These are my parents, Murray and Jackie. They are absolutely wonderful: generous, loving, kind, funny. This year was their 40th wedding anniversary. My siblings and I decided to have an anniversary party for them on a Sunday in August which was supposed to be my older sister’s baby shower, (Check out a different baby shower we had for her by clicking here: Woodland Baby Shower). Unfortunately, my sister’s water broke way early and her shower had to be canceled at the last minute. Don’t worry! Her precious little girl arrived safely about a month later. But before all that happened we were supposed to have the surprise anniversary party for my parents at the end of the shower. Once the shower was canceled we had to tell them about their party, so that was a bit disappointing, but the party itself wasn’t. We had friends, old and new, and lots and lots of family, tonnes of food and beautiful decorations. We decided on an outdoors, woodsy, vintage theme. Take a look!

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Decorations:

Main Display Table

On the main table I put:

• their wedding album
• a string of rose gold leaves with little white lights in them
• jars with flowers. I used my Cricut to cut out the numbers “1979” in adhesive vinyl and I put one number on each jar. I bought one bouquet of flowers from Costco and divided the flowers among the 4 jars.
• a sign I made them for their anniversary last year, “We decided on forever; since 1979”
• I wrote, on my DIY White Board some things that happened in 1979 (you can make one of your own using this tutorial here): top songs and movies, prices of gas, houses and bread, etc. (Picture below- it’s very but-first-we-craft-ish. Note the mess on the counter around it!) I turned my white board/dry erase board upside down and tied a burlap bow to cover the scripture reference.

• Burlap and photograph banner. I printed pictures from throughout their life together. There are a shocking few pictures of just the two of them when we kids were young! They had 4 kids in 3 years and four months, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that they didn’t get their picture taken…ever.
• A serviette from their wedding. My mum was looking in her cedar chest for a blanket just that weekend and found the serviette. Perfect timing!
• The cake. Costco had changed all their cake designs just that week. I had planned to waltz in the store, pick my favourite design (which I already knew) and then waltz on my merry way. However, when I found the designs had changed it took me AGES to pick what I wanted. My sister was even there helping. Finally we decided on the owl cake to match the outdoorsy theme. My dad is a pun-er extraordinaire – and my mum always laughs at them, no matter how lame (#truelove), so I wrote on the cake, “Murray will Owl-ways love Jackie.” I know, it’s adorable.

Guest Book/Cards Table:

Disclaimer: This, to me, is really sad. Nobody thought to take a picture of the card/guest book table, so this picture is a glimpse in the background of this picture of my Dad with two of his grandsons:

On the table is a vintage decorative bird cage for cards, a letter board that says, “Please Sign,” a giant wooden “H” (the first letter of my parents’ surname) that my brother made as a guest book, a pewter lantern, and this wooden circle for outside the bird cage:

Play Area:

Because there were going to be so many little kids there my mum set up an awesome play area for them. It had a little kitchen, cash register and more!

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The Food and Drinks:

Oh my! The food! My dad is the kind of person who goes all out when someone is coming over. He’ll always have double what he needs as well as a ridiculous amount of variety. So we had to put on a feast that he would be proud of.

You can probably see for yourself what we had, but I’ll tell you anyway:

• Charcuterie (cheese, crackers, meat, pepperettes, pickles, olives, etc.)
• Spinach dip
• Nacho dip
• Tortilla pinwheels
• Meatballs
• Chips and dip
• Veg Tray
• Fruit Tray
• Baked goods from my Dad’s favourite bakery (butter tarts, danishes, cookies, cinnamon buns)
• Mini donuts (my brother made the donut board)

For drinks we kept the tea flowing and just left out the Keurig, cream and sugar for guests to help themselves. We had insulated paper cups with a permanent marker so people could write their names on them. There was one juice dispenser of white grape juice and ginger ale with green grapes in it on this table, and a 3 jug dispenser beside it.

In the three jug dispenser the red one is some sort of red juice with pop (my sister made it, and I don’t remember what she did!) and strawberries, the middle one is iced tea with lemon slices and the third is water with lemon and lime slices and lots of ice.

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The party was so nice. It was a come-and-go idea, with speeches about halfway through. We told guests, in the invitation, when the speeches were going to be so they didn’t miss them. It was a beautiful day with beautiful people! Happy Anniversary Mum and Dad! I love you!