A Bowling Party: the inspiration

                           

My sweet husband will be turning the big 3-0 in a little less than one month's time. Since he is a pretty low-key guy, he has left almost all planning of his big day up to me. 

I love party planning. (Just be glad I didn't have a blog when I was wedding planning! It would have been crazy! If you want to follow someone as she plan her wedding, check out my friend Kara's blog.)

I am fairly certain I started thinking about this party last year when Chris turned 29. We could have had a party at our house, which would have been fine, but I wanted to do something cool and interesting.

                                                  

The Corner Bar. photo by Ryan Prewitt

In my job as a reporter, I stumbled onto a place in St. Charles, Mo. called The Corner Bar. It's the last place in the US where you can play a form of three-pin bowling called cocked-hat bowling. They've been playing it in the basement of this cool, grungy bar since 1875.

League play is every Monday-Thursday, year-round. But on Friday and Saturday nights, you can rent out the lanes in the basement. I wrote a story about the bar, and the cocked-hat bowling tradition, for my paper last fall.  A little seed of an idea was planted in my brain.

This spring, I rented out the place to celebrate Chris's b'day. With less than a month to go, the party planning has got to get going. So I crafted a little inspiration board:

I still need to pop into the bar again sometime so I can scope out what kind of space I'll have for food, etc. The bonus is, you can bring your own food you just have to buy drinks upstairs at the bar.

I'm thinking bar snacks like cheese sticks, olives, peanuts, pretzels, cake pops decorated to look like bowling balls, some vintage pins, bowling shirts and perhaps some hats? So many options...

My Birthday

I turned 26 on Tuesday. It was a great day. My colleagues took me out for lunch and ice cream. Chris and I went to the Hill in St. Louis for dinner. I love going down there to walk around or eat. We talked about how nice it would be to live there, except it would be a bad commute for both of us. Another downside is the little yards (but that does mean less mowing!) and potentially less space for all our junk!

We stopped at Zia's where I once had an amazing plate of lobster stuffed ravioli in a cream sauce. Yummm. While many people waited 25-30 minutes for a table indoors, Chris and I got to sit down right away outside. Yes, the thermometer said 94 degrees. But in the shade, with an ice-cold glass of chardonnay, you can hardly tell!

We ordered too much food, then rushed to go see Wicked at the Fox Theater. It was fantastic! Great seats! Excellent scenery, wonderful lyrics, amazing costumes. Second favorite musical ever. (First favorite = Rent).

It was, all in all, a perfect day.

To celebrate my birthday, I promised I'd pick a winner for my first ever earring giveaway. I gather from some of you, that you have trouble leaving comments. If you don't have a google account, you can click on the button marked Name/Url and it should leave space for you to type your name (Kalen) and, if you have a website, leave your URL. If you don't have one, you can leave it blank.

Via Random Number Generator : commenter Number 2 is the winner.

Diane said...

Making a comment here!

Diane, e-mail me your address so I can send along your new earrings!