Max and Ellie: Annie's Big 3-0: the decor

Annie and I planned a lot of her party while we were sitting in a movie theater late one night waiting for the first showing of Eclipse to start; I took notes on the back of an old shopping list I dug out of my purse. The first thing Annie thought of was something she'd seen growing up back East: half of a lemon with a peppermint straw stuck in it. The entire party was basically planned around that one idea! Bob's Peppermint Sticks are really easy to find during the Holidays (we've given them as Christmas gifts to our neighbors), but not so much during the summer. You can buy them online for just a few dollars, but the shipping is ridiculously huge in comparison to the price. The other option is to buy them at Cracker Barrell, which I love to a bizarre degree. We don't have any Cracker Barrells here. Luckily, Annie was visiting her in-laws out of state and swung by one of their locations just to pick up the peppermint sticks. To get the lemons to stand up straight, I just cut a thin slice off the bottom. They looked really cute. Actually getting sweet, minty lemon juice out of them was another story, but we discovered that biting both ends off the peppermint straws and gently squeezing the lemon while sucking really hard on the peppermints sticks did the trick...for most of us.

The day before the party, Annie, my little ones, and I went to a nearby u-pick flower patch and picked all of the flowers for the arrangements. Well, Annie, my oldest, and I picked flowers; my youngest played in the mud. I was wondering why she was being so good. The flowers were about $20 total, which I think is pretty amazing. We arranged them in clean #10 cans, and I have to say, they looked pretty darn cute. When I did the arrangements the night before the party, the white snapdragon spikes were gracefully drooping down, but I couldn't fool mother nature for long and by the next morning they were standing straight up in the air, and I couldn't even twist them around without destroying everything. Still, the lovely mix of white, yellow, red, and pink looked absolutely beautiful together.

Somehow, we didn't have to rent much for the party, just the chairs. We borrowed the banquet tables and white table cloths from church, and used my in-laws' folding tables covered in freezer paper for food prep. Annie and I both have plain white dishes, natural woven wicker chargers, and silverware. We used 8 of her sets, 8 of mine, and alternated them. I think I actually liked it better than if every place setting had matched perfectly. The table runner was just a long strip of burlap from JoAnn's. I bought 3 yards for $2.99/yard, cut the whole thing in half, and overlapped the two strips right in the middle of the table under the center flower arrangement. A few white tea-lights in mismatched mason jars, striped name tags hanging from striped ribbon, and red striped paper straws from Hey Yo Yo completed the rustic, country effect.