19, 19, 1965!

I have been wanting to have a joint birthday party for a few years now. I finally had a good excuse to throw that party.  Garry and I turn 50 this year!  So since my birthday is in Feb. and his is in April, I decided to have the party March 14.  This was the invite I made. I invited 16 couples.

I decorated with pictures.  I picked some out and Garry made this 50 collage.  I displayed some pictures on our magnet board.

I set up the island with pictures of us, mostly in high school and college.

I laid out a scrapbook I had made years ago with the story of us because it had a lot of our old HS photos in it. 

I put out a candy bar on the island too.  We had gone to Winco and picked out various candies and I counted out 50 of each kind and displayed them in jars and containers.  I made the above sign so the guests could leave with bags of candy. 

We had a lot of appetizer/finger type foods for everyone to eat. 

It kind of reminded me of my recitals...

We made some cheese bread hot out of the oven when it was time to eat.

I made two different poke cakes, a chocolate mint and a coconut and I made some brownie, marshmallow, strawberry skewers sprinkled with white chocolate. for dessert.

Skewers

We played some games throughout the night.I have the best sister Ky who loves to make up party games and so she did a 50 question trivia game and the famous couples on your back and we let them go up as couples to guess who they were.  Then we ate and after eating and visiting, we played the doo doo game.  Ky had come up with 200 songs from the 80's and we divided up into 4 teams.  It was so hard and we didn't have much success, but it sure was fun.  Then we did the candy bar game where everyone picks one from the center and puts it in their bag and the roll the dice and you can steal or switch hands depending on what is rolled.  Then we ended the night with the newlywed game.  We had prizes of gum for all that played.  The winning couple (Hills) got the Hubba Bubba, everyone else got the Trident gum and the losers (US!) got the Extra.

We pretty much ended at 11 and everyone left hopefully happy and thought it was fun.  I sure enjoyed it all!!

L to R: Valles, Lawrences, us, Brian Thatcher, Reeses, Witt's, Hills, Shafers, Closes, Jex's Candlands
On couch: Osburns, Toni Thatcher, and Barlows.  The Borlas were there for most of it, but had to leave around 10 and we had two couples invited who couldn't come.  Stuff like this makes it o.k. to turn 50!

My first paid gig!

Remember that fun little tea party I went to a few months ago? I spent most of the time talking to a new lady in our ward. Somehow it came out that I liked scrapbooking and dabbled with my own photography on the side.  Well, in January, she texted me asking me if I'd be interested in photographing her nephews wedding on Valentines Day. She explained that they were on a tight budget and coming in from Oklahoma for the big event.  Boy did it ever take me a long time to reply to that text.  I was so shocked that anyone would ask having never even seen any of my photos and I was scared to death to screw up someones big life event!  I typed a thank you but no text, but couldn't bring myself to send it.  I jokingly told my family that someone wanted ME to photograph their wedding.  Cynjyn gave me a great pep talk saying that she thought I was a great photographer and that I could do it and I should say yes! Everyone else thought I should give it a try to, so I erased the no and said yes.  Then I stressed and stressed for the next month over potentially ruining someones wedding with terrible photography!  Well, the big day came and somehow I survived.  I did have some pictures that didn't turn out so well, but I also had some good ones.  I ended up taking 780 photos of the evening.  In the end I gave them a disc with 79 edited photos for them to do as they please with.  Cynjyn went with me so I could check my metering and lighting on her and offered support.  We were there for two hours and just did the wedding portion.  Cari (the lady who hired me) did the reception.  So these are are few of the photos I ended up giving them:

I ended up doing some compilations of things like their decorations and the wedding party entrance and such.

I guess I was pleased with how things turned out and I hope they liked my work.  I am so glad it's over!