This coming Thursday is my parent's 40th wedding anniversary.
They truly are great examples to me of what a marriage should be. They embody the essence of a successful marriage. And are a living example of a couple that loves each other completely.
I wanted to express my gratitude for their example to me so I threw them a party last night. They didn't want a big hoopla, so I simply invited all of their kids and their families to come over for dinner.
After a lot of thought, and talking with my sister, I decided a rustic theme. My dad loves dutch oven and so I had by brother bring Dutch oven Chicken. We had dutch oven potatoes, and peach cobbler and chocolate cobbler for dessert. It was an enjoyable night and lots of fun. I decided to decorate with stuff that would be used again. I got family photos of all my siblings and one of my mom's favorite family photos from when we were young on a family vacation and printed them all on 5x7. I then made "frames" for them. I had lots of spare pallets in my back yard so I simply chopped these down and sanded and stained them to approximately 7 inches in length. I sanded them down and then stained them dark.
The paint stir sticks on the back made for really easy hanging.
Once they were dry I hot glued clips on the front. I bought them here: Hinge Clips
They truly are great examples to me of what a marriage should be. They embody the essence of a successful marriage. And are a living example of a couple that loves each other completely.
I wanted to express my gratitude for their example to me so I threw them a party last night. They didn't want a big hoopla, so I simply invited all of their kids and their families to come over for dinner.
After a lot of thought, and talking with my sister, I decided a rustic theme. My dad loves dutch oven and so I had by brother bring Dutch oven Chicken. We had dutch oven potatoes, and peach cobbler and chocolate cobbler for dessert. It was an enjoyable night and lots of fun. I decided to decorate with stuff that would be used again. I got family photos of all my siblings and one of my mom's favorite family photos from when we were young on a family vacation and printed them all on 5x7. I then made "frames" for them. I had lots of spare pallets in my back yard so I simply chopped these down and sanded and stained them to approximately 7 inches in length. I sanded them down and then stained them dark.
I used paint stir sticks on the back to hold them together and I simply used plain white glue to glue them together. I really liked the cracks, and other imperfections in them.
and it was ok if the boards were not exactly 7 inches.
The paint stir sticks on the back made for really easy hanging.
Once they were dry I hot glued clips on the front. I bought them here: Hinge Clips
It was a fun easy project and I was able to make cute frames for nearly free.
I also have an incredible friend of mine that paints original water colors that painted a beautiful family tree for my parents. In the center is my parents initials and the year they got married, each ring around the tree represents a year, and their children's names are in the corresponding ring. The tree has branches with each of their children's spouse's name and leaves with their children.. It is beautiful.
I framed it.
She does mostly custom watercolor, if you want to see what she can do, or would like to contact her you can visit her etsy site.
My sister made a vinyl sign out of an old cupboard door.
And then we hung it all on the wall
Table decorations we used burlap, some pine garlands, and pictures from our child hood, mostly vacations. I threw in a couple of woodsy decorations such as ceramic birds and the like. My mother's wedding cake topper was a little girl kissing a frog (I used it on my wedding cake too) I thought it was fitting to use it as decorations for their fortieth wedding anniversary.
But really the hit of the party (besides the food) was the baby picture game. I got baby pictures of my parents, all my siblings and all my parents grandchildren, had them printed up in black and white and then we tried to guess who was who.
It was a fairly simple party, not outrageously priced. Which I love. And my parents loved the time with their children, but mostly their grand kids. we really should have gotten a picture with them and all their grand kids, but I wasn't thinking about pictures during the party. But we did get these two of them with the two newest grandbabies.
Happy Anniversary Mom and Daddio
