Baseball, beer and 90 years (a birthday party recap)

My papa’s 90th birthday was last week, so we planned a fun party to celebrate his big day with friends and family. The man loves baseball and beer – so that was the theme of our party. He’s just too cool for school.

It turned out really fun so I wanted to share some of the details. The whole room was a patchwork of red, white and blue.

The invites and stamps were provided by Tiny Prints – they were a great way to set the tone. And the personalized stamps were probably the biggest hit! We told my papa that after 90 years, he deserved his face on a stamp. 

We used a hall in town, but wanted to add some personal flair. We started with Cubs and baseball balloons tied to beer buckets and empty beer cartons saved by cousins.

The buckets were filled with tissue paper and baseballs.

I reused some of the paper fans from Henry’s party, but my mom came up with a fun way to display them to become more exciting centerpieces on some of the tables. And another cousin found a 6×6 foot piece of astroturf, which were cut into 1 foot squares under all of the centerpieces.

I love that all of the centerpieces came together relatively affordably, but they made a great impact.

When guests arrived, we asked them to sign a special baseball I created from a wooden tabletop I purchased at Lowe’s. I just painted it white and added red vinyl stitching.

We also made “special edition” cups for the occasion. My cousins, aunt and mom even helped me apply all the vinyl onto the cups (which made the effort much more fun).

My aunt bought cups that turned colors when there was cold water poured inside. Cool, right?

I blew up a doctored image of the Wrigley Field sign with my grandpa’s name.

Overall, it was a really fun day to celebrate a really special guy. I took so many photos of the guests, but figured you don’t want to see them all. But here’s my little family.

And it was a real pleasure to plan this with my mom, aunts and cousins. Planning a party together makes it much more fun, I think.
And this rad dude seemed to enjoy the day. The local PBR distributor even brought him a special bucket of PBR gifts – including glasses, shirts, banners, a scarf and more.

And he even received a personalized Cubs jersey with his 90 milestone.

Happy 90th, Papa Ralph!