For the past few years, I had been secretly planning TJ’s 30th birthday in my head. Where we’ll go – what we’ll do – who will be there. Turning 30 is such a huge milestone and I always knew I wanted to celebrate big. So fast forward to 2020. The year of his 30th finally arrives and I can finally bring my vision to life – but we’re now faced with a huge issue – the pandemic. Travel plans were cancelled and large gatherings were impossible, so I had to get creative.
I decided to throw him a low-key party at our home with some of his immediate family members and a few of mine. I figured once the pandemic was over, we could continue the celebration with all of his friends on a future date.
Below I share details on how I planned his party along with DIY tips and ticks I learned along the way.
Theme
With any party I throw, I always base everything around a theme. It just makes for a more aesthetically pleasing event when everything flows together. When thinking of a theme, sometimes the easiest place to start is with the food. If you have specific dishes in mind, theme ideas can be pulled from the food.
Both TJ and I love tacos and find ourselves fixing them multiple times a week. Fun fact – we always joke about opening up a taco food truck. Maybe we’ll make that a reality in the future. Anyway – I was certain that I wanted to fix him tacos on his birthday. From there, I thought about themes that would pair well with tacos and landed on a “Fiesta”. I turned to Pinterest for some fiesta inspiration and landed on “Taco Bout 30”. It was perfect.
Food
As mentioned above, the theme of his party was based around tacos, but I knew that couldn’t be the only food I served. In an effort to stick as closely to the theme as possible, I opted for a full Mexican spread. I created a “menu” (more on this later) which displayed every dish I would serve for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I carefully selected dishes that were full of flavor, filling, and most importantly – wouldn’t be overly difficult to prepare. I’m so happy with the dishes I chose as each one ended up being a hit!
If there’s one thing I would do differently next time, it would be to prepare some of the food ahead of time! I spent so much time setting up decorations the night before and failed to think about prepping the food. This resulted in me spending most of his birthday in the kitchen prepping + cooking. I felt terrible. So take a piece of advice from me and knock out a lot of the prep work in advance by a pre-chopping vegetables or even pre-making some of the dishes and reheating them in the oven the day of the party.
Tip: One thing I found extremely helpful was to print off the recipes for each dish. This allowed me to lay out each recipe on the counter and bounce from one to another instead of relying on the tiny screen on my phone. Having physical copies of the recipes was a game changer.
Below are the dishes I chose along with direct links to the recipes:
Desayuno (Breakfast)
Almuerzo (Lunch)
Chips + Salsa
Cena (Dinner)
Spicy Shrimp Tacos (these were a huge hit!)
Dessert (Postre)
Cake – Click here for my IGTV video on how to recreate this egg-free cake.
Decorations
So let me preface by saying that decorating is my favorite part about throwing a party. This is where I spend a bulk of my time when I’m in the planning phase. I love statement pieces (such as balloon arches), while also tying in personal touches (such as personalized cups + napkins). My style of decorating is doing just “enough”. I try to take advantage of the space I have by using it to it’s full potential, but not overdoing it where every single corner is filled with decorations. I also love to DIY most of my decorations, which is always exciting but can be very time consuming.
For TJ’s party, I utilized three spaces in our home: our dining room, kitchen, and a small cut out space in our kitchen. When I began my search for decorations, I kept the size of those three spaces in mind.
Dining Room:
I opted for a balloon arch that would be the focal point of the party. Underneath the ballon arch, I used balloons that displayed the party theme name “Taco Bout 30”. When creating a balloon arch, I highly recommend prepping a day or two in advance. Balloon arches can be semi-time consuming if you’ve never created one before, so give yourself time by having the balloons already pre-blown in advance. I blew up the balloons while TJ was at work and stored them in Nori’s closet + my car.
When creating a balloon arch, the biggest piece of advice I can give is to use both balloon garland + tape. Once your balloons are blown up, feed the bottom of the balloon into the garland and work your way up. Once you have the length you desire, go back and tape balloons in smaller varying shapes to the balloons that were attached to the garland. This is the second time I’ve created a balloon arch + I still have a lot of learning to do, but I think it came out great considering I threw it together at 3 a.m.
Here are the items I used for the balloon arch:
- Balloon Pump – this honestly is one of my best Amazon purchases to date. I’ve used it for so many events and it makes blowing up balloons a breeze.
- Taco Bout 30 balloons
- The balloons I used for the arch were left over from past events.
In addition to the ballon arch being a focal piece, I also wanted to draw attention to the dining table as well. With any party I throw, I always tie in greenery on the table. It honestly makes such a difference. I didn’t want to go overboard for TJ’s party, so I opted for lush greens and tied in blue roses – his favorite color. I kept the rest of the table decor minimal by adding a runner, cacti and succulents, along with mini sombreros on top of each plate.
Kitchen Cut Out Space:
The cut out space in my kitchen made the perfect location for photos. I decided to utilize this area by creating a fringe backdrop that would look great in pictures. It was my first time trying this DIY and it surprisingly took LONGER than the balloon arch. I probably should have researched a tutorial on how to create it, but I was rushing and figured I could just “wing it” – big mistake. It’s not perfect, but overall I like the way it came out.
There are probably tons of tutorials on Youtube showing how to create a fringe backdrop, but the quick version of what I did was cut various colored plastic tablecloths into strips and looped them on top of a piece of wire. once I attached all of the pieces of tablecloth, I went back and trimmed the hanging fringe pieces into a V shape. I set out some photo props and a ring light and voila – an instant photo wall.
Here are the materials I used:
Kitchen:
I used the kitchen island to display the menu’s (both food + drink) and all the prepared food. I also utilized the side of the kitchen island for a bar cart which housed the tequila, mixers, custom birthday cups, along with Mexican sodas and beer.
For a personal touch, I created two menu’s for the party – a food menu which displayed the breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert items that would be served for the day and a drink menu. I couldn’t be happier with how both of these turned out.
All and all – TJ’s 30th fiesta was a success. I’m looking forward to the world finally being safe again so that we can continue the celebration with friends. It will give me an excuse to throw another party haha!
If you decide to try out any of the DIY’s mentioned above, be sure to tag me on IG or use the hashtag #BrookeADIYs.
Xo,
Brooke
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