THE BIG 5-0, 007 STYLE!

My husband turned 50 last fall and he wanted a big party to celebrate this milestone birthday.  We settled on a 007/Casino Royale theme.  Everything was awesome from the food to the decorations to the casino games.  It was awesome but it took a lot of planning, organizing and help from friends and family.  We pulled off a stellar event.  Here's how we did it.

INVITATIONS

Since we were doing a 007 themed party, I wanted the invitation to start off that theme.  I had my husband put on his tux, get his little pistol out and we did a photo shoot around the house until we found the perfect picture for the invitation.

I created the invitation in Microsoft Publisher and did a "washout" on his picture so it would be in the background.  Here's how it turned out.

In case you can't read it, it says. "He's aged to perfection, he's shaken not stirred, Joseph Lindsay is 050."


CENTER PIECES

Since there was so much to do, I didn't want to go overboard with the table decorations. I placed a black sash on each table. I decided on LED light candles (from the dollar store) surrounded by dice in a vase.  Some were placed on faux money and some on mirrors.  I added some chocolates that looked like coins as a finishing touch.  The chocolate coins came from Party City. The dice came from Amazon. My friend created and printed the faux money.

One more thing, to make things easier for set up, 18 dice were counted and placed in plastic zippered bags so set up was a breeze.  My sons helped me with that leading up to the event.

MONEY BANNER

Again, I was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest and wanted to create something similar for our food table.

My friends (AKA Team Too Much) came up with a great way to duplicate our inspiration for our table.  She estimated how big she needed the money cut outs to be and printed them off, printing two per sheet using the landscape option. It took approximately 20 bills to cover an 8 foot table.  The money was evenly spaced out then hot glued to red ribbon.  The ribbons were draped along the tables and taped in place.  TAH-DAH!

CAKE

I ordered the cake from Sam's Club.  My mom also got cupcakes from Sam's Club.  We wanted the dessert to look as good as the rest of the decorations so we placed playing cards on each cupcake. The cupcakes were a little smaller than planned so we cut the cards in half and VOILA!

PARTY FAVORS

For party favors, I settled on pretzel stick turtles and chocolate dipped rice crispy treats.  The turtles were pretzels, caramel, crushed pecans and chocolate.  I tried a couple different things for the caramel.  Ultimately, I settled on caramel apple sheets cut in half and wrapped around each pretzel stick.

Once they were wrapped in caramel.

Then, we dipped them in chocolate and rolled them in pecans and swished wet chocolate across them.

The caramel apple sheets were a little too chewy for my taste after they hardened so I don't think I will make them using that again. Or I may try them and split the caramel sheets in fours instead of twos and perhaps that will help.   I also made some samples using caramel sauce and found the caramel flavor to be to faint.  I may try them again and just make some caramel sauce myself.

After they cooled, I packaged everything in pretzel bags, mini party bags, other treat bags.  All purchased from Amazon.

I printed out little labels with my husband's picture which said, "Thank you for coming.  See you on our next mission."  These were handed out at the end of the night.

BALLOON ARCH

I found my inspiration balloon arch on Pinterest and needed to recreate this for my husband's party.

I combed lots of blogs trying to figure out the best way to make the dice that anchor the balloon arch. I settled on boxes from Home Depot.  I ordered boxes from Home Depot because I needed them to be perfect cubes.  I ordered a set of 10 boxes size 24 x 24 x 24.  Then, I had to consider what to cover them with.  I considered paint, plain white paper and even a white sheet.  I settled on good ol' vinyl rectangle table cloths from the dollar store.

Team Too Much met with me and we created some samples. Then, we knew we were on the right track.

In terms of creating the circles for the dice, I relied on one of my favorite scrap booking tools.

Based on the size of the boxes, Team Too Much suggested I use the three inch size circle and she determined proper placement so they would actually look like dice.  I cut out 42 circles for each dice and Team Too Much hot glued them to the boxes.

Team too much, also strung the balloons on yarn for the arch.  She tied two balloons together and then another set of two balloons.  She twisted the two sets of balloons together to create a cluster of four balloons. She strung the cluster on the yarn and repeated the process. Clusters were placed closed together to avoid gaps. Team Too Much determined the length of yarn based on ceiling height and the 2 feet high boxes. Once she knew how many balloons it took to reach the ceiling, she doubled that amount while alternating colors of clusters.  The end result is nothing short of FABULOUS!

I also ordered dice, ribbon, balloons, casino printed lanterns, and dice card boxes from Amazon. We placed some extra dice for the stage where the Dee-jay was stationed.

FOOD

My husband wanted real food, not finger foods.  I ordered fried chicken from a local restaurant.  My cousin made all the spaghetti.  My mom made the meatballs, rice and green beans.  I baked turkey. We had rolls and salad.  The food was very filling, tasty and economical.

BAR

What wasn't so economical was the bar.  I found a great post on determining how to stock a bar for a party.

We did offer a signature drink, 007 Martini which was a huge hit.

007 Martini is equal parts orange flavored vodka, orange juice and a splash of Sprite or 7 Up.

I bought too much of some things and not enough of others.  My advice is to know your crowd.  Only one person had gin.  No one really requested White Zinfandel.  What was a big hit, you ask?   The signature drink, the other flavored vodkas with chasers, Rum, Hennessy, Chardonnay and Moscato.  No worries, I'm sure I'll come up with a sangria to use the gin and zinfandel.

I also served lemonade in a really cute punch fountain and pitchers of water to go around.

CASINO GAMES

Of course we had a deejay (who was totally amazing by the way), I wanted guests to have something else to do.  Since we were doing a 007 themed party, I thought CASINO GAMES! I rented a couple casino games: Roulette and Craps.  The company also provided dealers who explained the game and oversaw everything.  Each guest was given $250 in funny money to play with.  The person who lost all their money first got a Boo Prize which included Kleenex and a booklet explaining the games.  The person who had the most money at the end of the night also won a prize.  The casino games were a huge hit.  The tables were packed all night.

My husband was so happy.  All of his co-workers, family and friends complimented him on such an awesome party.

If you're thinking about hosting a 007 Casino Themed Party, take the plunge, I'm sure your guests and your beloved will enjoy it. :)