Thursday, May 06, 2010

Avast, me hearties!

Next weekend, my aunt (my dad's sister) will turn 95!!!
She lives in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and she's throwing a Pirate Party!
I won't be attending this party, but I went to her 88th birthday party.
I took a bus ride from Tijuana to Puerto Penasco, about eight hours on a Mercedes bus with good movies in English.
The only bizarre part was the random stops so machine gun toting army could get on board and check out passengers.
Machine guns were also at each bus terminal, and all the toilets required pesos to unlock them.
I was so afraid of not hearing my bus boarding notices at stops, I just hung out by the bus.
If you don't get back on in time...they leave without you!
Even after all my years of Spanish classes, I still can't understand the language.

Anyway, at my aunt's 88th party, her mariachi friends played.
There were tables set up, and food cooking, and people were dancing.
It was awesome!

My aunt broke her leg not too long ago, and now she fears walking.
Sadly, a lot of elderly people become too dependent on walkers and wheelchairs and scooters, out of fear of re-injuring themselves, but what they really need is to keep moving! Keep walking!
Well, what kind of present does one get a little old lady who is almost blind, and basically in bed or a wheelchair?

My mom took my advice and got her the Homedics Sound Spa--a little machine that makes the sound of ocean waves, or rain, or (my favorite) birds tweeting.
My mom bought a bag of popcorn to cushion the mail journey (I said, oh no, you should have gotten Pirate's Booty! Oh well)

I decided to get her something she could wear to the party.
I spent hours looking at custom tee shirt sites, thinking I'd get some sort of image with "Show me Yer Booty!" on the front.
My aunt, you see, is a bit of a card.
I found some fun tees like a pink Jolly Roger with pigtails, or a rubber ducky with an eye patch, or a multi-colored parrot.
But I really wanted to add her name to the shirt, and I really wanted to be able to use Olde English script.

I ended up ordering through Zazzle.
I got a lady pirate with Tia Maria (Aunt Mary in Spanish).
I got the party card displayed above from Zazzle too.

When the husband of a friend of mine turned 50, she threw him a little kid's style party, with ice cream caterers scooping out yummy sundaes.
Upon entering, each guest also received a pirate hat, an eye patch, and temporary tattoos.
The fun thing is their last name is Yahr, so all night everyone was saying, "Eye be garr, yarr..."
Pretty funny.
But I love the whimsy of it, the tongue in cheek, the good old-fashioned fun.

Other gift or decorating ideas for an adult's pirate party:
*treasure boxes filled with gold coin chocolates
*scroll on parchment paper (with burnt edges of course) perhaps as part of a scavenger hunt
*or use a scroll for the invitation, using bottle invitations (see my tutorial). Place a handful of sand in 12-ounce plastic bottles, with perhaps a few rhinestones, and a scroll marking the party destination
*food served might be rough and tumble, like a whole pig, or turkey legs
Obviously rum drinks or these cocktail recipes.
More cocktails here.
In my aunt's case, a bottle of Tia Maria makes more sense!

I love the party this lady threw (a photo staging area! Genius!): read about it here

Links:
Pirate Merch
Talk Like a Pirate (pages of more links at this site)

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1 Comments:

Blogger Gina E. said...

Your Aunt sounds a real hoot! If I get to her age, I hope I'm like that. I know my nieces and nephews (and their kids) think I'm pretty cool, as when I see them, I've usually got some silly thing like a waterpistol or bubble pipe to amuse them. Kids seem to find us interesting because we don't have any kids of our own. I remember one set of my parent's friends who didn't have any kids, and I always thought they were kind of exotic. They seemed to have so much more money and more spare time than the others who had families!

6:45 AM  

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