Jordan's Dinner: A Few Details

I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day (and birthday, my love...) We definitely had a great night, starting with a delicious dinner at Vinoteca 902, one of our new favorite restaurants located on Market Street in Wilmington. We exchanged Valentine/Birthday gifts once we got home after dinner. Let me take a moment to give a proper shout out to Pinterest. When shopping for my Valentine gift, Jordan actually looked at my Pinterest boards and picked out clothes based on pictures I've been pinning. I was pretty impressed and proud of him for being so creative and thoughtful (and have to mention he did a darn good job picking out clothes). 

Going back to Jordan's birthday, I thought I'd share with you just a few small things I did to prepare for his surprise dinner we had last weekend. Of course you should all know by now that I can't resist a DIY project when I see an opportunity. 

When we first started planning the party, I asked Jordan's parents for a few pictures of him as a child. I originally wasn't quite sure how I was going to use them, but I knew it would be fun to implement them into the decor of the dinner. I had a ton of metal table number holders leftover from our wedding. Since we weren't necessarily 'assigning' tables to our guests, instead of table numbers I made these decorative cards with various pictures from Jordan's childhood.

I also used some scrapbook paper, white paint and leftover jute rope to create this banner. I made it similar to the Valentine Banner I created last week, but cut a different shape for the each piece of bunting. I also attached the paper to the rope using hot glue rather than clothespins. Each piece of bunting was cut by hand and each letter was hand painted using Martha Stewart craft paint.

I also printed a large picture of Jordan on his first birthday (but I don't have a picture of it). Let's just say it looks like Lucy in a high chair with a Train-shaped cake in front of her. I kid you not, those two are identical. I didn't do much else decoration-wise as the room we had dinner in was very small and left little to no room to decorate.

One other fun 'project' I did for Jordan's birthday was asking each of the guests to write a letter to Jordan (in lieu of a birthday card or gift). In that letter, I suggested that they tell Jordan a favorite memory with or a funny story of Jordan. We received a great number of responses, some of which took their own version of the instructions and each created an amazing letter for Jordan. He took them home and read them later that night after the dinner and was touched by the kind words of his family and best friends.

Now that Jordan's birthday and Valentine's Day are both over, I'm excited to shift my attention and focus on the guest room and other projects I hope to complete around the house. Stay tuned for lots of projects and updates coming up soon!