Birthday Diva

One thing I've learned in my short time as a missionary is that regular life does not stop just because God called my family to missions. Take birthdays, for instance, which seem to always fall right in the middle of some sort of missionary craziness!

For the second year in a row, our daughter's birthday fell smack dab in the middle of our family moving. Last year, I was able to convince Laynie to have her party at a local movie theater, which made planning and prep very easy on me. This year, however, she wasn't having any of that. She wanted a full-on diva slumber party, complete with makeovers. The only problem was that we were in the midst of selling all our furniture and packing our personal items to go into storage so that we could move out of our house and hit the road for 2 months to raise support and get some additional training. No pressure, right?

Since our house was essentially empty except for a sofa, a couple of desks and some air mattresses, I had to figure out how to create a salon area and also a place for the kids to eat pizza and cake. A folding card table served as our hair/makeup station and we cleaned off our desks to serve as the nail station and cake table. Our church came to the rescue and let us borrow two 8-foot tables and some chairs, which gave us a dining table. However, with all the empty space and bare walls, I really needed to do something spectacular to pull off the whole diva theme.

Thankfully, I'm a former event planner and still have some connections! I was able to borrow quite a bit of decor to go with our pink and zebra print theme, which was a huge help with our limited budget. Black linens are an event planner's best friend and helped create uniformity even with mismatched furniture! Pink satin and zebra print fabric created pops of color and pattern. Black feathers, disco balls, balloons, and paper lanterns scattered around the room added additional interest.

Here's a break-down of everything:

Instead of buying a pre-made banner, I made my own out of scrapbook paper and pre-cut letters. To highlight it, I hung it over the mantle and used black feather boas, disco balls, and pink lanterns to frame it.

 

The table setting was so simple, but turned out really cute! For the centerpieces, I scattered small disco ball ornaments and pink, plastic crystals on white, rectangular trays. So easy and kid-friendly! I used decorative paper plates that matched our theme and plastic "wine" glasses from the Dollar Tree. I wrapped short lengths of black feather boas around the stems and tucked a pink napkin in each cup, along with a pair of sunglasses for each diva to wear at the party.

Since our walls were so bare, my sister-in-law, Karen, and I had the idea to create a "throne" for the birthday girl. I draped a high-backed chair with a black linen and added a pink satin sash. Karen hung pink and white tulle over the throne to cover up part of the blank wall and we added balloons on each side for some height.

I kept the cake table simple with just some zebra fabric over a black linen. A balloon bouquet masked the bare corner behind the table. An empty planter turned upside down under the fabric helped elevate the cake. I couldn't resist the adorable paper plates with a zebra print shoe that I found at Wal-mart!

Here's the birthday girl right before time to blow out the candles!

For the after-dinner activities, our empty dining room was transformed into a salon, complete with hair, makeup, and nail services. My former boss, Catherine, had a chalkboard she had made from a large canvas painted with chalkboard paint and then framed in a white frame. It was perfect to list the services that our salon offered and also helped mask another bare wall! Karen set up the stations with everything you could possibly need in the way of hair, makeup, and nail products and we were open for business!

After presents were opened and the cake had been cut, the girls started their makeovers and took turns at each station. I played hairdresser, Karen did nails, and my sister, Gayle, was the makeup artist! Within about an hour, we had 8 gorgeous divas who had been pampered to the extreme!

I can honestly say that I had more fun planning this party than any other birthday I've ever done. Admittedly, it was pretty stressful trying to pull it together with all the other things that we had going on, but I'm so glad that I made it a priority. I know that Laynie will always remember it!