No Running

A couple weeks back Tracy and I helped my mom decorate for a party she was hosting.  The party was with her quilting group.  I guess that at the beginning of the year they had decided on a challenge to make skinny table runners because it was the only way any of them were going to follow through on a resolution that included the words "skinny" and "runner" together. 

Unless of course their resolution was to run over any skinny runners they saw outside - but these ladies quilt; I'm sure they are nicer than that.

Anyway, I called Tracy who came up with a fantastic slogan for the party.  I had an idea for an invitation, but wasn't sure it would fly.  Instead I made an invitation that, while it screamed "spring" and possibly even "quilting" it didn't match Tracy's party slogan.  I don't think either of us were in love with decorating a party around it.

So I just decided to throw out the original idea.  Tracy and I thought it would be much more fun to design a party around this:

Mom liked it too and we were off to the races.

Over the next couple weeks Tracy and I collected miscellaneous items to complete the decorations.  The morning of the party we met at mom's at 9am and started putting it all together.

Two tables were set up similar to this:

These were the party favors and placename holders:

Here is our place setting.  We cut up a brand-new bath towel and Tracy found these perfect sweatbands online for napkin ring holders.  They were child sized and worked great!

Because we wanted everyone to be able to see who they were talking to, we didn't want large centerpieces.  We came up with anti-exercising flags.  Tracy spent the night before defacing magazine cut-outs.  She told Rob she had a hard time doing this.  She actually likes to exercise and believes people should try to live healthy lifestyles so it went against a lot of her beliefs.  Even still some of these really made me giggle.

(It says, "I bet she's hungry.")

(Devil horns and blacked out teeth...I'm sorry but wouldn't most people

like to post this on their fridge some days?)

This was the centerpiece for the buffet:

And I wish I had taken pictures of these candlesticks before.  They were old brass candlesticks my mom had waiting in the garage sale pile.  I pulled them out and painted them with some Rustoleum black texture spray paint.  That stuff is awesome!  These are no longer in the garage sale pile and I believe mom is going to reuse them in her house somewhere.  If she doesn't I'll be stealing them!

All the food was labeled:

Unfortunately we left before mom put out all the food so I don't have an after picture of that set-up.  But I bet it was pretty and yummy!

In the end I think what we all liked was that while it was a quilting party, it didn't revolve around the idea of little old ladies sitting around sewing. 

If you would like to see the ladies' finished quilts, go to my mom's friend's blog here.  She has a picture of everyone's quilts; it's neat to see all the different patterns!