Turning 35 is a big deal! It officially marks the halfway point between youthful 30 and dreaded 40. We celebrated in style with a spectacular fire and ice themed birthday. We are sorry to disappoint you if you think the rest of the post will be about Game of Thrones. We were actually inspired by the stunning engagement party of Emily Thorne and Daniel Grayson on the first season of Revenge! We combined fiery and icy elements to create a truly memorable evening for us and our guests. We are excited to share the details with you.
A fabulous party begins with a fabulous invitation. In the past we used Evite, Paperless Post or Punchbowl. This year we used Splash to customize the perfect invitation. Splash distributes online invitations (think Evite, Paperless Post and Punchbowl), manages contact lists (think MailChimp), sells tickets (think Eventbrite), and creates a page to showcase the postparty photos (think Flickr). You can find our original invitation here.
We infused elements of fire and ice throughout the decor, the menu, the cocktails and dress code. We combined vibrant reds and frosty whites with hints of icy blues to create a sophisticated party atmosphere. Kanchana created our whimsical welcome chalkboard sign while Olga from International Garden created our stunning fiery and icy floral arrangements. We placed a beautiful bouquet of pearl lilies, scarlet daisies, porcelain ranunculus and ruby alstroemeria on our welcome table along with our guest signing books. We recommend guest books for any major birthday party. We created our books with Shutterfly. We decorated the coffee tables with two floral arrangements: white hydrangea with porcelain ranunculus in a bud vase and crimson roses with eggshell alstroemeria in a mason jar. We also placed hurricanes with cherry and sky blue gems with crisp white votive candles. We scattered martini glasses with cinnamon imperials on the side tables. Although we typically associate balloons with children’s birthday parties, we thought it would be fun to add a childish element to our party. The giant 35 balloons from Party City were a big hit and turned out to be excellent props.
Guests were asked to dress in red or white attire. Don’t our guests look fabulous wearing these colors?
We had a lot of fun composing our fire and ice menu. The sophisticated spicy and icy menu featured:
We displayed the menu in an adorable scarlet and porcelain striped frame. To spice up the buffet table, we incorporated crimson and vanilla roses in bud vases and fiery daisies with eggshell alstroemeria in mason jars. We also scattered more hurricanes with the cherry and sky blue gems and white candles. We always recommend food tents for non-formal parties. They can be both decorative and informative. We purchased these adorable fire and ice food tents from Etsy.
We loved our fire and ice themed dessert table. The key to create a stunning dessert display is utilizing platters and vases in a variety of sizes, heights, shapes and widths. We incorporated a burlap tablecloth, a wooden cutting board and white platters. We recommend sticking largely to white serving dishes as colorful desserts photograph beautifully against them.
We incorporated a variety of bright red and pure white desserts, with hints of icy blue. To add color and height, we placed six cylinder vases of varying sizes on our dessert bar. The fire side featured cherry gems with a white candle, red milk chocolate lindts and red colored water with a white floating candle. The ice side incorporated sky blue gems with a white candle, icy blue white chocolate lindts and blue colored water with a white floating candle. We framed the dessert table with a paper tassel garland that Archana made from red, white and blue tissue paper. The TomKat Studio has a tutorial to make the garland. If you are in a time crunch, we recommend looking for garlands and banners on Etsy. We completed our dessert table with three floral arrangements featuring pearl football mums and ruby alstroemeria in mason jars. We displayed our Dessert menu in another striped picture frame, which featured:
The crowd favorites were the homemade ice cream sandwiches, fireball cupcakes (which were made with fireball whiskey), the coconut cupcakes and raspberry tarts. We loved turning the cupcake display into edible decor by shaping the fireball cupcakes into the number 35.
We believe every party should have at least one signature cocktail. Guests had their choice of “The Fire,” which was a pomegranate martini, and “The Ice,” which was a lychee margarita. We served them in whimsical mason jars with themed drink tags. We also served Fireball Whiskey and Rum Chata. We decorated the bar with fiery daisies and eggshell alstroemeria, hurricanes with white votive candles and colored gems and turquoise and cherry chevron napkins. We framed the bar with a TWIN FIRE & ICE burlap banner. We created this banner with sparkly red, silver and blue letter stickers from Michaels. The twins started the festivities with a toast of sparkling red wine.
We recommend adding Photo Booth props to a themed party. While purchases from Etsy will easily run in the $40-50 range, the memories you make with them will be worth so much more. The large number balloons made for excellent props too.
