Party time

The day before the party, we took Mum to Old Basing and went on to Reading to collect last minute items and the flowers. There is a flower stall in the main street where Rebecca had placed my order. I picked statice, small carnations, gyp, some bell shaped ones (don´t know the name) and the huge bouquet we wanted to present to her. We had our arms full and the total price was only 35.00, extremely good value.

Then on to Rebecca´s where I spent most of the evening decorating the glass jars for the table posies and assembling the decorations that I had flat packed in my case.

I invested in a new glue gun which was waiting for me, so glad I did would have been very hard without it. It also worked so much better than my old one.

Daniel, Shine and the girls were supposed to join us for dinner, but when they went to collect the cake, there had been a misunderstanding about the collection day so they had to wait for it to be decorated, that got us in a bit of a tizz and they didn´t arrive till after midnight.

Saturday we were up early, packed and off to the venue to decorate

The place is centuries old complete with working water mill, the room had low beams which made hanging the decs much easier.

Luckily we had Rebecca, Antoni, Daniel, Shine and SIL, Jo helping, we were gluing, blowing up balloons, at least I remembered a pump, stringing, sprinkles for the tables, I mixed up the coloured water using acrylic paints and took it in bottles so we made 14 posies. The girls were enjoying themselves playing with balloons and ´helping´!

With just enough time to change, we finished before the first guests arrived, then the guest of honour arrived at 1.15, completely flabbergasted by the whole thing, seeing so many people there (48) wishing  to celebrate with her

Mum has lived in the same cul de sac, along with most of her neighbours, all of a similar age, for 63 years and she was totally overwhelmed by the fact that they were all there.

Along with nieces, nephews, grand and great grand children, old work mates and friends.

After the buffet we all gathered round to watch the video Chris had painstakingly made for weeks. What was truly wonderful was everyone could identify with it, having found photos of her friends and neighbours and of her parents and Aunts etc so all the rellies had a connection with the film too.

There were quite a few giggles and a lot of tissues being used as it progressed. Chris had coordinated music from each decade as the photos flipped past and all wanted to know just how he had managed to get such good images from the very old cine films. There was even a clip from 1971 of me as a very young teenager, when I joined the family on a camping trip to Ringwood with us playing piggy in the middle with Mum.

It was cake time next, I wanted one of the delicious Filipino ones and asked Shine to organise it. They use purple yams and is the lightest, fluffiest yummy cake ever and of course, when cut its purple, Mum´s favourite colour.

Unfortunately the centre flower failed, it was supposed to slowly open, play Happy Birthday and sparkle, but it was still effective.

Chris performed a few songs, we couldn´t take his guitar with us but during our house search found his first original one that hadn´t been played for 40 odd years, but with new strings it certainly did the job.

About 5, people began to drift away, I think the oldies had partied enough

Then came the clear up, always quicker than putting up

Everyone loved the afternoon and with the sun coming out we managed a series of family photos too,

it was certainly worth all the effort, just a shame it all seemed to whizz by so quickly.

Mum was joking about what are you going to do for my 100th then?

We shall see

take care

xcx