Princess will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015 with a 1970s-themed disco deck party.

Welcome aboard! Host a fabulous, unforgettable cruise party with these ideas! Enjoy the dinner at the Atlantis Buffet, participate in the amazing activities

This is a picture of our Cruise Ship Boat Party Invitation.

We decided to give you a step by step tutorial to making this knockout Titanic cake yourself...and you’ll never believe just how easy it is!

Mike Spasoff is a tireless servant to this community -- at least for a few months out of the year -- and that's good enough for me. It...

This "Straight Outta My Thirties" digital sign can be printed out at a 5x7, A4, 8x10, or 16x20 size. They make great party decorations or a gift for any 40th birthday. After printed, it can be framed and displayed on tables or simply hung up on the walls. Please CAREFULLY read the points below before purchasing! ♦ ALL ITEMS in my shop are DIGITAL FILES ONLY ♦ No physical poster/sign is shipped in the mail ♦ This item is an INSTANT DOWNLOAD ►► INCLUDES FIVE HIGH RESOLUTION DIGITAL FILES (These files are flattened jpegs and are not editable) Please note that a watermark is shown on the sample image. The high resolution files will not have a watermark. - A4 (8.3"x 11.7") digital jpg file - 5x7 jpg - 8X10 digital jpg file - 8X10 digital pdf file - 16x20 digital jpg file ►► DIGITAL FILES ONLY This listing is for high resolution digital files, which will be available for download when payment is confirmed. NO PHYSICAL PRODUCT WILL BE SENT IN THE MAIL. The buyer is responsible for printing the poster. ►► HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE DIGITAL FILES... Once payment is confirmed, digital files will be available for download through Etsy. Here is some additional info on downloading your digital file https://www.etsy.com/help/article/3949 ►► PRINT RECOMMENDATIONS Photo Printing Services at the following stores... Sam's Club Walmart Walgreens CVS * Because of the large amount of black ink coverage, printing from a home printer is not recommended for this printable. ►► REFUNDS Due to the nature of this product, no refunds will be given if any of the digital files have been downloaded. Refunds can only be given only if the item HAS NOT been downloaded. Please read the listing carefully and be sure you are purchasing the correct year! ►► TERMS OF USE You may use my images for personal use and for gift items. Under no circumstances may this image be used for resale purposes of any kind. Thank you!

I could not be more excited to share Disney Dinners: Indiana Jones with you! Indy is one of my brother’s favorite series of all time and he helped me plan this one. Just do me a favor and play the sweeping John Williams score while you read this. Here’s everything you need to know to …

Let’s just say it: flower girls are often the “awww” moment at your wedding. They make your guests smile. You can make that moment even more meaningful with the right accessories that reflect your style. Here are 4 handmade style ideas for your flower girl from the Etsy Wedding Team. Floral Wear. Beautiful floral hairpieces, corsages and necklaces in your wedding colors can make an adorable impact. {handmade by www.MGMart.etsy.com} New Flowers. Looking for something a little different? Try unusual types of flowers, or even leaves. {handmade by www.Spoccdesign.etsy.com} Flower Keeper. When your flower girl is too young to drop petals, or you simply don’t want to, flower balls, mini bouquets or baskets with attached flowers can substitute. {handmade by www.MackensleyDesigns.etsy.com} Beyond the Basket. Try unusual shapes to carry petals. {handmade by www.NutfieldWeaver.etsy.com} For more flower girl and handmade wedding ideas, browse the Etsy Wedding Team on the left.

Our church had a Valentine Dance. The girl who was in charge chose a Tropical Cruise theme. She and another girl who were in charge of decorating for the dance totally outdid themselves. I had to share pictures of their amazing decorations! Above there are sand dollars in sand with Sharpies so you could write a Valentine message to give to your Valentine. I have never been on a cruise, but the idea here is that there are lots of booths set up with good "for sale". Because this was a dance for families, meaning every age, I was a little apprehensive about these items getting touched and handled. Everything worked out, though. Maybe because everyone was having so much fun dancing! We had a professional photographer taking pictures of all of the families. Here are a bunch of props that you could wear in your pictures. This was a little "spa" set up with little towel animals. Insane attention to detail! These ladies built all of this! I was just floored by all they did on a relatively small budget. Look at the banana dolphin coming out of the jello ocean! I was in charge of the invitations, and this is what I came up with. I tried to make it look like a ticket.

The Top 100 Yacht Rock Songs of all-time (#91-100). Enjoy the sounds of the alto sax and the soft, mellow voices of Orleans, Pilot, Anne Murray and 10cc.

