GIFT IDEAS: 50TH BIRTHDAY LIFE PHOTO BOOK

What a week of birthday's! My daughter Evie was born on my mums 49th birthday. So this year we've had double the celebration with two milestone birthday's. Evie's 1st & my mums 50th. My sisters & I have been planning & organising a surprise party for my mum for MONTHS. It has been SO stressful but extremely worth it. If you're planning a surprise party for anyone I would recommend starting early! Especially if you really want to personalise the party...


There is so much to book &  a lot to think about from the venue, entertainment, food, cake, decorations, people invited & gifts! Here are some great ideas for your milestone party:

Decorations:
Photo boards are so much fun to make, are easy to carry around & look great laid out in the 'age' of the person whose party it is! I must admit it took HOURS to sort through EVERY SINGLE PHOTO in my mums house, sneakily scan them into the computer & send them off to Photobox to be printed. It took a few days for the photos to come but I did order 250 of them. If you wanted to fill the venue with photos, make sure you leave yourself enough time!

We booked The Godolphin Arms in Marazion for the party. The venue has just been renovated so I knew that they would NEVER let us bluetac so many pictures to the wall. I decided to get really creative & cut out a couple of HUGE 5's & 0's from some cardboard. We then arranged all of the photos into a lovely little collage & stuck them all on. It is so easy to do! Even my one year old got involved! 

This could even be a great gift! Mum was really happy to see the photos & loves how it's really captured her whole life. Even though they're large boards, they are a great keepsake & were so easy to just prop up on the tables rather than stick on the walls. Having the photos laid out like this really let us see all of the different hairstyles & fashion choices mum made & highlighted all the different stages in her life, something you don't really get to see when you're just flicking through photos in an album.

THE DAY YOU WERE BORN:
Do you know what happened on the day you were born?

I love the idea of knowing what was happening in the world on the day that you were born. You wouldn't believe how HARD it was to find out how much things cost in the UK in the 60's, so this will be really handy for anyone who wants to create one of these for a family member or friend born in the same year. My little sister Gabriella drew up the board for the party & made it look really creative. We bought some metallic pens & a foam board from hobby craft to create this. Armed with a laptop & google, we managed to track down (eventually) all the information we wanted for it. I am so happy how it turned out!

CAKE:
No party is complete without a cake!

This DELICIOUS cake was made by the BAKING BIRD who are based in Truro, Cornwall. My mum is very musical. She plays multiple instruments, has played in so many local bands & is the music co-ordinator at her school. We wanted to make the cake was really personal to her. The music notes on the base of the cake are actually the notes for happy birthday! The cake was black forest gateau topped with vanilla icing! It went down a treat!

GIFT IDEA:
It is so hard to choose a gift for a milestone birthday. Especially when you know there are a lot of people buying gifts for the birthday boy/girl.

Photo books are an amazing idea! I really wanted to make a photo book for my mum, representing a timeline of her life. It took a lot of hard work to find all of the pictures for it but when we did we set them out in chronological order. We managed to include pictures of her at school, her first holiday, her wedding, pictures with each of her newborn children, her graduation & pictures of her with her first grandchild plus many more. This photo book was made via Tesco. I ordered the soft back but really regret it. I'd recommend spending a bit more & getting a hardback photo book because it looks so much nicer & is a lot sturdier. They are so easy to make on Tesco's website & you can get really creative with the layout, or just choose the basic option if you're in a hurry!

The party was last weekend & mum is still feeling very overwhelmed by it all. We were so nervous about the turn out but were so grateful that the room was packed! Facebook was a great place to set up a secret group & to spread the word!! We remembered to capture loads of pictures of everybody all together. It's so rare for our whole family to be in the same room, so I am so happy that we got a picture of my mum with my brothers & sisters!