Fiesta Friday/Real Party – ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ Welcome Home Party

Since today is Veteran’s Day, I thought no better time than to share our surprise Welcome Home party for my husband returning from a 6 month deployment from Kuwait this summer. I shouldn’t call it a party, he doesn’t ‘do’ parties, extremely low key events with a few friends is very much up his alley, so the big blowout I wanted to do was out of the question. I still wanted to make it special.

He’s a Major in the Marine Corps, so I incorporated the Corps colors of red, yellow, black and white into the theme, ‘There’s no place like home’.  I was going for a ‘homey’ backyard country feel so of course, we had a BBQ, complete with potato salad, pulled pork and all the fixins!

Once again, I called on amazing Kori of Paper & Pigtails to create the invites and tent cards based on the welcome back banner created by the talented Do of Piggy Bank Parties.

I wanted something fun for a tablecloth, so I weaved streamer paper across the table and used my new Pastry Pedestals for the backdrop. It was a total fluke, since the full banner wasn’t fitting across the front of the table and I had to figure out a way to have his name in there.

Yes, I couldn’t resist renaming stuff…

The to-die-for red house cookies and flag heart cookies are my cookie gal Jenny of Jenny Cookies; seriously, we are addicted to her cookies.  I sent the flag heart cookies home with guests in the red gable boxes.

So the big joke of the party was the red birdhouses. I had attached unpainted birdhouses to dowels and stands with full intention of having them painted way beforehand.  But, because of our crazy schedule with dad returning home sooner than expected, and taking a family vacation to Disneyworld shortly after, the night before the party found me painting them.

Jason was baffled as to why I was a) painting birdhouses and b) painting birdhouses late at night. Since I couldn’t tell him why, I simply got into a heated discussion about painting something that is going to get rained on and faded and should have been left unpainted. Of course, at the party’s reveal, it made perfect sense to him!

Today, we honor all those who serve. Our boys are 7 and 10 and each deployment doesn’t get any easier, but with wonderful family and friends who not only came out that night but supported us through, we are always grateful that we can celebrate this day with our dad.

Vendors
Banner – Piggy Bank Parties
Invites, tent cards –  Paper & Pigtails
red house cookies and flag heart cookies – Jenny Cookies
milk bottles – Sav-On Crafts