loop.  I am excited to share all the deets with you!  I have to start by saying...Surprise Parties should be re named Lie Parties because that is exactly what you have to do to keep it a secret. I felt so guilty (I mean slightly) making up stories about why I had to be somewhere or why I had taken money for silly reasons.  In the end when Adam saw how it all came together and he slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together during the party, the guilt slowly washed away.

It started with an email about 2 months ago . I just decided one day at my desk, I'm going to throw this party.  So I whipped up this invite by buying fonts and downloading them on my computer and then just messing around with them and some google images. I paid an etsy designer to clean it up and put it in to a pdf file and then I just took them to Kinko's and printed them on card stock.  I LOVE how they turned out.  I had one blown up and we framed it.  I blacked out my address and phone number for the blog.

I threw the party right in our backyard.  I borrowed some chairs and moved all of our patio furniture out in to the yard. I bought bales of hay for extra seating/ottomans.  I bought tons of candles at Ikea and black and white throws to put on the chairs for when people got chilly.

I painted this piece of wood with Chalkboard paint and stuck it on the side of the kegerator. 

I had seen some one take pallets and make a day bed out of them so that's just what I did here.  I took pallets from work and attached them together and added casters.  I bought a brand new twin size mattress off of Craig's List for $10 and threw a bunch of our random blankets over it.  My great grandmothers afghans were really cozy when it got cold later in the evening.  I bought a Chiminea and set up a basket full of the ingredients to make s'mores.  They were a huge hit!

A girlfriend of  mine got married a few weeks ago and she heard I was in the market for empty jars for lighting.  She was nice enough to let me have the jars she used to line the path to her reception. The wine bottles came from a family friend that owns 300 East here in Charlotte.  I lined our patio with them and it looked so good when the sun went down.

Our neighbors just recently opened up a bakery down the street so I asked them to make Adam's cake. It was really good.

Making S'Mores.

Girlfriends

It was a lot of hard work to keep this secret from Adam and I had to do a lot of the preparation at my parents house.  I am so happy with how it all came together.  Everyone had such a great time and I know it was Adam's favorite birthday to date.  It will probably be the last surprise party I throw for a long time!

Since Saturday, we have really been enjoying the day bed and chiminea in the backyard.  This is my favorite time of year!!!

I really am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband. There is nothing I would change about him.  I am constantly spoiled by him and so it was nice to actually be able to do something for him once.  I'm looking forward to seeing what his 30's hold for him. 

Happy 30th (for the thirtieth time) Honey.