70th Birthday Celebration

My aunt said it best when she said my mom’s 70th birthday celebration weekend “felt like one giant hug.” It was filled with love, family, laugh-’til-your-stomach-hurts moments, wonderful food and even better people.

For my mom’s 70th birthday, her one request was to have the women who love her most under one roof at our home for a lake weekend. We had to make it happen and from start to finish the whole weekend felt so very much like my mom. It was cozy and comfortable, warm and welcoming, supportive and loving. It filled all of us up with gratitude for my mom, the current leader of our family and the first to turn 70 from her generation of women, and I think she left our home on Sunday feeling incredibly loved.

In today’s blog post I’m going to do my best to breakdown my mom’s 70th birthday celebration in a way that recaps our weekend but also shares a bit about what worked well for us when planning the weekend to hopefully make it a little helpful for anyone else out there who might be planning a milestone birthday celebration in the future!

70th Birthday Celebration

Turning 70 years old is a big milestone and one that certainly felt worthy of celebrating. My mom is an introvert at heart so we knew a giant gathering with tons of people or a crazy party wasn’t really her style. But a relaxed weekend with family, a sprinkling of fun games and floating in the lake? That’s my mom to a tee!

Choosing the date for my mom’s 70th birthday weekend was easy as her birthday fell on a Saturday. I texted my aunt and my mom’s cousins about a year ago, telling them to reserve the weekend for my mom’s 70th. Only two women could not make it which we more than understood and my mom was thrilled to have eight women (and one teeny baby) under one roof to celebrate her special day.

My mom and sister arrived in town on Thursday evening so they could have a little more time with Ryan and the boys before Ryan whisked Chase, Ryder and Rhett off for a guys’ weekend camping at Jellystone. This meant the women of the family could completely take over our house for a girls’ weekend and everyone else arrived at some point on Friday.

When planning the weekend, my sister and I did our best to think through the menu and plan a selection of food we know my mom loves. One thing I also took away from planning a 70th birthday party? If you’re offering to help with party planning, be as specific as possible with your offer. I cannot tell you how helpful it was to me and my sister when my mom’s sister and cousins texted us with specific offers of help from making a blueberry breakfast casserole, to handling Saturday’s lunch or shipping a themed charcuterie board to the house to snack on all weekend long. We graciously accepted all of their offers to help and I also think it meant a lot to my mom that so many women wanted to chip in and make her birthday so special.

70th Birthday Celebration Ideas

• 70th Birthday Party Theme

In terms of a party theme for my mom’s birthday weekend, our theme was a rather loose one but it had a semi-70s feel with lots of daisies, bubbly fonts on the games, retro birthday banner and tumblers, and bright colors in the coral-pink-orange-yellow color palette. (I removed the peace signs and didn’t use some of the “stay groovy” signs that came with the birthday banner to keep things a little more simple and less in-your-face ’70s.) My mom, aunt and her cousins got a big kick out of the fonts used and said they reminded them of The Monkees and their album covers!

• Games + Activities

Activity-wise, planning the weekend was incredibly easy as my mom wasn’t interested in a spa day, a wine tasting or anything else that really required us to leave the house. A lake day that included games and floating in the lake was her main request and it helped make the whole weekend feel incredibly relaxed and saturated with quality time with everyone who attended.

My mom also wanted to stream her favorite movie, The Sound of Music, during her birthday weekend and we did this on Saturday night while we played Blank Slate which had all of us absolutely cracking up! I know I’ve recommended Blank Slate in the past, but it really is a 10/10 game with the easiest learning curve.

For the more personalized games, I did my best to center them around the birthday girl! I made a trivia game with questions about my mom’s life and tried to make the questions ones that various people in the group would be able to answer without one person completely dominating the game. My mom’s sister won the game which was perfect!

We also had a This or That game where everyone circled the item they thought my mom preferred from a list of items and my mom played along with her answers serving as the answer key. The final birthday party game was a “Name 7” game where everyone was challenged to name seven items in as may categories as possible in seven minutes. (This one had us cracking up, too!)

