15789

Awesome 80's -33yr- Workout Leggings

May 2007

Dawn in Marysville, WA, USA

Special Mention

Totally Awesome 80's  Since I'm always throwing the kids a party, when I turned 33, I decided to have one myself, and since the 80s were so cool, it seemed perfect.  

INVITATIONS  I made my own, by making a 4 square card out of black cardstock, and at my local craft store die-cut lots of squares out of red, yellow, blue, green, white and orange cardstock.  I rounded the corner of the squares using a corner rounder, then randomly laid out 9 squares on each square card, in a 3 X 3 grid, and tada, the front of the card is a face on a Rubik's cube.  I printed out the details on paper (using the Microsoft font called Computer), and trimmed it to fit inside the card.  It read A Most Excellent 80's Party, you're invited to get into the groove  at a most rad birthday party! Bring your homeboy or your Valley girl, to our house, in the middle of our street, Saturday, May xxx, at like 8 p.m! Don't be a lame-o, RSVP by Wednesday, May xx. Make sure you are in your freshest 80's gear, or you'll sit with all the other dweebs, fer sure!  I sent invites out a month before, because most of the guests have children and I wanted them to have plenty of time to find a babysitter.  2 weeks out, I sent out a reminder e-card from Evite, there is a cool one that has black tiger stripes and said Wild Thing I also asked everyone to bring a picture of themselves from the 80s, or a prom picture.  

OUTFIT  What is the 80s without leg warmers?  The store Claire's has tons of 80s stuff, my head was spinning.  I found a red mesh shirt at the thrift store, with a sleeveless black T and my workout leggings.  At Claire's, I got turquoise leg warmers, strands of black necklace, a chunky turquoise heart on a chain, humongous hot pink plastic earrings, a turquoise/pink head band, and black fingerless gloves.  I teased my hair within an inch of it's life and pushed it back with the headband.  My sister last year gave me a huge make up case, and it had great had blue and white eye-shadow and pink lipstick that I used, and put on what felt like a pound of eyeliner and mascara.  I couldn't find jelly shoes in my size, so my black Converse sneakers worked out just as well.

DÉCOR  Not a lot of specifically 80s décor out there, so I pieced together lots of different ideas.  I have 2 living rooms, and I wanted each room to have it's own theme.  For the front room, I went to Joann's, and got white tiger-striped faux skin material to throw over one couch, and checkered-print material to cover each of the arm chairs.  One wall I covered in gold stars that I found in the teacher supply section of the dollar store, and from the ceiling I hung two columns of gold stars.  This was my prom picture wall.  Whenever a couple came in, they stood in between the two columns and had their pictures taken, a full-length and a close-up.  My friend was the photographer, and had them do wacky poses with her digital camera.  I was so going to get a Polaroid camera from Wal-Mart, but completely forgot to.  Their pictures will be sent to them in their thank-you cards. 

I went to a local thrift store and found tons of vintage stuff.  I bought old Polaroid cameras, Viewmasters, some Walkmans, and a VHS console, to scatter around.  On the table, I laid out games like Uno, Connect Four, Monopoly, and I Love the 80's board game I found at Target.  It's just like Trivial Pursuit. I figured that if they wanted to, they could start up a game.  I ordered 12 gold balloons and 12 pink, turquoise, green and blue balloons with extra long ribbons to float along the ceiling (our ceiling is pretty high.)  It was a pretty cool effect, since you had to walk through a curtain of ribbon.  In the second living room is where the big screen TV was set up with the karaoke machine, so this was where the main action was.  I found tons of polka-dotted paper lanterns on sale at Party City for a $1, so I loaded up on those, and their coordinated plates, napkins and cups were only .50, and they were multicolored, so the colors worked perfectly.  The lanterns  were hung from the ceiling, along with strands of neon green, turquoise, black and hot pink steamers hanging down. 

