Memories in Bloom: A Good Reason for a Party!

So there's this really great girl I know...she is a wife, a mother, an employee, a runner, oh and did I mention - she's now a CPA! As you might know, my SIL Melissa recently passed the final stage of her CPA exam. After many years of school, several years of study - the wait is over! Now, I am not one who has to look hard to have a party but this one was a while in the making and boy was it a blast to do! Primarily because, Melissa deserves it!

If I were half the blogger I hope to be I would've been better behind the camera, Melissa did alot of picture taking and I'm too impatient to wait for copies so I'm posting what I have.

Here is a little behind the scenes:

The balloons kept Braden busy for a while - he would gather them all up while standing in a chair on his tippy toes and then move them to the other side of the room and then proceed to do the whole thing over again!

The party was a numbers theme (Lisa so loves a theme and as my like-minded party planning friend - we ate that up in about 30 seconds flat) We used black & white with "splashes" of yellow since that is said honoree's favorite color. It turned out really cute. Our prize area was this dessert table. Whatcha think?

This little area was kinda cute too - props to Lisa who bought that candle stand for 25 cents and painted black was quite a hit.

This is an after party pic with the silver candlesticks missing but this looked pretty neat too - very grand with the silver candlesticks - as I said - blogger in training I guess.

p.s. - this number banner for the mantle was my absolute favorite part - probably because it was my brainchild and I did the work myself on this part - either way, I thought it was cute and can imagine so many different ideas for different themes.

We had some little darlings running around too who were quite proud of Mommy as well (and Mommy's cupcakes!)