Year of the crazy birthday, continued.

As mentioned in the initial Very Golden Birthday post, the mr had a golden birthday this year too. And it wasn't just any old golden birthday. It was a big one. A big 3-0!
I thought and thought and thought... (and thought some more) about a "theme" for his party that wouldn't be too theme-y. No 30 yr old guy wants an overly themed, cutesy party. I googled "guy parties" and looked them up on pinterest... and you'd be surprised at the lack of ideas out there. Or maybe you wouldn't. In any case, it seems there's the mustache party, the beer party, the mustache AND beer party, and that's about it. All of them involving men's (apparently) favorite pastime: drinking.
Problem being: we don't drink alcohol. (yep, it's a little like that not drinking coffee thing. You can see why here if you want.) A gatorade party didn't seem to have the same appeal.
I came up with this vague notion of having a color theme but nothing else and using gold in conjunction with his favorite colors, which happen to be very fall-esque. You may know I live in Packer territory, and that team is quite literally the state religion, so I suppose it's not surprising that when thinking of colors that went with gold my brain automatically turned to green.
Then I realized: mr LOVES football. He has a special affinity for college ball, especially his alma mater, BYU, but since moving to Wisco, he has definitely been swept up in Packer Fever.
Those two spurts of inspiration was all it took to turn his birthday into:

Over the next week I'll share some tutorials for creating the perfect "guy party" (minus the beer, sorry) along with what to do when the weather throws you a curve ball (what's the equivalent of that in football speak? An interception? A fumble? I'm going to have to study up...) and how to include family that lives far away. Though all of the ideas I've got are specific to the Pack, you could easily switch this up for any favored sports team.

Oh, wait, a little background. You do know that packer fans are called "Cheeseheads" right? Because if you didn't know that the following cheese references all week long would make no sense to you. Wait, wait. Let me show you a picture for illustration:

photo via

That, my friends, is a Cheesehead. Though admittedly not as die hard as this one:

photo via

And truth be told, most Cheeseheads look more like that. Yes, it IS freezing here during football season. I can only assume they are all so smashed on Wisconsin beer that the cold does not affect them.

If you think that looks a little ridiculous, check this out:

photo via

Yes, friends, that IS a Cheesebra. And yes, it is snowing. We're fanatical around here, there's no denying it.

So, now that you know where I'm coming from, I can show you the banner.

Again, as with the last party, I was on a pretty strict budget. Meaning, none. So I had to use a lot of things I had on hand.

Today's tutorial focuses on that bunting up there. You know how to make a bunting. There are, how many? 50 bajillion tutorials? Something like that. I did not sew mine (since I didn't have green and gold fabric and didn't want to buy any.) So, here is how I made mine simply, with just paper, a hole punch and twine.

This is how I easily cut a million perfectly shaped triangles that were exactly the same. Without a silhouette or cricut, because as I've complained in the past, I'm not cool enough to own those.

1. Start with rectangular card stock. Bend your paper in half - don't crease it all the way down the middle, just hold it in place.

2. Make a small crease just on the edge. Open it back up.

3. Align your paper so that you will cut from the crease in the middle of the bottom edge to the right corner at the top edge.

4. Cut.

5. Slide your paper through the paper cutter, align the cutter with the middle crease at the bottom and the opposite corner at the top.

6. Cut.

Easy shmeezy. Now repeat this process about 600 times.

7. I made yellow and green triangles. For the YELLOW pieces only, use a one inch circle punch and make random holes all over them. Now they look like cheese!

8. Punch two small holes across from each other at the short straight edge of the triangles. Thread twine through the holes, coming up through the back, across the front and down through the front to the back. Make knots after each triangle to keep them in place where you want them.

Now, just hang! The original plan was to hold the party in our backyard, and I was going to line our fence with these, so I had like 300 feet of bunting, no lie. I hung them all over the main floor and outside along the porch railing.