It has taken me months to finally post about this party because we simply did SO much, that blogging about it seemed like a daunting task! I want to be thorough enough that you can at least find links to some of the stuff we bought, and maybe do some of these things for your own cruise party, so it took hours just to compile this post alone. But here it is, finally! The BACKGROUND... After a few years of my dad fighting lymphoma and achieving remission, my parents were all set and super excited to be planning a cruise vacation again which they previously had done every winter! But, alas...cancer returned with a vengeance and they were forced to cancel their vacation to go back to an even more aggressive battle. Both of my parents turned 60 at the beginning of this year, and my siblings and I decided to throw them a blow-your-mind AWESOME cruise themed party on a date when they would have been on their trip...and that's just what we did. We brought the cruise to them and invited their friends and family to board the ship. Here's how we did it. The THEME... It can be a very dangerous thing when the forces of myself and my sister are combined for one project, but it made for quite the recipe for a mass creative juice overload. Invitations - we opted for Evite instead of printed, so we could put more resources into the party itself. We gave our parents two orders...choose a date, and email us a guest list...then do nothing until the party date. We didn't let them in on who had RSVP'd. But, we had to let them pick a date in order to time it right between my dad's chemo rounds and before his bone marrow transplant. My sister Heidi, an illustrator and graphic designer, created the "branding" of the party...including an official logo (based on Royal Caribbean's logo) for the party. With that came signage labeling the cruise terminal, the various "decks" and rooms in the "ship," the coat room, the "head," the "pool deck," etc... Sign on our front door...we had a red carpet leading up to the door as well Heidi ordered this awesome custom floor decal online! The foyer..."Birthday of the Seas" ship sign, and a table of "boarding passes." Everyone got a "boarding pass" upon entry, which had their name and how they knew my parents. Heidi got some clear ID badge sleeves online and I picked up some lanyards at Office Depot. The DECORATIONS... Heidi came over to my house 5 days before the party with a car loaded to the roof with stuff, and added to my garage full of stuff, we got going with the decorations early. My husband was on a business trip, and boy was he surprised when he got home! Here's how everything looked the day of the party... March in Minnesota...we had snow. But this string of nautical flags in the front yard made it easy to see where the party was... The invitations made it clear that our guests were to come dressed in tropical attire....or else they would be subject to us dressing them! To be prepared for the un-festive guests, we pulled together some tropical shirts and lei's from thrift stores, my sister had the hat with the dreadlocks, she got a coconut bra from a party store and I bought a captain's hat online. The weather was going to be iffy that day, so my husband had the great idea to utilize our heated garage....and boy did we ever! This photo below is of my parents seeing the garage for the first time. We each spent probably 10-12 hours at least on the garage. Heidi found the deck rail and ocean backdrops online...two ocean backdrops and two ship deck backdrops covered every wall of the garage! We hung the top one first with duct tape, then taped the ship deck to the sky/ocean backdrop. My hubby and I hauled our deck and gazebo furniture into the garage, which included the little bar in the corner, the umbrella, etc. We bought some pieces of large rug and astroturf and covered the whole floor and duct taped it down. We strung little twinkle lights all over the ceiling, and hung sparkly palm trees from the ceiling (the gold fringe you see in the center is the "trunk") You would NEVER know it was a garage when you were in there...it literally felt like a ship deck. It was AWESOME. Even my husband was reluctant to tear it all down after the party, even though he couldn't access any of his manly tools for a week. Heidi found a customizable "Paradise Bar and Grill" sign online and they printed "Birthday of the Seas" on top for us! Looked SO cute hanging over our little bar and it was really well made. I got a really nice seashell garland which is hanging just under the front edge of the bar. We brought out fake trees and real palms to decorate too. The hanging baskets with ivy came from our deck. More garage! I hung some shiny foil palm tree garland on the deck rail (thrift store), you can see the two foil hanging trees which were cute!! I actually only ordered one but they sent me two. Score! The nautical flags were everywhere too. Here you can see the lights pretty well. I got a bag of those little round paper lanterns at a thrift store and stuck them on random lights. Heidi brought bright colored tablecloths and we put some of the food in the garage...salads, chips/snacks, and some desserts. So inside the house was the fancier midnight buffet setting, and in the garage was more of a casual ship deck. Me and Heidi! We wanted to have some sort of photo backdrop and get photos of every guest in front of it. In the corner of the garage we set up a spot with a palm tree, astroturf, and a beach themed shower curtain! We were looking at photo backdrops online that were super expensive, and then Heidi got an idea to get a shower curtain! It was a little wrinkly but worked just fine...we hung a light behind it so the sky would light up. I sett out a camera on a tripod and captured most of the guests. Now, into the HOUSE decorations... pendant flags in the living room View from the TV/family room looking into the kitchen. Streamers, nautical flag pendants, and lighted tropical flower garland! I got a grass table skirt that fit just right on the three showing sides of the cake/fruit table. We have a long ledge shelf thing up above in this photo, and for the party I cleared it off, laid a strip of rope lights up there, and then taped balloons in a row. When the sun went down the balloons looked pretty cool being lit from behind. My parents used to own this "FurReal" parrot and they gave it to us a while back as our boys love it. He sat inside the foyer on the table where people picked up their "boarding passes." Throughout the night he moved his head, talked, and made parrot sounds. I programmed him to say things like "Happy 60th Phil & Rollie," "where's the birthday boy?" and "Thanks for coming!" What's a cruise without towel animals?! Years ago my mom gave me a towel origami book and it got some use for this party! I set several animals in each bathroom. I picked up a few pairs of cheap sunglasses at Goodwill since my hubby and I both wear prescription glasses and don't own any. They turned out pretty cute! towel monkey Towel elephant So, with the fancy buffet in the kitchen and the more casual beach-y theme of the "ship deck" in the garage, we turned our other living room area with the fireplace and piano into the "Viking Crown Lounge" (an actual name of the lounge on Royal Caribbean ships). The atmosphere here was all about mood lighting! "Viking Crown Lounge" sign - sitting on a mini easel on our mantel, lit up with a giant glow stick After my boys were in bed we lit some of the candles down low on the bay window. We sprinkled seashells around candles too and covered my end tables with white tablecloths topped with a red cloth napkin. Looked pretty cool from the kitchen! I pretty much just pulled out all of the candles we had in the house and grouped them on top of the piano. Underneath them I had some cute fake palm leaves and sprinkled seashells. Heidi made these floating candles in mason jars on the right, with shells in the bottom. We had them outside on the sidewalk, and in the "viking crown lounge." One of my end tables. We put little battery powered tealights in candle holders with shells. ...And now down to the basement... I had one rope light left, and it was the perfect length to run down the railing of our spiral stairs to the basement! We didn't do a ton in the basement...not many people went down there anyway. But, we wanted it to be cute too just in case we needed some overflow, as we were expecting more than twice as many people as we've ever hosted before! I hung crepe paper across the ceiling with balloons along the track lighting strip. (Side Note...we can't use those lights as the cord is broken...don't put balloons and paper by lights that you plan to turn on or you'll get popped balloons and possibly a fire!) We have a couple antique trunks in our basement that were my great grandma's. I figured it would turn them into cute themed decor if I decorated them with travel patches, so they would look like the cruise ship guests' luggage! I did a Google image search for all the images and just stuck them on with masking tape. Another thing we did downstairs but I can't seem to find a photo of at the moment... Heidi got a tropical fish aquarium backdrop that was really long like the garage backdrops. I hung a piece of it over the front of our basement fireplace, with a light behind it, so it looked like an aquarium. (The rest of the backdrop we hung on the front of our countertop in the kitchen under the buffet) We also had a party trivia DVD looping on the downstairs TV, tropical music playing, and another little round table with chairs and a candle. The FOOD... The food, ooooh, the FOOD! We dug deep into our photo archives of the family cruise vacation our parents took us all on years ago, specifically the midnight buffet! What's a cruise party without a jaw dropping food presentation?! The Midnight Buffet! (No, we didn't wait until midnight to serve it, much to the relief of many of our guests who took our invitation a little too literally! Ha!) Silver backdrop behind the chocolate fondue, lighted punch fountain, and ice sculpture! I bought this Rival chocolate fondue back when I worked for Best Buy's corporate HQ with my employee discount. It has been a hit at several parties! Fondue food in a starfish dish (from Goodwill) with palm tree picks and color changing LED ice bucket My brother Ben made this awesome cruise ship cake! He even made all of those little windows out of chocolate...quite a centeripece! The cake table, surrounded by fruit and veggie displays Heidi carved this parrot out of a block of cheddar!!! Yes, we do have a family full of artists. Having a sister with a restaurant came in handy too...Heidi brought several beautiful little pre-made appetizers to have on hand along with the tons of food we made ourselves. Another beautiful creation by Heidi...amazing chocolate cake! I also made a flourless chocolate cake because it was what my mom loved to order on their cruises...it was really delicious but not that photo-worthy. I saw these flip flop cookies in Family Fun magazine and HAD to make them! They took hours to make but were worth it. I used Pepperidge farm milano cookies and Nutter Butters. The straps are made of licorice or gummi worms, and are decorated with flower shaped and pearl sprinkles. Treats more treats!! One key to the midnight buffet "wow factor" is to work UP in your display. We used a lot of tiered trays, and we created various levels by stacking blocks, boxes and bins on the counter and covering them with pretty satin silver tablecloths. Again...vertical! The lighted punch fountain was really cool and actually not a bad price at $29. Watch out though, it'll leave tiny splatters on it's surroundings...but made quite a statement! My brother made two pineapple tree stands with a wood base and metal rod. We drilled holes in pineapples to make the tree, and Heidi got some fake palm leaves for the top. Heidi also made the melon swan, the squash bird, the fruit...awesome! And she brought whole, un-cut fruits to add to the display. It really helps add to the cruise buffet look of "excess!" Fruit kabobs! We stuck them into a half melon, and then set the whole display on top of an oval shaped mirror I bought at a thrift store a while back. Heidi's swan, carved out of honeydew melon, and awesome flowers!! Heidi working on her chocolate cake This was the view as you entered the house on the right side. There are a lot of food items I'm not even posting here that we had...there was just too much to mention. We planned to just not have everything out at once, so that we had a steady rotation of new menu items all night long. As a side note, we also planned ahead