Another one of my friends turns 40 soon so me and couple of our friends threw her a surprise party.  Once again I totally thought she guessed, but she did not.  Although I accidentally missed her coming up to my door so she did hear the people here before she rang the bell…. oops! 🤦🏼‍♀️  Wendy loves all things sweet, so we decided to make it a sweets and ice cream theme.  Everything turned out so cute, it was another really fun one!  I loved the pastel color scheme and all the cute ice cream details!  Here is all the links and tutorials and details for everything:

– I bought a solid and a patterned fabric in each of the 4 colors and sewed the pennants for the banner.  Then used this tutorial to make the mini honeycomb ice cream cones and then raided my all too enormous stash of ribbon and tied them in between.

– I designed an ice cream graphic in the 4 different colors and then printed them out and put each in a white frame.  I used the same designs from that and imported them into my Silhouette and cut them out in each of the 4 colors and taped them to the sliding glass door.

– I used the designs again on the little cards for the 40 things we love about Wendy.  Then on my Silhouette I cut out a big paper “40 years loved…” and over that hung another garland with some more of the mini honeycomb ice cream cones.

– I cut out a large 4 and 0 out of foam core (I seriously hate cutting this stuff) and then we cut tissue paper fringe and glued it onto the numbers to hang on the mirror over the graphics.

– I stopped in at the little local floral shop again and picked up whatever flowers they had in coordinating colors.  I meant to order these in advance but never got around to it, and luckily they had both peonies and ranunculus in the colors I wanted, because those were the two flowers I really wanted.  And fortunately they had at least one in all 4 colors.

– For the food I made these turkey and cheese sliders that a friend of mine makes for a lot of her parties and I always love them, and then Angie brought some cowboy caviar and chips and a fruit and veggie platter with a ranch dip and cream cheese toffee dip (from Our Best Bites cookbook).

– I found the little green vintage dessert cups at Hobby Lobby earlier this year and have been loving using them ever since, and they were perfect for the ice cream along with my clear little dishes from Crate and Barrel.  I picked up some paper cups from Home Goods and filled them with all sorts of candy and sprinkles and ice cream toppings and used 40 of them in the shape of a 40.  I also made some homemade caramel, and another friend made some homemade fudge sauce, both were so good.

– I made the same chocolate cake and buttercream frosting that I did for Angie’s party last year (both are my absolute favorites), and turned them into little mini ice cream cone cake balls.  Adorable and delicious!

I hope it all made Wendy feel how much she was loved!