Last week one of my friends turned 40, so our other friends, Jeanette and Wendy, and I threw her a surprise party.  It was the first time I have ever thrown a surprise party and I thought for sure that she would figure out.  She didn’t though, and it was so much fun.  Everyone showered her with love that night and she was so moved, and it is just the best feeling to do something for someone that means so much to them.  And as much as she felt like she didn’t deserve it, she definitely does, she is amazing and is such a great example to me and is just one of the most loving and kind and unselfish people ever!

This was my favorite party I have done so far, I loved everything about it so much.  Every single detail I thought was so cute. Here are the details and links to tutorials and recipes’s if you are interested.

-I had a purple and green floral fabric banner that I made and used for a party a few years ago, and used that as the theme for everything else.

-I found a tutorial for a paper and felt flower garland and the floral cake and cupcake toppers.  I made my own design for the large paper flowers on the sliding doors, and folded over the little tab at the top to make them pop out a little bit.  I cut out all of the paper with my Silhouette.

-I used the watercolor flowers I painted for the Easter dinner, and painted a few more flowers and greenery, then scanned them all and digitized them to make the birthday banner, mason jar wraps and the flowers on the paper straws.

-For the balloon arch, I just got a large plastic needle and after Wendy blew them all up, and Jeanette tied them all, I strung them on some fishing line.  The second half definitely had too small balloons… I should have added in more of the large ones like I did with the first section.  (I intentionally didn’t include the pictures that really showed this…)

-I have been meaning to make a crate stand for my drink dispenser’s and I finally got around to it for this party.  I love how it turned out.

-I used this chocolate cake recipe and this buttercream frosting recipe and they were SOOO good.  I seriously couldn’t get enough of this frosting.  I really want to try out a bunch of her other cake recipes.  I tired out doing some watercolorflowers on the cake, but I hardly ever makes cakes, and while I was happy with how they turned out considering my level of experience, they could be SOOO much better. 🤷‍♀️

-I used my friends sugar cookie recipe which are my favorite sugar cookies ever and I always make sure to roll them out really thick, because that is how I like them.  It makes the biggest difference in my opinion.  I followed some Jenny Cookies tutorials for the purple flowers.  For the green cookies I tried a few different things, most of which I could not execute, so this is what I liked best, and they could definitely use some work…

-We did a cheese board for the food, I love these, they are so good, and you can include whatever you want.

-The timing worked out perfectly for the lilacs, Wendy’s dad has a couple of bushes that just happened to be blooming at the right time for the party.  Which I thought just made it all so perfect, I love lilacs so much and they worked so perfect with the theme.

-To commemorate Angie’s 40th, we (mostly Jeanette) brainstormed 40 things we love about Angie while we worked, then she typed them up and I added some of the watercolor flowers to them and we placed them all around the party.  Then she got to take them home to remember all the reasons we love her. 💜