to start putting together to-go boxes full of a little bit of every food item, to send home with Mom and Dad. I figured they would likely be so busy visiting with their friends, that they wouldn't get to try everything. Let's just say that all of our families ate well for a long time after this party! More pretty little desserts! We carried around trays (this palm leaf tray I got at a thrift store) and offered guests bite sized appetizers and desserts throughout the night. Creative little hummus display in a red cabbage I had to get this color changing LED ice bucket from Amazon. I only paid about $25 but can't seem to find them for less than $50 now. You can set it to rotate colors, or pick one. I kept it on this blue, since our buffet color scheme was aqua, white and silver. It has a rechargeable battery or you can use the cord, and has a remote control. Fun! This is actually my mom's Christmas pinwheel cookie recipe! I just made blue instead of chocolate for one color, and before slicing them I rolled the whole thing in sparkly blue, silver, and pearl sprinkles to get the pretty edges. I found a photo online of a cute lemon fish, sent it to Heidi in one of the thousands of emails we had flying back and fourth, and voila! She made one way cuter. My dad loves mint and chocolate, so I had to try these bars I found on Pinterest. They were AWESOME. My dad always loves getting rum balls on their cruises, so my sister made some! (and the little signs we put by each food too) Rum balls and an assortment of fancy cookies I made these little beach cupcakes...the cake is rum cake, and then I used some homemade cream cheese rum frosting on top. The sand is made using crushed graham crackers, the beach towel is a sour candy, and the umbrella of course is a cocktail umbrella. Heidi made some wonderful salads and set the large bowls in a Rubbermaid bin filled with ice to keep them cold. This table is in the garage...the big garbage can behind the table is covered with a hula skirt I got at a thrift store. Swan ice sculpture! Heidi found an ice sculpture mold on Amazon and made several of these for backups. She put it in a clear glass pan, on top of an upside-down clear plastic bin. The sides of the bin are lined with foil inside, and it is filled with lights to create the lighted base. I'm sure there must be a trick to getting the ice clear and not cloudy, but it looked pretty sweet! This cute little tree is made of a sweet potato for the base, and I believe watermelon rinds for the branches! Oh, and don't forget to use plenty of fresh parsley for garnishes everywhere! My brother and sister-in-law's pretty veggie trays...love the idea of serving dip in the pepper! I found a recipe online for some crock pot tropical meatballs and my sister-in-law made and brought them. I think she did a double batch...they were gone before I could try them so I'm guessing they were pretty awesome! We also had a meat/cheese/cracker display, and I made some jerk chicken kabobs that my hubby grilled. There were so many food items, I didn't try them all...I think if you took one bite of each dish you wouldn't be able to try them all! We figured, better safe than sorry with the crowd size we had...I believe it was about 65-70 people. The ENTERTAINMENT... With all there was to eat and see in the house, we didn't need much for entertainment. It seemed people were pretty entertained just visiting, looking at the food sculptures and taking photos! So, we didn't really plan much else and that worked out just fine. Don't stress about entertainment...the party itself is entertaining! We were lucky enough that my parents have a friend who is professionally trained in hula and Polynesian dancing! What are the odds?! She came up with the idea to do a quick little hula lesson and it was really fun and entertaining for the people she called forward, but especially for everyone watching! Hula lessons! Music... We have Pandora through our Tivo box. I started at least a month in advance honing in a tropical station with steel drum music and Jimmy Buffet, which we had playing all night. We also had an iPod and sound dock in both the garage and the basement. I made up a limbo pole by wrapping some colorful ribbon around a tension rod. The idea was to pull it out whenever the limbo song came up on Pandora. But, the party was so busy I never noticed the song so we didn't end up using it. I also made a photo slide show in iMovie and played it on our DVD player throughout the night. It was full of general cruise-y photos from our last family cruise vacation, and some of the photos my parents had taken of themselves on their past cruises. Okay, yeah, my boys were actually entertaining for many of the guests. I was planning to get them to bed promptly on schedule, however, they were being so good and such little charmers that we were getting threats from the guests that they may take them home....so, we let them stay up a little later than normal. In Closing... You should see the massive Google Doc we put together when we started planning. There were probably dozens of ideas we just didn't get time to even do, and many things I still haven't even shown in this post, but we can happily say that we did as much as humanly possible! Maybe once my eyes stop burning from staring at the screen doing this post for so long, I will come back and share some more ideas and links. All in all, the party was a raging success. The most people we've ever hosted in our home, the best food, the best decor, hands down. And we host a lot of parties. I told my parents not to expect much for their 70th birthday because there is just NO WAY we could EVER top this party! Ha! Many guests came up to Heidi and I and asked if they could hire us to plan a party, or told us we should do this for a living. We both immediately agreed that no amount of money would motivate us to put this much time and energy into one night again... only for Mom and Dad! (sorry!) But what we can do is share what we did...I hope this post inspires you to go all out if you're planning a cruise themed party, or at least gives you a few ideas! And if you haven't gotten enough link love in the post above, here are some more links to cruise party stuff...just do some searches for cruise party, tiki party decor, tropical decor, etc and you'll get tons of fun ideas!

