A Birthday Party Inspired by Piggies

Yay for more parties!!! For our friend Theresa's birthday, her husband, Josh, gave me a budget and 3 weeks to create a "fabulous birthday party", doing anything theme I wanted to. Hello, dream! I have learned a few things while planning and throwing parties in the last couple years, especially that parties can get expensive. I have also learned that they don't have to get expensive if you do it right. I love doing DIY-type stuff as it is, which is probably why I love planning parties so much!

I really wanted to come up with something fun and new for this party (which was this past weekend). I know Theresa (like me), loves turquoise, so I wanted to incorporate that color in with my ideas. Theresa also has a crazy love for pigs, so I decided to throw a sweet little "Pig Party". Planning this party was a little trickier than usual. The party was at Josh & Theresa's friend's place - people we've never met. Luckily, their friends and I were able to chat before the party, to get an idea of what I had to work with. Not to mention, Jody helped me (bigtime!) with setting up. Having her there made it way less awkward, since we were literally transforming some strangers' dining room into a birthday wonderland.

Since it was a party inspired by piggies, I had to include pink (duh!). Seriously, what's cuter than pink & teal?! I was surprised not to find any inspiration from other party blogs and usual sources I go to for ideas. It totally didn't matter though, because I feel like I came up with some pretty fun ideas of my own. Of course, I had to make a garland and decided to do one with wide-flags. I found a bunch of fabulous paper at Hobby Lobby.. light and hot pink solids and patterns and a couple turquoise tones. To balance the party from being mostly all-pink, I made some fun little poms with turquoise tissue.

I wanted to get a little more creative with the poms, since I use them so often. Instead of doing them the regular/common way, I decided not to shape the edges. I folded and secured them as usual, and cut each folded-crease vertically, giving them more of a cheerleader-pom look. They were absolutely perfect. 

While I was at Hobby Lobby, I checked out their tulle and found it on sale. I bought a couple yards of net-tulle, instead of the standard kind. I thought it would be super cute to create a couple tulle-poms to add to the "hanging centerpiece".

Each place setting included a 'pig nose' which I made from sticks and cardstock. I found the perfect little pigs (actually pencil-top erasers) at Party City, along with some adorable, turquoise goblets. Continuing with the pig-theme, I bought some pink pipe-cleaners and twisted them around the base of each goblet, to look like pig tails. I found the perfect 'pig tail' paper at Hobby Lobby, and used a sheet for each setting.

Lots of candles! I used paper and ribbon to dress up some cute, stemmed candle-holders I found at Dollar Tree last Thanksgiving. I wanted to add some more glass and candles, so I went back to Dollar Tree for some more. Square holders with white, lavender candles. I wrapped each square holder with paper, ribbon and some sweet, silver chord.

I loved the way silver looked with all of the pink and teal. I incorporated some candlesticks we have from Ikea. Instead of using candles. I placed 4 of the smaller hollow yarn balls I made for my Italian Party, last December.

Theresa requested her favorite Hawaiian Cupcakes I make (well, my mom's recipe). I made some fun little toppers with extra paper and ribbon. I found the image on a kids' free coloring pages website - Image.

Yummy Italian for dinner.. Angel-hair Spaghetti, salad with {Jody's} homemade dressing and croutons, bread with {Jody's} homemade butter and Italian-seasoned oil. Yuuhhuum!

Happy Birthday, Theresa!! What a fun night..


xo