Celebrated my aunt’s 60th birthday at an her favorite Asian buffet restaurant. She used to participate in battle reenactments and growing up my other aunt remembers her playing with GI Joes instead of barbie dolls. So a army camouflage birthday party theme was a little out of my realm but it turned out to be so fun!
One thing when celebrating at a restaurant, the decorations have to be brought in and easy to take down. Unless you can get a private room, you may only have a few minutes to decorate and generally they don’t allow you to hang things on their walls or ceilings. The other thing is you may not know exactly what you will be given, in terms of the tables and chairs and where you will be seated, so you need to be flexible. The decorations should be finished or almost finished and can be set up in about 10-15 minutes.
Here are basics you can pretty easily bring in:
- tablecloths (I prefer inexpensive plastic ones that can be left, then you don’t have to wait for the staff to clear the tables to take your tablecloths home)
- table runner
- center pieces: This is where you can have fun, I like balloons attached to some decorated boxes, a few props and maybe some flowers.
- napkins ( restaurants will obviously provide these but usually they are white, you can continue your theme with your own napkins)
Remember to call a manger at the restaurant beforehand and talk to them about you want and what they allow. The few restaurants I’ve decorated for parties have been very accommodating and I haven’t had any problems.
For this army camouflage birthday party , I brought:
- Two wrapped personalized army supply boxes with helmet and balloons attached
- Three black plastic tablecloths (only needed two)
- camouflage netting table runners
- Bag of plastic arm men figurines
- Additional six plastic dress up camouflaged army helmet
- Camouflage napkins
Army Supply Balloon Centerpieces
Supplies for one:
- two Christmas square wrapping boxes
- rocks for weight
- brown wrapping paper
- vinyl sticker letters***
- one plastic dress up camouflaged army helmet
- brown twine
- seven helium filled balloons
Fill the boxes the with rocks or some something heavy to make sure the balloons have some weight. I used the Christmas boxes upside down so in case the color printing showed through the wrapping paper it would only be on the bottom, because the side of the boxes are white.
Wrap the boxes with brown wrapping paper. The brown paper is a little thicker than normal wrapping paper, so just make sure you are pulling the paper tight around the box and taping.
Don’t be afraid to tape I used a lot to hold the paper in place. Just make sure the last pieces are rolled up and placed behind the flaps so there is no visible tape.
Once the boxes are wrapped, I added “Kim’s B-Day” using vinyl letters. ***I used a vinyl cutter to cut them out, but since most people don’t have there own. You can pick up packs of letters from your local craft store, write your own or if you happen to own a Silhouette you can cut out your own.
Stack the boxes and add a plastic dress up camouflaged army helmet. Use brown twine to tie the three pieces together. Leave some left on the the top for when you tie on the balloons.
The balloons I waited till the day of the party to pick-up. I used a total of seven balloons: 2 black, 2 gold and 3 green and asked for them to have black ribbon put on each balloon. Tie together and knot them well to the package.
Putting together the rest of the table
I set everything up at home first to make sure I was happy with the result before the party. The only work required though was cutting the camouflage netting into three pieces for the table runner. I purchased the 6.5 x 5 ft size and folded it into thirds along the long edge and cut. Super simple, no need to cut straight lines, the ragged edges don’t even show. Overlap the ends of each piece so it looks like one long runner. Actually I only ended up needing two of the pieces when I got to the restaurant so I used the third for the gift table.
After the tablecloths and the runners are down it is just mater of placing the centerpieces and having fun setting out the extra helmets, army men and napkins. And ta-dah you have a super simple army camouflage birthday party!
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