15 Cruise Staycation ideas that you can easily replicate at home. Lift your spirits by having a virtual cruise while being stuck at home, until we cruise again.

Welcome aboard! Host a fabulous, unforgettable cruise party with these ideas! Enjoy the dinner at the Atlantis Buffet, participate in the amazing activities

Have you ever wished you could travel back in time and be present for a momentous occasion in history? Today I’m going to give you step by step instructions about how to host a “Last Night on the Titanic” dinner party, complete with themed activity stations all around the ship (also known as your house), modern versions of the actual menu the night the ship went down, music, dancing, a visit from the Captain, and an unforgettable live action ending. [NOTE: If you'd prefer to watch this discussi

It has taken me months to finally post about this party because we simply did SO much, that blogging about it seemed like a daunting task! I want to be thorough enough that you can at least find links to some of the stuff we bought, and maybe do some of these things for your own cruise party, so it took hours just to compile this post alone. But here it is, finally! The BACKGROUND... After a few years of my dad fighting lymphoma and achieving remission, my parents were all set and super excited to be planning a cruise vacation again which they previously had done every winter! But, alas...cancer returned with a vengeance and they were forced to cancel their vacation to go back to an even more aggressive battle. Both of my parents turned 60 at the beginning of this year, and my siblings and I decided to throw them a blow-your-mind AWESOME cruise themed party on a date when they would have been on their trip...and that's just what we did. We brought the cruise to them and invited their friends and family to board the ship. Here's how we did it. The THEME... It can be a very dangerous thing when the forces of myself and my sister are combined for one project, but it made for quite the recipe for a mass creative juice overload. Invitations - we opted for Evite instead of printed, so we could put more resources into the party itself. We gave our parents two orders...choose a date, and email us a guest list...then do nothing until the party date. We didn't let them in on who had RSVP'd. But, we had to let them pick a date in order to time it right between my dad's chemo rounds and before his bone marrow transplant. My sister Heidi, an illustrator and graphic designer, created the "branding" of the party...including an official logo (based on Royal Caribbean's logo) for the party. With that came signage labeling the cruise terminal, the various "decks" and rooms in the "ship," the coat room, the "head," the "pool deck," etc... Sign on our front door...we had a red carpet leading up to the door as well Heidi ordered this awesome custom floor decal online! The foyer..."Birthday of the Seas" ship sign, and a table of "boarding passes." Everyone got a "boarding pass" upon entry, which had their name and how they knew my parents. Heidi got some clear ID badge sleeves online and I picked up some lanyards at Office Depot. The DECORATIONS... Heidi came over to my house 5 days before the party with a car loaded to the roof with stuff, and added to my garage full of stuff, we got going with the decorations early. My husband was on a business trip, and boy was he surprised when he got home! Here's how everything looked the day of the party... March in Minnesota...we had snow. But this string of nautical flags in the front yard made it easy to see where the party was... The invitations made it clear that our guests were to come dressed in tropical attire....or else they would be subject to us dressing them! To be prepared for the un-festive guests, we pulled together some tropical shirts and lei's from thrift stores, my sister had the hat with the dreadlocks, she got a coconut bra from a party store and I bought a captain's hat online. The weather was going to be iffy that day, so my husband had the great idea to utilize our heated garage....and boy did we ever! This photo below is of my parents seeing the garage for the first time. We each spent probably 10-12 hours at least on the garage. Heidi found the deck rail and ocean backdrops online...two ocean backdrops and two ship deck backdrops covered every wall of the garage! We hung the top one first with duct tape, then taped the ship deck to the sky/ocean backdrop. My hubby and I hauled our deck and gazebo furniture into the garage, which included the little bar in the corner, the umbrella, etc. We bought some pieces of large rug and astroturf and covered the whole floor and duct taped it down. We strung little twinkle lights all over the ceiling, and hung sparkly palm trees from the ceiling (the gold fringe you see in the center is the "trunk") You would NEVER know it was a garage when you were in there...it literally felt like a ship deck. It was AWESOME. Even my