easy decor // a birthday celebration

hey party people. as i mentioned, we celebrated a super friend turning 30 this past weekend.

her sis and hubs wanted to surprise her down by the beach with a few cocktails followed by a tour (and by tour i mean us walking and picking out where to go next, not guided at all) of as many places our feet could take us to, to eat, sip and socialize. my part in all of this (besides obviously being a friend!) was to make their hotel room, and pre-party cocktail pad, as fabulous as i could.

i knew that things had to be easily portable, easy to put up and take down (aka, no nails) and they shouldn't draw attention to the staff.. i'm pretty sure they frown against this sort of thing;)

garland was an obvious choice. it takes up tons of visual space and can practically be put up anywhere by draping, tying or taping.

these fun flags were randomly placed in flower arrangements, snacks, and used as photo props. i'll share later on fb (as a follower perk i mentioned!) how i made these in about 5 minutes.

i hate paper and plastic cups. if there is one thing i always have at my parties, it's glassware. i don't care how many people we have over (mix and match people!), we have glasses. ya, it's a lot of dishwashing after, but i love it. i found these on etsy from an awesome vintage shop. i feel a lot of use coming from these in the future.

more things on skewers! these were great for the same purposes i mentioned for the flags. i also attached some string to these so we could hang them as well. paper is seriously the best decor. it's cheap and can make a huge impact.. and you can throw it away after your done without feeling bad.

when you don't know what you are working with until you get there, you've gotta be flexible. i brought a few vases and containers that could be placed where we needed them with snacks and flowers. the garland also worked wonders for (almost) covering the horrible tv that ruined my masterpiece of a table:)

we chose a large area in the main part of the room to display all of our goodies, it was our bar/dessert table/snack area! to fill the rest of the room, i used extra garland over windows and we (ok, not we, just the bday girl's sis, thanks jen) blew up a ton of balloons for the floor.

and believe it our not this all fit in one plastic crate. the end:)

do you guys have any easy decorating and entertaining tips?