We typically keep the music simple and stream Pandora through our Bose speaker. This year, our friend, Mark, provided live entertainment for our guests. He was spectacular! Mark even invited the birthday girls and their friend, Marvin, to join him in a performance of Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus. Our friend, Nayif, joined in on the fun too.
We believe birthday celebrations should last more than a single day. We enjoyed several celebrations with family, friends and even squeezed in a twin dinner on our actual birthday (while the rest of the family was abroad).
Our birthday festivities began with an intimate dinner at Park Avenue Summer. Not only is the food phenomenal but also this restaurant caters to both small and large groups.
On our actual birthday, we feasted on an amazing dinner at Junoon. We started our meal with complimentary Taittinger champagne. We concluded our meal with a special chocolate cake with birthday candles. It was a wonderful way to celebrate our birthday.
Whether you were part of Team Fire or Team Ice, we hope you enjoyed our birthday celebrations. We certainly did! We are not even finished yet! We have another celebration this weekend with our family.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
––Robert Frost
Recipes From This Post:
Mini Pizza Tarts: Simply Recipes plus 1/2 cup of mozzarella, 2 tablespoons of dried basil, 1 tablespoon of oregano and 1 tablespoon of thyme; Bon Appetit
Hummus: Rachel Ray
Salsa: Paula Deen
White Cheese with Pesto Bruschetta: Martha Stewart; Michael Chiarello
Watermelon and Feta Bruschetta: Watermelon Board
Fireball Cupcakes: Food plus 2 tablespoons of fireball whiskey
Fireball Frosting: Toba Garrett plus 2 tablespoons of fireball whiskey
Coconut Cupcakes: Ina Garten
Coconut Frosting: Toba Garrett plus 1 cup of shredded coconut
Raspberry Tarts with Pastry Cream: Simply Recipes; Brown Eyed Baker
Mini Ice Cream Sandwiches: Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart
Fire & Ice Sugar Cookies: Sally’s Baking Addiction
Royal Icing: Sweet Sugar Belle
Shop This Post
Chalkboard, Banner, Red, Blue and Silver Stickers, Menu Frame, Cardstock, Red and Blue Gems, Red, White and Blue Tissue Paper: Michaels
White Platters and Cake Stands: Pier 1 and Q Squared
Star Candles: Pier 1
Plates and Napkins: Party City
Stand Mixer: Kitchen Aid Tilt Head; Kitchen Aid Bowl Lift (we prefer the bowl lift model, but it’s more expensive)
Cupcake Carrier: Wilton (includes cupcake and mini-cupcake pans)
Wine Glasses: IKEA
Champagne Flutes: IKEA
Looks like everyone enjoyed themselves. And the table displays are awesome. Thank you for sharing the links to the recipes as well!
Haven’t read much about you but are you guys planning the whole party thing posts? You should have your own business with these. You are sharing great tips for those who are thinking of unique parties in the future. Really nice.
Don’t dread the 40s, the 40s are an awesome period in one’s life. My 40s have brought stability (financial and emotional), flexibility (with the children getting older, providing more time for my own pursuits) and freedom (it’s amazing how much less you care about the opinions of other people as you get older).
Happy late 35th Birthday. It looks like you guys had a great party x
Laura
Fire and Ice is such a fun and unique party theme! I have my 30th coming up in a few months and I need all the inspiration I can get.
I love your celebrations! You truly connect the people in your lives and bring them together for more, bigger and better, memories. Bravo!
Wow, I love this theme party it’s unique, beautiful and a lot of fun. Happy Birthday and wishing all the success in your life.
Celebrating 35 should be a big deal. So much happens in those 35 years. I love the decorations you have and it is fun with a fire and ice theme, even if I wanted to see more Game of Thrones stuff here. 🙂
What a nice party! It must be awesome to have a twin sister, two times the fun!
Looks like everyone enjoyed the party! Happy 35th birthday to both of you!
Happy birthday. I think the theme was a cool idea. It looks like you had a great party.
That is one interesting party theme and looks like everyone had a great time during the celebration. Those Fire and Ice themed food and decorations look amazing.
Fire and Ice is an incredible concept. Must be great for twins celebrating their birthdays I suppose. i like all the decors and food.
You guys sure had an awesome party. Lovely theme. Happy Birthday!
I love this theme for a party. Very nice and well-executed.
This is such a cute theme for a party! <3 Everything looks amazing 🙂
You guys look beautiful and happy 35th birthday! I love them Fire & Ice theme and looks like it was a huge hit. Thank you for sharing and may have to do something like this for my sister 😉
Thank so muck for article