husband was reluctant to tear it all down after the party, even though he couldn't access any of his manly tools for a week. Heidi found a customizable "Paradise Bar and Grill" sign online and they printed "Birthday of the Seas" on top for us! Looked SO cute hanging over our little bar and it was really well made. I got a really nice seashell garland which is hanging just under the front edge of the bar. We brought out fake trees and real palms to decorate too. The hanging baskets with ivy came from our deck. More garage! I hung some shiny foil palm tree garland on the deck rail (thrift store), you can see the two foil hanging trees which were cute!! I actually only ordered one but they sent me two. Score! The nautical flags were everywhere too. Here you can see the lights pretty well. I got a bag of those little round paper lanterns at a thrift store and stuck them on random lights. Heidi brought bright colored tablecloths and we put some of the food in the garage...salads, chips/snacks, and some desserts. So inside the house was the fancier midnight buffet setting, and in the garage was more of a casual ship deck. Me and Heidi! We wanted to have some sort of photo backdrop and get photos of every guest in front of it. In the corner of the garage we set up a spot with a palm tree, astroturf, and a beach themed shower curtain! We were looking at photo backdrops online that were super expensive, and then Heidi got an idea to get a shower curtain! It was a little wrinkly but worked just fine...we hung a light behind it so the sky would light up. I sett out a camera on a tripod and captured most of the guests. Now, into the HOUSE decorations... pendant flags in the living room View from the TV/family room looking into the kitchen. Streamers, nautical flag pendants, and lighted tropical flower garland! I got a grass table skirt that fit just right on the three showing sides of the cake/fruit table. We have a long ledge shelf thing up above in this photo, and for the party I cleared it off, laid a strip of rope lights up there, and then taped balloons in a row. When the sun went down the balloons looked pretty cool being lit from behind. My parents used to own this "FurReal" parrot and they gave it to us a while back as our boys love it. He sat inside the foyer on the table where people picked up their "boarding passes." Throughout the night he moved his head, talked, and made parrot sounds. I programmed him to say things like "Happy 60th Phil & Rollie," "where's the birthday boy?" and "Thanks for coming!" What's a cruise without towel animals?! Years ago my mom gave me a towel origami book and it got some use for this party! I set several animals in each bathroom. I picked up a few pairs of cheap sunglasses at Goodwill since my hubby and I both wear prescription glasses and don't own any. They turned out pretty cute! towel monkey Towel elephant So, with the fancy buffet in the kitchen and the more casual beach-y theme of the "ship deck" in the garage, we turned our other living room area with the fireplace and piano into the "Viking Crown Lounge" (an actual name of the lounge on Royal Caribbean ships). The atmosphere here was all about mood lighting! "Viking Crown Lounge" sign - sitting on a mini easel on our mantel, lit up with a giant glow stick After my boys were in bed we lit some of the candles down low on the bay window. We sprinkled seashells around candles too and covered my end tables with white tablecloths topped with a red cloth napkin. Looked pretty cool from the kitchen! I pretty much just pulled out all of the candles we had in the house and grouped them on top of the piano. Underneath them I had some cute fake palm leaves and sprinkled seashells. Heidi made these floating candles in mason jars on the right, with shells in the bottom. We had them outside on the sidewalk, and in the "viking crown lounge." One of my end tables. We put little battery powered tealights in candle holders with shells. ...And now down to the basement... I had one rope light left, and it was the perfect length to run down the railing of our spiral stairs to the basement! We didn't do a ton in the basement...not many people went down there anyway. But, we wanted it to be cute too just in case we needed some overflow, as we were expecting more than twice as many people as we've ever hosted before! I hung crepe paper across the ceiling with balloons along the track lighting strip. (Side Note...we can't use those lights as the cord is broken...don't put balloons and paper by lights that you plan to turn on or you'll get popped balloons and possibly a fire!) We have a couple antique trunks in our basement that were my great grandma's. I figured it would turn them into cute themed decor if I decorated them with travel patches, so they would look like the cruise ship guests' luggage! I did a Google image search for all the images and just stuck them on with masking tape. Another thing we did downstairs but I can't seem to find