Party Like a Rockstar

The next best thing to attending a killer party is hosting one! I love having parties, especially for my kids. Their birthdays are my absolute favorite days of the year and I love celebrating them. My daughter turned 16 this year and we had ourselves a little luau with family and friends. I purchased her invitations on Etsy, took a screenshot and texted them out about two weeks before the party date. My assistant principal let me borrow some of her luau party items that she used for her daughter’s party a few years ago. I ordered everything else from Amazon. The kids all had such a good time and spent most of the night at the photo wall. I love how cute the backdrop turned out. I ordered this 100 foot flower string and props from Amazon and the giant tiki boxes were made by a friend and leftover from our work luau.

These yellow tablecloths were a great find at Big Lots. I bought the giant palm leaves from Amazon to use as table runners and topped them with fresh pineapples from our local grocery store and glass bowls filled with white rocks, shells, colored sand and tea lights from the Dollar Tree. Each place setting had a lei, tiki cup and flamingo straw.

I tried to talk Mackenzie into letting Gramps make it a real luau and roast a pig, but she wasn’t having any part of that! Instead, we barbecued hamburgers and brats and served chips and dip, grape salad and these cute pineapple donuts. My cousin made the adorable cake.

If teaching or counseling doesn’t work out for me, I may look into party planning! It was so much fun working on the details with Mackenzie and watching her enjoy the party with her friends. After the party, all the girls came back to our house for a bonfire, made s’mores, played games and watched movies until 9:30AM the next morning!

Last night, we celebrated Jake’s 19th birthday. It’s finally starting to sink in that he is actually an adult now! He’s finished up a year of college, changed his major, quit his job at Journeys, got a new job with the City of Henderson and is living his best life! He didn’t want a big party. Instead, he opted for a small family gathering at our house and requested to have breakfast for dinner. So we ate scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and chocolate gravy (I promise it’s yummy!)

Overall, it was a great weekend full of family and friends celebrating our kids. We ended the weekend watching the kid’s past birthday videos and reminiscing about the “good old days” as Jake likes to call them!