There were just so many photos of this party that I had to put them all in collages or this post would go on forever. Click on the photos to enlarge them. If it still isn’t big enough for you click on it again…then it’ll get super big and not really fit on your screen.

Cool Daddy absolutely loves the ham my mom makes at Easter and Christmas. For years he’s been asking me if he can have his friends over to watch a game and eat ham. For years I have told him no…because who wants a bunch of ham-eating men in their house?! Since his 30th birthday was this last year and because he threw me this Totally Awesome 80s Party for my 30th Birthday the year before, I decided to grant him his wish.

Since his only two requests were for ham and male bonding time I began to refer to his party as “The Ham and Man Party”.

I have to give credit to my husband for the theme idea. When we were taking down the decorations for Adaline’s first birthday party he was balling up a bunch of tulle and said, “Can I have tulle at my party? We can hang tools!” He was joking and he completely forgot about it. Since it was a “ham” and “man” party I decided that should be the theme as well. I would make it “manly” and also “ham-y”. The fellas were going to be watching the Steelers football game so I decided to decorate in gold and black to match the team colors.

(This party was on October 24, 2010…and of course I never procrastinate…which is why I’m posting it now in February 2011 after football season is over and the Steelers lost the Superbowl!
I am very fast, and efficient, and on top of things blogwise…as you can tell. Don’t envy my sweet-sweet time management skills.)

I had a lot of ideas for the “manly” theme. Tools, sports, cars, but I could only accomplish so much in so little time. I decided to focus mostly on the tools with a little football thrown in.

First off, here’s the food. Many different pig products as far as the eye can see.

In the living room where I put all of the decorations (not the room they were watching football in) I wanted to try my best to hide anything feminine to make it as “manly” as possible. I removed everything decorative and covered all of the pictures.

For the decorations we’ll begin with the Happy Birthday sign. I made the letters out of duck tape. This big sign is hiding my enormous bridal portrait (you can see it in one of the photos for Adaline’s party). Working hand in hand with the manly tools/construction theme I covered the mantel with “No Work Zone” tape (yellow and black matching the Steelers colors!), and hung cardboard cut-out tools and mustaches in front of the fireplace. The signs reading “manly”, “masculine”, “macho”, and “studly” were added to cover some decorative floral work above the fireplace.

The construction site cut-out would be used for photo ops like this:

Here are all of the photos on the wall covered with man-related words. This idea also came from my husband who use 80s words and phrases to decorate for my 30th birthday party. I created the signs in Word using their clipart, printed them on yellow paper that I’ve had for years, and hung them using black and yellow Duck tape.

Here are the door ways clad with “work zone” tape that reads “No Work Zone” and “Warning: 30th Birthday Party in Progress”. My man is such a hard worker it was nice for him to have a “no work zone” for a day (But only for a day…then it’s back to work, buddy!).

On the dessert table we have a pig cake, of course! I wanted to make a “Ham and Man” cake and put the pigs head on a man’s body, but my mom said that sounded creepy. Also, I don’t know how to do that. This is only the second cake that I’ve ever decorated, so yeah. My mom made the extra pink cake just in case there wasn’t enough pig cake to go around. Mom made piggy chocolates from a mold and put those on and around the cake. Sprinkled around the cake is “30” confetti. I placed plastic tools on the dessert table (A package of 3-4 from The Dollar Tree), lollipops that read “30 sucks”, and some gross-out candy (gummy ear wax, and vomit), because boys are gross. Needless to say nobody, even the gross boys, would even try the candy.

I used a piece of foam poster board on the wall and added yellow paper and used electrical tape and black duck tape to form the letters “Ham Man” and added some printed “Ham vs. Man” signs above it. There are more “manly” signs on either side with “manly” words on them. I also had white and black balloons, pink piggy balloons, and yellow balloons with dump trucks on them.

Instead of traditional cone party hats I got the guys some yellow (Steelers!) plastic construction hats (manly!) and put pig snouts (ham-y!) around them! The snouts could be removed and worn separately.

We actually didn’t have a table for the fellas to sit at (and they were just going to sit in front of the tv anyway), so I set the place settings on the coffee table in the living room and they could pick them up as they came in. Each setting included a Steelers paper plate, a yellow fork, and a black napkin, tucked inside of a nail belt.

The nail belts are my favorite thing about the whole party 🙂 …The Ham Depot! Get it?! Of course you do…but I’m going to explain it anyway. So “Home Depot” is a hardware store and tools are all manly and stuff, and since it was a “Ham and Man” party I changed the word “home” to “ham” as a play on words.
You know that you think I’m brilliant. Or really weird.
You’d be right on both counts 😉 Moving on…

I got the nail belts at Home Depot for about .80 a piece. I took an orange Sharpie marker and colored in the “E”. Then I colored in the bottom and the rounded sides of the “O”. I then took a small sliver of masking tape to make the dash in the A and also needed a small piece to close the top of the A because the “O” was open on the top and bottom like this ( ) (sorta). And there you have it…Ham Depot belts!

This is the family room where they watched the game. For the most part I didn’t decorate in there because there just wasn’t enough time or space to bother with it.

I got a cardboard football toss game online (note that one of the players is wearing gold and black!) and pink pig footballs. I figured this is another way that the “Ham and Man” party theme seems to flow since football is often referred to and made out of “pigskin”.

I put gold and black balloons on either side of the tv. The helium started giving out on the balloons before the party even started.
(They were Pirates balloons…go figure!)

I covered the wedding photo of me with baseball pics of Cool Daddy in Junior High and High School. I also taped a large goal post to the wall.

The red toolbox (one that we already had) was left opened and had “toys” in there for the fellas. The pig footballs, extra mustaches (that I used on the mantal), yellow water guns, policemen action figures, “flying” pigs, and a goal post headband that you put on and throw a Velcro football at. The guys actually used the Velcro game some, played the football toss game (it almost always fell over), and had fun hurting one another with the flying pigs. It’s just not fun unless it’s dangerous.

When it was time for cake, I put all of the candles on. There were 30 candles on the cake, one of them was a football candle, and 5 of them were shaped like little tools! 30 candles sure can blaze up a tiny cake so we quickly sang Happy Birthday so that Cool Daddy could blow them out.

30 Candles sure do make a lot of smoke!

This is the only “group” picture that I got and it’s not even everyone 😦
Naturally I would’ve loved to have gotten a photo of all the guys in their hats, snouts, and belts, but we just never got the chance, plus…yeah, they were NOT going to do that anyway.

Here’s the Birthday Boy posing with his birthday signs!

Lastly, what does every manly pig of a man want?
…a 50s-syle housewife waiting on him hand and foot!

I stuck around the party serving my man and wearing a referee vest and “Ham Depot” belt as my apron.

I was very tempted to do the whole party in pink. The irony of the Ham and Man pairing is that pigs are pink and I thought about going with a whole pink pig thing and only playing up on the “ham” side and sort of poking fun at the “man” side since it would actually all be pretty girly. My husband actually would’ve found the humor in it, but I decided against it and went with the Steelers colors instead (which worked perfectly with the construction colors).

My husband said that he really liked the theme of the party and he thought it was funny, even if his (stupid) friends didn’t get it.