a photo of at the moment... Heidi got a tropical fish aquarium backdrop that was really long like the garage backdrops. I hung a piece of it over the front of our basement fireplace, with a light behind it, so it looked like an aquarium. (The rest of the backdrop we hung on the front of our countertop in the kitchen under the buffet) We also had a party trivia DVD looping on the downstairs TV, tropical music playing, and another little round table with chairs and a candle. The FOOD... The food, ooooh, the FOOD! We dug deep into our photo archives of the family cruise vacation our parents took us all on years ago, specifically the midnight buffet! What's a cruise party without a jaw dropping food presentation?! The Midnight Buffet! (No, we didn't wait until midnight to serve it, much to the relief of many of our guests who took our invitation a little too literally! Ha!) Silver backdrop behind the chocolate fondue, lighted punch fountain, and ice sculpture! I bought this Rival chocolate fondue back when I worked for Best Buy's corporate HQ with my employee discount. It has been a hit at several parties! Fondue food in a starfish dish (from Goodwill) with palm tree picks and color changing LED ice bucket My brother Ben made this awesome cruise ship cake! He even made all of those little windows out of chocolate...quite a centeripece! The cake table, surrounded by fruit and veggie displays Heidi carved this parrot out of a block of cheddar!!! Yes, we do have a family full of artists. Having a sister with a restaurant came in handy too...Heidi brought several beautiful little pre-made appetizers to have on hand along with the tons of food we made ourselves. Another beautiful creation by Heidi...amazing chocolate cake! I also made a flourless chocolate cake because it was what my mom loved to order on their cruises...it was really delicious but not that photo-worthy. I saw these flip flop cookies in Family Fun magazine and HAD to make them! They took hours to make but were worth it. I used Pepperidge farm milano cookies and Nutter Butters. The straps are made of licorice or gummi worms, and are decorated with flower shaped and pearl sprinkles. Treats more treats!! One key to the midnight buffet "wow factor" is to work UP in your display. We used a lot of tiered trays, and we created various levels by stacking blocks, boxes and bins on the counter and covering them with pretty satin silver tablecloths. Again...vertical! The lighted punch fountain was really cool and actually not a bad price at $29. Watch out though, it'll leave tiny splatters on it's surroundings...but made quite a statement! My brother made two pineapple tree stands with a wood base and metal rod. We drilled holes in pineapples to make the tree, and Heidi got some fake palm leaves for the top. Heidi also made the melon swan, the squash bird, the fruit...awesome! And she brought whole, un-cut fruits to add to the display. It really helps add to the cruise buffet look of "excess!" Fruit kabobs! We stuck them into a half melon, and then set the whole display on top of an oval shaped mirror I bought at a thrift store a while back. Heidi's swan, carved out of honeydew melon, and awesome flowers!! Heidi working on her chocolate cake This was the view as you entered the house on the right side. There are a lot of food items I'm not even posting here that we had...there was just too much to mention. We planned to just not have everything out at once, so that we had a steady rotation of new menu items all night long. As a side note, we also planned ahead to start putting together to-go boxes full of a little bit of every food item, to send home with Mom and Dad. I figured they would likely be so busy visiting with their friends, that they wouldn't get to try everything. Let's just say that all of our families ate well for a long time after this party! More pretty little desserts! We carried around trays (this palm leaf tray I got at a thrift store) and offered guests bite sized appetizers and desserts throughout the night. Creative little hummus display in a red cabbage I had to get this color changing LED ice bucket from Amazon. I only paid about $25 but can't seem to find them for less than $50 now. You can set it to rotate colors, or pick one. I kept it on this blue, since our buffet color scheme was aqua, white and silver. It has a rechargeable battery or you can use the cord, and has a remote control. Fun! This is actually my mom's Christmas pinwheel cookie recipe! I just made blue instead of chocolate for one color, and before slicing them I rolled the whole thing in sparkly blue, silver, and pearl sprinkles to get the pretty edges. I found a photo online of a cute lemon fish, sent it to Heidi in one of the thousands of emails we had flying back and fourth, and voila! She made one way cuter. My dad loves mint and chocolate, so I had to try these bars I found on Pinterest. They were AWESOME. My dad always loves getting rum balls on their cruises, so