Thirty

Milestone Birthday

This year on the first of September I turned thirty… I had a lot of mixed emotions as this milestone birthday approached, going through the motions of thinking about how I haven’t accomplished so many things in my life. This is something that arises each year on my birthday, and this year it was even harder given that I have been recently unemployed. I was still very excited to have a big event planned with many family and friends. One of my favourite things to do is having my family and friends mingle at events, all the people I love in one place.

My birthday celebration started with the visit to the Jurassic World Exhibition and a wander around Melbourne with a friend. Then on the weekend afterwards I had an awesome party planned which I was especially excited for. It was a costume party and I had a photo booth set up with a backdrop and a lot of different props. Due to being unemployed I asked that everyone bring some food to help cater for the part, everyone did and it made everything so much easier. I also had a friend make an epic neon cake for me and another cake from my sister-in-law, both were amazing.

Party Planning

For weeks leading up to the party I had been busy being creative, maybe it was because I was unemployed and had a lot of time on my hands. With the help friends I brought a black sheet and we squirted neon paint all over it and this was to be the photobooth backdrop and it looked amazing. I also made most of the photobooth props myself including the Etch-a-Sketch and Ferris Bueller red Porsche, it was so much fun and they turned out awesome.

I also decided to have a heap of board games available for during the party, including Twister and even a custom-made Celebrity-Heads. I also had a jar filled with a whole heap of Nerds in a jar for a guess how many Nerds competition. I had also made a heap of decorations, I had a little bit of a neon theme happening, I love neon because they are one design in daylight and another under a UV light.

I decided to have a guess book at my party as well, except I had it set-up a little differently and instead of a book I had plain white cards for people to write on. My plan was to add these with photos in to a scrapbook as a reminder of my birthday and all the amazing people I have in my life. As I have many friends who are overseas or interstate, I set up an email where people could send me messages to add to the guest book. I did not have access to these messages so they would be a surprise for my birthday, this was such an amazing idea because I have some incredible friends.

Celebration

It was an amazing party and I felt so honoured to have such amazing people in my life to share such a milestone with. So many family and friends attended and nearly all were wearing costumes which made it so much better. It made me very happy that everything worked out so well, so many people came to celebrate this birthday, everyone made an effort and the costumes and food were all amazing.

It was such a joy just being able to hang out with friends and have a good time, there were many laughs, many memories shared and a good time had by all. I truly loved this day and had such a joyous time, I thank everyone for coming and am so thankful about all the lovely things that were written on the cards for my guestbook. I will have these forever to look back on and I can imagine that they will help me feel better when I find myself in those dark moments. Sometimes the people in our lives are all that we need to keep going every single day.

Photobooth

Here are some of the photos that were taken in my home-made photo booth, these are just some of my all-time favourites with mostly friends. There are many photos not included as I don’t have permission to share everyone’s photos but they will always hold a place in my heart for this memorable milestone.

After Party

As always with our parties, once everything quietened down and everyone had left to go home, it was just myself and a couple of friends left. So as per our normal party traditions we head off for an early morning playground play, some Maccas and then a trip to Kmart to try on the ugliest combinations we could find and do a change room fashion shoot. I'm very thankful for being able to have this birthday celebration, and memories that will stay with me forever.