• Party Favors

In terms of party favors, we couldn’t resist adding a few special touches to help remember the weekend and Etsy was my go-to resource for party favors. I found the cutest can koozies with a polaroid-style graphic on Etsy and uploaded a photo from my mom’s childhood to give them a more personal feel. I also ordered tumblers in a variety of colors for everyone as a keepsake but they also served a purpose and made it easier for everyone to know which cup was theirs all weekend long. (I selected this shop because they were made with a UV print and not vinyl, making them a little more durable.) I ordered daisy print makeup pouches off Amazon and added letter patches to each one to personalize them and included a smiley-face shower steamer as well.

• Favorite Things Gift Exchange

In addition to surprising my mom with a handful of birthday gifts (more on this below!), we did a “favorite things” gift exchange where everyone wrapped up something to share within a certain budget. We ran the favorite things gift exchange similarly to how my girlfriends and I do our Favorite Things Night around Valentine’s Day every year.

(My contribution to the favorite things exchange: Large makeup bag / Tangle Teezer hairbrush / Jukebox soap / Lakur nail polish / Electric lighter / Satin scrunchie) 

Everyone drew a number out of a jar to determine the order in which they could select a gift from the pile and each gift could be stolen three times before it was “dead” and was no longer up for grabs. If a gift was stolen, the person who had their gift stolen could choose another gift. Since it was my mom’s birthday, we gave her the final steal of the game!

• Family Scrapbook Surprise

My sister and aunt had the sweetest idea for a surprise for my mom from our family: A family scrapbook! Each person in our family (grandkids included!) was responsible for bringing a 12×12 scrapbook page to my mom’s birthday weekend. We assembled everything into one giant scrapbook as a surprise for my mom to open over breakfast on her birthday. It was so fun for all of us to flip through to see old photos and read a little bit about what everyone loves about my mom but watching my mom light up as she took in each page was the highlight!

• Throwback Mementos + Baby Book

My mom was so sweet and packed up a box of some throwback mementos (books, magazines, etc.) to bring to her birthday weekend which made it all the more fun to look back and remember the various decades of her life. She also packed her baby book which was so amusing for all of us, as she looked like every single one of her grandkids in at least one photo from her baby book.

• Menu Planning

The older I get, the more I realize I’d rather have the host of a party present than bustling around the kitchen making elaborate meals during a party. I tried my best to take this thought to heart and we created a menu for the weekend that included food my mom loves but also a lot of food we could prep in advance. Here’s what our menu for the weekend looked like:

Friday: 

• Lunch: Chicken salad/ Tuna salad / Simple summer pasta salad / Croissants / Fresh fruit + veggies
• Dinner: Lasagna/ Watermelon, cucumber, feta and mint salad / Honey glazed carrots / Italian bread and butter
• Dessert: One bowl brownies / Homemade birthday cake ice cream

Saturday: 

• Breakfast: Greek yogurt breakfast parfait bar with fresh berries and homemade granola / Blueberry breakfast cake / Breakfast sausage
• Lunch: Simple summer chopped salad / Chicken salad/ Tuna salad / Simple summer pasta salad / Croissants / Fresh fruit + veggies / Macarons
• Dinner: French dip sandwiches (I picked these up from a local restaurant because they’re my mom’s favorite) / French fries / Salad
• Dessert: Angel food cake / Vanilla cake with buttercream icing / Assorted ice cream / Homemade chocolate sauce (I need to share this recipe!)

Sunday: 

• Breakfast: Greek yogurt breakfast parfait bar with fresh berries and homemade granola / Blueberry breakfast cake

We also had a ton of snacks available at all times that included a big charcuterie board, assorted chips and dip, Chex Mix, popcorn, fruit, crackers, etc.

In terms of drinks, we had lots of wine on hand but also made mimosas on Saturday morning and tequila sunrises for everyone for happy hour on Saturday.

From start to finish my mom’s 70th birthday weekend had all of us smiling so big. My mom called the weekend a “forever life highlight” and I could not agree more. I know I hit the jackpot with my mom as my mother and hope she knows how deeply she is loved and cherished.

Happy 70th Birthday, Mama!!!