happy 60th birthday dad!

As I mentioned last week, my dad's 60th birthday was on Friday and I was hosting a dinner at my home for him. I really wanted to do something special because it was his 60th and because I just love him so much. I had seen an ad in the Safeway ad for pork loin for only $1.99/lb early in the week so I decided to make that and a couple of side dishes to go along with it.

I'm not really a meat eater so I don't usually go beyond chicken or ground turkey for my protein so this was going to be something entirely new. Even though I had never made pork loin, or any type of pork for that matter, I was excited to try something new and get my feet wet so to speak. I also decided to make some cupcakes and a special little separate cake for my dad just for him.

Before going shopping for the party decorations, I made a little search online to see what types of ideas I could find for a 60th birthday party. The very first one I came across had browns and blues and so that's what I ran with. On Wednesday, I headed to the party store and purchased streamers, plates, napkins, plastic ware, balloons, cups and a table cloth. I chose a chocolate brown table cloth with a medium blue large round plate and a baby blue smaller square shaped plate to sit on top of the round one. On top of the plates I laid two sizes of napkins in the same colors and then the plastic ware in chocolate brown on top of the napkins. I wanted to add a hint of color to balance out the darkness of the brown and blue so I chose white. I used regular white printer paper for the place mats and wrote everyone's name on the top left corner in blue crayon. I also did the same on the cups which were white.

I hung two different colored streamers (brown and white) across the room and attached the darker blue and lighter blue balloons to the ends of the streamers on the wall. As I was hanging up the balloons, I decided to use some blue curling ribbon to add to them and as I did, I placed some on the streamers to hold them there for a second and when I did, I noticed how cute it looked. So after hanging the balloons, I curled a bunch of small strips of curling ribbon and hung them all over the streamers so they hung down a bit. It looked so cute!

After that, I got busy with making the birthday banner and I was pretty happy with how it turned out! Of course I used all the same colors and finished off the ends with a cute bow made from brown and white ribbon. The next day, my mom brought over two balloon bouquets in the same colors and it helped tie the whole room together. It was funny though because when my mom was picking out the balloons, the ones she picked up for the brown color turned out looking like a red color so we just pretended they were brown! It was funny!

Here's a picture of the dining room all set up:

I have to mention first that I'm still having some problems with my removable flash so some of these photos are a tad on the blurry side. I put new batteries in the flash and they started to corrode...again...ugh.







The yummy food!


 
I made pork loin, cranberry sauce, homemade mashed potatoes, a berry tossed salad with homemade dressing and we had Sangria that my sister made! I'll share all these yummy recipes on Friday's 'Family & Food Fridays!' post!

My dad and Evan's papa on his birthday!



For the cupcakes, I made the same icing I mentioned here and just put it on with a butter knife and then dipped them in a bowl of clear sanding sugar! I thought they turned out so pretty! They kinda looked like little snow balls! They were all sparkly and well...just pretty!



I had a bit of cupcake batter left over from my dad's little cake so I just made some extra cupcakes out of that. I decided to do the same with the icing except I added a 1/2 cup unsweetened coco powder to the icing to make it chocolate and instead of the sanding sugar I dipped them in blue and white jimmies!



Here's the cake I made for my dad, I got a little carried away with the piping bags! haha!



I found these cute candles at the party supply store and thought they would be fun!





 Make a wish!



After dinner and dessert, we played a little bit of the Wii and then played some 'Catch Phrase' which had us all in stitches! It was so funny!

So all in all, it was a good and yummy day! I just love spending time with family and throwing parties! It's just such a fun time for me and I can't wait for the next one!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!