At the thrift store, I also found 45s records with 80s songs from people like Chaka Khan and Hall and Oates.  I used wall putty and stuck them up all over the walls.  I bought neon inflatable guitars, and had them all around the living room.   I had to move out a table and push back the couches, because I knew my group would get rowdy.  I covered my kitchen table with a black tablecloth, and used phonebooks underneath to get different heights for the food I set out, which I'll get to later.  I had ordered a ton of jelly bracelets from an online party supply place, but didn't realize they were child sized, so I ended up scattering some of them on the food table, and gave away a lot of them in the goody bags.

FOOD  The 80s were all about junk food, so I had plenty of it.  I found large block candle holders at my dollar store, so I filled each with Mike and Ike, Kit Kat bars, Bazooka Joes, Now and Laters, Blow pops and Runts.  I used Chinese takeout boxes for gummy bears and gummy worms.  I ordered a sandwich tray from the grocery store, and bought a couple bags of pizza rolls.  I cut up strawberries, had chips/salsa and Cool Ranch Doritos.  To make it even more fun, I labeled the foods  Mystic Pizza  rolls, Breakfast Club sandwiches Three Amigos chips/salsa, Desperately Seeking Doritos, Strawberries no Shortcake.  We had coolers full of Coronas and Bartles & James wine coolers, and lots of non-alcoholic drinks, Capri-Suns, Mountain Dew, Coke and Pepsi, and I even found Tab, and of course, lots of water.  What I liked best were the cakes I ordered.  They were two cube cakes decorated like a Rubik's Cube.  They frosted chocolate cakes, spray-painted each side a different color and piped black frosting for the lines.  They were the highlight of the table, and everyone loved them!  We also served the cake with chocolate chip cookie dough and plain vanilla ice-cream.

ACTIVITIES  All my friends came in their raddest 80s gear, it was so fun seeing grown people all dressed up like teenagers. There was so much lace, big hair, fish net stockings, and striped shoes.  One guy looked just like The Karate Kid, even had on the same headband.  And there were several bad suits and white loafers, lots of turned up collars and vests.  When they came to the front door, they were greeted with a sign that said Save Ferris.  As soon as they came in, they went to the prom wall and posed for their picture. They put their names in for a drawing for prizes. I had bought lots of toys like My Little Pony, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Care Bears, and even a Wooly Willy, and throughout the night, I drew names, and depending on if they had boys or girls for children, I gave them an appropriate toy.  We had everyone put on a name tag and instead of using their own names, we thought up great 80's names, like Biff, Chad, Molly, Buffy, etc. instead.  People kept trickling in, so at first all the men folk were in the garage doing drinking games while the women were admiring and comparing outfits. 

Once everyone arrived, I had put together a How well do you know the 80's quiz found online.  It was funny how quiet it was, while everyone answered questions. Everyone was shouting out answers, a lot of them were so easy, and the winner received a Viewmaster.  Not everyone remembered to bring their picture, I was going to post them up on a posterboard as A Wall Of Shame and the person who could identify everyone correctly would win a prize.  Instead, we just passed them around, and remarked on the big hair, bad clothes, etc.  Soon, the karaoke machine was turned on, and we had a great 80s karaoke CD, that everyone was fighting over the 2 mics.  There was a lot of guitar playing with the inflatable guitars and couples were dancing all over the place.  It even spilled outside to around the fire pit.  I printed up ballots for voting on Best Hair/Use of Hairspray Dopest Dude Raddest Girl Best Karoke  Prom King and Queen, but everyone was dancing so much, they never settled down long enough to vote.

FAVORS  When guests were leaving, I passed out clear cellophane bags with some shredded turquoise paper, and loaded up with some jelly bracelets, Pop Rocks, candy jewelry, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a Ring Pop and a roll of Sweetarts. A lot of people didn't even realize those candy were still around.   Even though I didn't draw everyone's name, when they left I still handed out more 80s toys, so no one went home empty handed.  And of course, they'll have their prom pictures when they received their thank you card.  I really have been planning this for awhile, and picked up things as I found them.  I can't bear to pay full price for stuff, so I scoured my dollar store, clearance sections of major stores, used 40% coupons, the works.

Everyone had such a blast, and it was totally worth all the work!!

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