A special birthday.

What’s a girl to do when her husband happens to love music? And turns 26?

Throw him a special birthday party, perhaps?

This was my first theme party, and the decorating was a lot of fun.

I brought home a dozen old records that no one should ever want to play again and turned them into wall decor and record bowls.

The bowls are easy, if you want to try this at home (I used the instructions here and they worked well). The plastic folds into wonderfully organic shapes – I think mine look a little bit like big black clams.

We also rounded up enough old CDs for me to make a “chandelier” of sorts. It’s not as sparkly as I thought it might be, but the slowly spinning circles are quite hypnotic.

The birthday banner was made from the more colorful record inserts and some bias tape (the lettering doesn’t show up very well, unfortunately). It’s definitely re-usable, so family members can expect to see this again. :)

I’m afraid that I forgot to take photos during the party itself because the food took longer than I thought it would and there was a lot of scurrying around the kitchen. Josh barbecued so much meat and veggies that I thought we’d have tons of leftovers (wrong!) and I made Elvis Presley’s favorite poundcake with strawberries and whipped cream. It all turned out to be pretty delish. Good company + good food + good drinks + good music + good reason to celebrate = a very good time.

Happy birthday again, my dear; it was a very special day.