40 and over the hill

Everyone expects the black decorations and old people jokes at a 40th birthday party, but you can add some special touches to make your party unforgettable.

Over The Hill Birthday Invitations�

You want to start the party off right with a fantastic invitation that will get people talking. Go with a personalized milestone birthday invitation, many have a spot for a picture and you choose you own wording, or try this over the hill grim reaper invitation.

We love magazine cover invitations for this party. Whether it's "Outta Time", "Hot Flash" or "Old Men's Journal", the celebrant will love this personal invite!

Or have a caricature invitation made of the soon to be ancient celebrant. A caricature invitation not only creates a great piece of art you can use several times during your event but it will also let you feature hobbies and character traits that can help theme your party. For example if the birthday person is a golfer you can make some of your gag gifts golf items (a giant tee, sharpened pencil, exploding golf balls, etc.)

Over the Hill Decorations
Hang a personalized Over the Hill welcome banner outside your home to announce the party! Have a Grim Reaper greet guests at the front door. Or if you did a caricature it can become a male or female life-sized cutout that will greet guests at the front door. These are always a hit and are a great souvenir for the guest of honor.

For inexpensive but dramatic decorations drape black crepe paper around doorways and across the ceiling. Scatter bouquets of black balloons around the room, and throw in a Mylar Big 40 birthday balloon in each bouquet. We also love these black star balloons for this theme.

Add another Grim Reaper silhouette scene setter to one of the walls as a hilarious decoration.

Over The Hill Table Decorations and Menu
Set the table using the appropriate black tableware. You can make fun silverware bundles with black napkins and black plastic silverware. Wrap a strand of black beads around the bundle and you have tableware and a favor in one!

Another fun way to theme your centerpieces is to incorporate some things that the guest of honor is "as old as". Use buckets of potting soil with a little plant sign stuck into it that reads "Old As" for clever "Old As Dirt" centerpieces!

You can also use "old and outdated" technology as room or table decorations. Try the local thrift store for typewriters, floppy disks, 8-track player, or a rotary phone.

Or go with "getting old" decorations; Geritol vitamins, prune juice, adult diapers, and copies of ARP magazines. Everyone will get a kick out of making fun of getting older.

Some people think all the food should be black (olives, licorice, etc.) but that's not much fun. I would go with the standard party fare, and maybe a side dish of oatmeal and some prune juice for humor value (and maybe the guest of honor will really need it).

You certainly should have some fun with the cake. Tying the Over the Hill theme in with a seasonal event or hobby is always good. When my spouse turned 40, three days after Halloween, I had a cake made with all sorts of goblins, ghosts and spider webs on it. The message? "Turning 40 is pretty scary." Not too original, but it was a big hit. Your golfer could have a golf flag with "Pretty soon, you'll finally shoot your age!" For the boater..."The Old Man and the Sea." Be creative. Any decent cake decorator can do almost anything you ask.

40th Birthday Activities
You almost have to have a roast. Make sure your guests know your plan, and ask them to bring a favorite story to tell. You can do a celebrity roast format where a variety of guests get "on stage" to poke fun at the star of the show. We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (at least not too much), so use this approach only if you know the guests and are sure they won't "cross the line." The other option is to have a single person do the roasting. Best friends are perfect for this. They know all the secret little stories, but they also know where to draw the line.

"This is your Life" is another format for the roast. Have mom and dad tell stories from the early years (a very long time ago), and grab a life-long friend or a teacher for the school years. A co-worker can recount famous (or infamous) moments at the office. You get the idea. Put together a CD with pictures from the corresponding years, and this can be a really fun hour or so. This approach can, and should, be funny, but it also lends itself to many touching moments and memories.

If you have a smaller group, think about renting a hearse (amazingly this isn't that hard to do) and tour some of the old neighborhood hangouts. This is a blast, and provides fabulous photo opportunities.

Whatever you decide to do, have your guests capture the memories on a personalized birthday camera so the guest of honor has many different views from the big day!