As the old saying goes: “like mother, like daughter”, I’d like to think with Veronica as my mom, I’ve picked up a few things from her when it comes to hosting/throwing a great party or celebration!! I’d also like to think I’m pretty creative and crafty, and I love bringing fun Pinterest ideas to life, especially for special occasions.
My dad often comes to me around my mom’s birthday (and Mother’s Day, and Christmas, and sometimes their anniversary LOL!) asking if I have any ideas for her upcoming fête. With 60 being a milestone birthday I knew we had to do something big, fun, and memorable for her! She had mentioned to me earlier in the summer that her brother (my uncle) and his family were going to be home for the summer, and that she’d love to drive down to Calgary to celebrate with them. One thing about my mom is that she hates a surprise, especially in party form, so as much as I wanted this to be a surprise I knew she wouldn’t enjoy it. So once I got the okay from my dad (aka bank of dad lol!!), confirmed with our family in Calgary that the weekend worked for them, I told my mom the plan!
As part of my “gift”, I took over the bday weekend planning and booking, but I still kept her in the loop! I didn’t want my mom to feel like she had to plan her own birthday, but as you may or may not know she hates a surprise lol!!Location:
We have fallen in love with a little boutique hotel in Calgary called The Westley, the location downtown is great, the decor is beautiful, the vibes are on point and they have the best beds! Very important when choosing a hotel, obviously. They also have a suite called Revel, which is amazing for hosting a small group of people; in total we were 10! It is a 1 bedroom plus a living room area with a wet bar, again, perfect for having everyone come hang out, enjoy some drinks and appies/snacks, and open presents before our dinner reso!
Decor:
I won’t lie, decor in a hotel room can be tricky, you have to use items that are relatively portable, won’t do any damage, and will be pretty easy to clean/pack up. Along with making the room cute, I also knew we needed functional things to serve food and drinks with, so with all of that in mind, my mom and I went shopping!
We found cute rainbow paper plates and matching napkins at Party City, so that is where our colour palette came from. Also when transporting party supplies, plastic or paper over glass always… for obvious reasons! We bought plastic trays, scoops, bowls, drink pitchers, a measuring cup, wine glasses, chopsticks, and paper cups for snacking, all from The Dollarstore, some items were even in our colour palette!Haus Tip:
A few other good items to remember to bring with you when hosting an out of town party: a cooler (great to take home leftovers, in our case sushi and creme puffs!), a hauler (great for toting things around), garbage bags (these ALWAYS come in handy especially during clean up), knife (a real one, not plastic, especially if you are cutting a cake!), corkscrew for wine/bottles, a tea towel or two (great for spills, when making drinks etc) and as always, scent free baby wipes (these are good for absolutely everything)! Don’t rely on the hotel/venue to have the necessities you might need, they very well might, but you don’t want to have to be calling the front desk 100 times, and running around trying to find those items.
Balloons:
My mom had been spending the summer scanning old family photos to make digital copies, so I saw photos I had never seen before! Photos of my mom, my uncle, some relatives I’ve never met, and my late grandparents. I truly don’t remember how this idea popped into my head, but about a week before we were leaving I thought: “what if I print out one photo from each year of my mom’s life, and hang them from balloons in the hotel room…” This was hard because my mom is basically a detective. I first had to pick 60 photos I thought represented her, things she loves, life milestones, trips, etc. Any post-digital era pics I had to stealthily email myself from her computer so I could get them printed, but also delete the sent emails so she wouldn’t find them! I took pre-digital age, already printed photos from her “binders of extra photos for scrapbooking” when she wasn’t home, and bought 60 balloons in our colour palette on an afternoon when she wasn’t with me. I also bought a gold 60 because who doesn’t love a bday number balloon?! I went to a Party City in Calgary to get the 60 inflated, and buy tanks of helium for the latex balloons I wanted to float in the room. I spent about an hour and a half in my little craft bubble: blow up balloon, tie on string, hole punch photo, tie to string, see if balloon floats. I also wrote the date and event/place on the back of each photo. And I maybe went a little extra/over board and colour-coded the decades… 1960’s pics were on pink, 70’s pics were on blue, 80’s pics were on yellow… etc. No one noticed this (even though I had made a little info card lol!!) but everyone was in awe of this set up, and couldn’t believe I found, printed and floated 60 photos! I printed and cut all the photos to 4×4″, but I think if I did this again I would do 3×3″ or 2×2″ since the 4×4″ were kind of heavy and needed a fair amount of helium in the balloon to float.
Food + Drink:
My mom chose the Orchard Restaurant for her actual bday dinner, which was such a delicious meal!! For the table I made everyone a set of dinner menus and place cards, in our colour palette, of course! For a party of 10, the restaurant does a set menu and they emailed me with the exact dishes a few days before. I personally don’t like when I don’t know what I’m eating, so I thought a printed menu for everyone would be nice! I also made everyone a name card, this was helpful for seating arrangements, and I also added some fun facts on there from 1965! We like to do “birthday questions” when we celebrate bdays, everyone asks the birthday person a question, and this has become a fun tradition! I had texted everyone 3 weeks before asking them to send me a question they’d like to ask my mom, and I added their question to the bottom of their name card. Then half-way through dinner we went around and asked her our questions! It was fun to see what everyone wanted to know, and also learn some new things about my mom!
My mom wanted to be in charge of the drink options, so she brought all the ingredients and made (I repeat: she wanted to!!) a signature cocktail in the room, her “Lychee Spritz”! There was an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version of that drink, an assortment of wine, flavoured bubbly water, Diet Coke, Bailey’s Birthday Cake liqueur (this was more for the fun party vibes as it wasn’t an amazing flavour haha) and champagne! I made vinyl name stickers to put on the plastic wine glasses, so people knew who’s drink was whos! Very cute and functional, and who doesn’t love when something has their name on it?!
Cream Puff Cake Tower
Celebrating in Calgary, I knew it would be easier to order a cake/dessert from a bakery IN Calgary over buying and bringing a sweet treat from Edmonton. I had seen a viral TikTok from Creme Cream Puffs, and my mom loves cream puffs, so I went out on a limb! This was one element I was able to surprise her with. They offer a cream puff tower, so that was an easy choice! Carly was so great to work with, I chose the vanilla & sprinkle dipped puffs, with 3 filling options: salted caramel, vanilla with chocolate fudge, and lemon blue raspberry. These were a TOTAL hit, and the small 15′ tree was more than enough for all of us to enjoy and take home leftovers! I added the candles and this was her “birthday cake”!
Extras:
Every good party needs some snacks- even though we had our dinner reso, theres nothing more fun than cocktail hour with a few snackies!! I’d like to think I know my mom pretty well at this point, so choosing her favourite snacks to stock the hotel room with wasn’t hard. We doordashed sushi to the lobby for our in-room appies, had Helluva Dip with original Miss Vickie’s potato chips, Smartfood popcorn, Synder’s cheddar bites, our fave chex mix, Haribo gummy bears, Lindt & Purdy’s chocolates, Twizzlers and Dentyne cinnamon gum.
I think her 60th was one for the books, we had so many laughs, conversations, nice family time, some reminiscing down memory lane, and hearing stories from my mom and her brother about their childhood! The food at Orchard was delish and we stayed so long we closed down the restaurant… they had to finally kick us out! We then all went back to the hotel room to enjoy the cream puffs and have a little night cap. A super fun weekend celebrating my mom!
Let me know if you have any party planning tips you swear by, I always love learning new hosting tips and tricks!
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