Rockin' Out - Party Decor Pt 1

Finally, today is the day!  We're going to start the party wrap-up!

Before we can talk decor, I have to give you the update.  Hubbs and I caught up with our overdue Spring cleaning.  The house was ready.  I cleaned my floors the night before and I planned to re-clean right before the party started.

The house was set... well, all but the laundry room.  I know.  I worked so hard catching up with laundry... Then, we deep-cleaned the rooms and sorted through our donation items and I was dropping clothes down the laundry chute.  They landed in the basket ready for the wash.  The man went looking for his khakis for work on party day and scattered ALL of the clothes in the basket all over the laundry room floor. It was fine. I would sort them before the party, right?

WRONG.

The laundry room was a big ol' pile of laundry... and laundry baskets...  empty laundry baskets on top of piles of clothes.  Some clean but needing a wash before donation.  Others dirty and found in the corners of Munch's room... All embarassingly piled up in the laundry room.  It's fine.  People probably saw it and thought we were dirty... probably thought I haven't gotten on the fast track toward laundry recovery... The same people would probably see the papers and craft supplies all over the craft room floor and assume that too has been a mess.

We'll speak more on both of those spaces soon as I've been pluggin' away at both of them.  Anyhoo, let's get to this party, shall we?

Like the front door said, "it's time to be NEON."   O and yes, I used a large pinwheel as an entry wreath!

Sheena arrived early and helped put the finishing touches on the basement while I worked on the rock star carpet for the entry. 

I'm very pleased with how it turned out :)

Big thanks to Sherry, my craft twin, for the PVC pipes.  I covered them in purple duct tape in a matter of minutes ($4 at Party City), used party streamer for the ropes ($1), blew up balloons ($1) for toppers and placed a star (5/$2 at Walmart) to create a great entry point.  The black table cover ($9) made for a great "carpet" and really was a simple way to set the tone for the party.  Even grown-ups got in on the fun :)

You see the pic - Vic used it like a soul train line when he arrived, lol.

In the living room, located just off the foyer, Mr. Zach set-up the drumset with its sparkle custom paint job.

We placed the gifts on the sofa and, being that Mr. Zach's gift was the awesome paint job, I figured I could use his gift as a big ol' piece of decor :) O and I also hung the tassel garland over the sofa:

It's from Party City ($10).  I know what you're thinking and, you're right, I could've made it.  I could've gotten one with more theme-appropriate colors... My plan, however, was to either re-use as much of this decor as possible or trash it without worry.  This was a re-used piece and you'll just have to stay tuned to see where it wound up!

Other than the living room, the only other place with decor upstairs was the dining room and I showed you a sneak peek of that awhile ago:

I'll show you more of how it looked at the party when we talk about the food... For now, I hope a quick a tutorial of how I made the suspended backdrops will do.  Here goes:

I already showed you how I painted the guitar here.  Once it dried, I used sparkle scrapbook paper to to add some detail over the speaker and on the handle.

I mounted the guitar to black foam core board with glue and used a 2" circle punch to create neon circles... I then hand cut the 'tails' for all music notes.  My original plan was to cover the boards with notes but as I laid things down, I decided I wanted a wave of notes and circles to give the appearance that music was coming from the guitar.  I really think it looks awesome:

The above photo shows the process.  I stood the boards next to one another and glued them from this position so I could be certain it would look exactly as I wanted.  Once it was ready, I used a screw driver to poke holes at the top, used yarn and tape to hang it from the ceiling:

Keep in mind, the kids were in the basement while the adults (primarily the dads since we were borrowing the man cave) were upstairs.  I wanted to keep the decor simple and focus only on things that made a statement. You know I love details but I had to find another way to incorporate BIG details into the party.

We'll talk about the basement tomorrow so be sure to come back! I can't wait to show you the hula hoop chandelier I made with scraps or the giant pinwheels we used to cover the TV!