Phall in Philadelphia

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If you don't live in Philadelphia, you probably don't know this, but people here like to turn F's into Ph's. Sounds stupid to the outsider, but I have to admit it's kind of fun - I mean, phun. Anyway, after getting back from our honeymoon, it was straight to work on our department's biggest event of the year. It basically consists of a lot of logistics for the people flying in, all-day programming for our visitors (and all the materials and logistics that go along with that), and the cocktail reception to cap it all off with (my favorite part). It's kind of a rarity for people in our industry to throw receptions and actually decorate, but I wouldn't have it any other way (and luckily my director wouldn't either). So we spend a good couple of hours, with help from our facilities men and on-site caterers, setting up and decorating for a good ole time to be had by 150+ people. It's stressful, but I love it. I love seeing peoples' reactions to all the decorations, hearing the compliments, and secretly knowing that I didn't spend a fortune on decorating it. Not that it's my money, but still. It's fun getting creative with things you buy at the dollar store, or some other cheap place online, and seeing the result looking like you spent way more on it.

We used to do a theme not to be mentioned (I'm just so sick of it I don't even want to talk about it), but I finally got to nix it and we ended up just doing a fall theme this year, which I think turned out great. Even though we had a ton of dollar store decorations, I think it looked classy. I hope it looked classy. I'm pretty sure it looked classy. We cleared the area of all the furniture and brought in a ton of high tops. We rented antique gold shimmer linens for our food tables and high top cocktail tables. We hung spiral fall decorations from the ceiling, had leaf confetti, leaf garland, tissue paper leaves, and I made floral arrangements from ($ Tree) fake flowers, leaves, and fabric petals. They looked great, if I do say so myself. The final touch was the gold balloons. I loooove me some balloons for a cocktail party. Especially gold ones. I feel like they're fun but being gold they're classy. So they're classy fun. We had delicious food and I bought a ton of candy and bags for people to take it home in (they really liked that). Autumnal fare, candy, pretty decorations, and alcohol. Who needs anything else? We didn't even have music, but it was so loud no one noticed anyway.

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Next up? I'm off to Arizona to see Former-Bridesmaid-Turned-New-Momma Lela to help her throw a Halloween party. I'm hoping she'll let me put up decorations and help make fun party stuff versus changing diapers. I'd like to think she knows better than to put ME in charge of a baby :) juusssst kidding (sort of)

Happy Halloween!! What's YOUR costume going to be? I'm going to be a Panda!

-C

xxx