Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Andy's 40! Photo Place Mats and Cake Topper

Andy turned 40 last week. His parents and Aunt Ruth came into the city for a surprise birthday dinner at Chicago Q restaurant. I used an old photo to make some cute, simple table decorations to set the mood.


Andy's mom gave me this photo of a 4-ish year-old Andy last spring. I always knew that I'd use it for his 40th birthday. Once we decided to go for BBQ, I figured that place mats would be perfect. I scanned the photo and laid the pattern out in Illustrator. I had them printed on 11"x17" paper at Kinko's. I really wanted them to say "Happy 40th Birthday," so I didn't laminate or decoupage them for durability. (I think that it would so fun to make these for a kid's birthday and add a new one into rotation every year.)


I printed the "Happy 40th Birthday" pattern onto card stock for "napkin rings." The 40s were cut by my Silhouette SD.


I made a party hat cake topper by taping some toothpicks on the bottom to secure it in place.


It might have been a *smidge* emasculating, but I thought it was the cutest.


I told the bakery (Andy's fave frosting in the city, Sensational Bites) to decorate the cake in 70s red, orange, and brown colors.


As I mentioned in my 366, Week 5 post that I had planned to usher Andy into year 40 with balloons and then slept through the alarm. Well, all was not lost. They greeted him when we came home from dinner.


Unfortunately, I left my camera at Aunt Ruth's house the weekend before and she forgot to bring it to dinner. It breaks my heart, but these were the best photos that I could manage with my point-and-shoot. :(

1 comment:

Terese said...

you are such a good wife! love that football picture of andy :)