my sister made some! (and the little signs we put by each food too) Rum balls and an assortment of fancy cookies I made these little beach cupcakes...the cake is rum cake, and then I used some homemade cream cheese rum frosting on top. The sand is made using crushed graham crackers, the beach towel is a sour candy, and the umbrella of course is a cocktail umbrella. Heidi made some wonderful salads and set the large bowls in a Rubbermaid bin filled with ice to keep them cold. This table is in the garage...the big garbage can behind the table is covered with a hula skirt I got at a thrift store. Swan ice sculpture! Heidi found an ice sculpture mold on Amazon and made several of these for backups. She put it in a clear glass pan, on top of an upside-down clear plastic bin. The sides of the bin are lined with foil inside, and it is filled with lights to create the lighted base. I'm sure there must be a trick to getting the ice clear and not cloudy, but it looked pretty sweet! This cute little tree is made of a sweet potato for the base, and I believe watermelon rinds for the branches! Oh, and don't forget to use plenty of fresh parsley for garnishes everywhere! My brother and sister-in-law's pretty veggie trays...love the idea of serving dip in the pepper! I found a recipe online for some crock pot tropical meatballs and my sister-in-law made and brought them. I think she did a double batch...they were gone before I could try them so I'm guessing they were pretty awesome! We also had a meat/cheese/cracker display, and I made some jerk chicken kabobs that my hubby grilled. There were so many food items, I didn't try them all...I think if you took one bite of each dish you wouldn't be able to try them all! We figured, better safe than sorry with the crowd size we had...I believe it was about 65-70 people. The ENTERTAINMENT... With all there was to eat and see in the house, we didn't need much for entertainment. It seemed people were pretty entertained just visiting, looking at the food sculptures and taking photos! So, we didn't really plan much else and that worked out just fine. Don't stress about entertainment...the party itself is entertaining! We were lucky enough that my parents have a friend who is professionally trained in hula and Polynesian dancing! What are the odds?! She came up with the idea to do a quick little hula lesson and it was really fun and entertaining for the people she called forward, but especially for everyone watching! Hula lessons! Music... We have Pandora through our Tivo box. I started at least a month in advance honing in a tropical station with steel drum music and Jimmy Buffet, which we had playing all night. We also had an iPod and sound dock in both the garage and the basement. I made up a limbo pole by wrapping some colorful ribbon around a tension rod. The idea was to pull it out whenever the limbo song came up on Pandora. But, the party was so busy I never noticed the song so we didn't end up using it. I also made a photo slide show in iMovie and played it on our DVD player throughout the night. It was full of general cruise-y photos from our last family cruise vacation, and some of the photos my parents had taken of themselves on their past cruises. Okay, yeah, my boys were actually entertaining for many of the guests. I was planning to get them to bed promptly on schedule, however, they were being so good and such little charmers that we were getting threats from the guests that they may take them home....so, we let them stay up a little later than normal. In Closing... You should see the massive Google Doc we put together when we started planning. There were probably dozens of ideas we just didn't get time to even do, and many things I still haven't even shown in this post, but we can happily say that we did as much as humanly possible! Maybe once my eyes stop burning from staring at the screen doing this post for so long, I will come back and share some more ideas and links. All in all, the party was a raging success. The most people we've ever hosted in our home, the best food, the best decor, hands down. And we host a lot of parties. I told my parents not to expect much for their 70th birthday because there is just NO WAY we could EVER top this party! Ha! Many guests came up to Heidi and I and asked if they could hire us to plan a party, or told us we should do this for a living. We both immediately agreed that no amount of money would motivate us to put this much time and energy into one night again... only for Mom and Dad! (sorry!) But what we can do is share what we did...I hope this post inspires you to go all out if you're planning a cruise themed party, or at least gives you a few ideas! And if you haven't gotten enough link love in the post above, here are some more links to cruise party stuff...just do some searches for cruise party, tiki party decor, tropical decor, etc and you'll get tons of fun ideas!

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