Okay where do I start? Mac's party was an adventure. The neon/80's-ish theme was embraced by Mac's friends and our family. The house was full of energy...dance music and lots of sugar certainly helped.
Instead of decorating around the house we concentrated on the dessert table and one other surprise for Mac. Sean and I took a couple of days to make hundreds of mini desserts. He kept track and I think the final counted ended up around 641. Granted it's a lot easier to get to that number when everything is tiny. A regular cookie or cupcake recipe will crank out a hundred items.
Apparently I have been reading way too much of Amy Atlas's blog since I was on a mission to have the table look perfect. We didn't have all the platters everyone seems to use so some cardboard, 1/2 a yard of fluorescent fabric and a staple gun helped create "trays" for the desserts to be placed on. I would actually love to do this again, but with cute little patterns.
Little bites of rice crispy treats were dressed up with a swipe of white chocolate and sprinkles...
The mini cupcakes were pretty much glow in the dark thanks to gel paste food color. I also used this cupcake recipe again and cannot recommend it enough.
We made little pudding parfaits and strawberry shortcakes in dixie cups and Sean made a brownie cup recipe we've been using for years...
We also had a bowls of mini chocolate chip and sugar cookies. And we made sure to have boxes for everyone to take home leftovers...
Okay moving on to the police. Of course I thought everyone was kidding, but there they were on our front porch responding to a noise complaint. I had talked to all of our immediate neighbors personally before the party and left notes at several houses right around us, but I guess I didn't reach out far enough. I also made a point of telling the DJ we didn't want the music too loud in the first place...we wanted to avoid everyone having to yell and leave with their ears ringing. We had the DJ turn the music down more and the officers offered to take our phone number to call us (instead of coming back out to end the party) in case we got another complaint...which we did right as the party was over at 10:30. So much for thinking we were proactive ahead of time.
The surprise for Mac was setting up a homemade "photo booth" (after seeing this). We hung fabric on the curtain rod in our living room and purchased a bunch of props. Now I have a couple hundred photos to go through and get a bunch printed to send with Mac's thank you notes...thankfully there's a 4x6 print coupon for Costco this week.
So music + sugar - police + photo booth = A super fun 15th birthday party.
