60's Party Recap (in parts)

Last February, we had a big birthday party for Brenna's 30th birthday. We had so much fun that we immediately started talking about "what we should do next". Well...it was quickly decided that since John's 60th birthday was in December, we were going to have a 60's party. We lucked out with the way the calendar lined up last year...we decided against having it on/near John's actual birth date of 12/20. Instead we determined that we would celebrate on January 2, 2016....which happened to be a Saturday. That way most Christmas and New Year's parties would be over...but we could squeeze in one more party before the holiday weekend ended. I didn't know if people would be worn out from all the holiday celebrations...or if they would be like me...hoping for one more thing! hahaha

                                                        All 60's...music, food and fun.

 With that decision...we were I was off and running.  I began searching I-Tunes for old songs I remembered from the 60's.

Of course, I had to keep in mind that my music...The Doors, Cream, The Zombies, Lou Reed, etc was a little different then John's idea of 60's music. He was the youngest in his family and had siblings 5-16 years older than him; so naturally he grew up listening to their music on the radio. He was more likely to request Frankie Valle, The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye or music along that line. It was a challenge, but I loved it. I downloaded music and rearranged it and tweaked that list for months....until I came up with my perfect play list. hahaha all six plus hours of it!!!!
We told everyone about the party....way, way in advance. I did that for several reasons...one - in hopes that some family members would try to plan ahead to join us and also to give people plenty of time to look for a costume. I guess it also was a way to build up the excitement...because we certainly managed to do that! I know people thought we were a little crazy planning so far in advance...but I didn't care...I am crazy...hahaha.
First to "sign up"...my sister Martha and her husband Tony. We told them in March and she said "We'll be there!" She mentioned it to her son and his wife; she told them "We plan to be in Florida at Christmas time, meet us there."

They already had costumes from another party they had attended.....so they were one step ahead of the rest of us. With Martha on board, I started working on my other out of town family members. My brothers live here, so I knew they would be around, so now I was doing my best to convince
 the rest of the gang.
Some friends got excited right away...they said, we will be there and I'm getting a costume. Others sounded skeptical...hahah but eventually came around to my way of thinking. hahaha
Brenna and I had fun planning out the menu...looking for typical 60's dishes. Jello salad, Pigs-in-a-blanket, fondue, meatballs, shrimp (cocktail) to name a few.
We searched online and found our costumes...vintage baggies (a la The Endless Summer), wigs, gogo boots, glasses...I kept Amazon busy with all my orders.
As the months went by Elizabeth and Ellen made plans to join us. It looked like we were going to have all the Burtons together for the party. (The only one who didn't make it was our brother-in-law Rob and our nephew Shane. )

Sisters....and some kids....Meredith,Liz,Anne,Brenna,Ellen,Martha, Anna and birthday boy John in the back

In the end the only ones missing in my family were Rob & Shane, Ryan R., David and Samii B., and Marcus.
I was so happy to have everyone there...I didn't really care if anyone else came...I knew we would have fun. I knew they would all have costumes and dance and have a good time. We invited all of John's family, but for various reasons, they couldn't make it. He was a little disappointed...but that's just the way it goes. Sometimes it works out...sometimes it doesn't. He did say at one point..."I don't think this is even about my birthday...this is just a party so the Burton's can get crazy."  he might have a point .
We slowly got the decorations, etc together. As the list of people we were going to invite got longer...I decided if we were having it at our house, we needed some kind of tent for the back yard. It took some convincing...but we did order a 10 x 20 ft tent. We also had two 10x10 pop-ups available.

One thing I have learned over the years is that when you decide to have a party(here or past years at my parents house)...it requires you to give everything a good cleaning. One project leads to another and you clean your way around the house. In our case we worked our way around...cleaning the back room, the screened porch area

and then the garage. John figured we could set up the ping-pong table out there, something for the people to do that don't like to mingle in the crowd...hahah. We had been wanting to do something with the floor out there...and ended up tiling it. Wow...it looks great now!

 Once the floor was done, the walls looked crummy...so we did a quick (very quick) paint job. The garage was looking better than inside the house! hahahaha
 Cleaning up the garage gave us a lot of extra space for people. It was also a good place to move some of the furniture out of the living room to make more space for walking around near the front door. (it's a good thing we did that!...we needed all the space we could get!)

A few people had joked about the date, commenting that we probably wouldn't need much beer...since everyone would still be getting over New Year's Eve. (We ordered two kegs anyway and both were almost completely gone.) It seems my idea they people would always be up for one one celebration...proved to be true.
I Sent out a Save the Date in late October...figuring people could find costumes on sale; if they hadn't already found one. At that point more people were "jumping on the bandwagon"....and everyone seemed to be getting as excited as we were about the party.
Whenever I heard a song that might work...on the radio, in a movie (like The Man From Uncle...actually got two or three from that soundtrack), TV show, etc...I added it and tweaked the play list some more. (Poor) John had to bear with me and listen to it more than once...while I tried my best to get the right music playing at the right time. To me there's nothing worse than going to a party...and the music never really gets going until people are ready to be going. So John humored me and gave me feedback each time I rearranged the songs to get them where I wanted them.

I am happy to report that the music was a hit! Everyone enjoyed the variety.There was a core group of us dancing, but many times people would dance by singing and bopping along. It worked out pretty much the way I had hoped it would. There was a song for just about everyone there. hahah
Out of everyone we invited....only about 10 or 15 couldn't make it. And then several people told friends about the party...so we more than made up for them. It was a bit like a reunion...some friends there we have known for over 40 years! It was like a kind of crazy HS reunion in a way,,,hahaha

I am going to sign off for now...but don't fret...there are more picture to come. Just thought I'd give everyone a break for now...hahha