2448 Miles – The Party

Once we finished all 2448 miles (and then some) of our party research, retired and replaced the vanlet, and hosted one last dinner party in a “clean house” we were set to start really planning and decorating. To say this is when we started planning would be inaccurate. We’d been working on important background concepts like food, music, invitations, and even basic decorating plans for approximately the last 10 months, but now we really had to get down to business. We needed to figure out the best way to transform our house into Route 66. We had a couple of key concepts in mind, we wanted it to have the kitschy over the top feeling that we experienced as we made our trip, and we wanted to be very clear that this wasn’t a Disney “Cars” party or a “racing party.” I do want to mention here that almost everything we created could very easily be tweaked slightly and rearranged to fit a “Cars” party. So, if that’s what you’re looking for, this blog could still give you some fun ideas and inspiration.

When we originally thought through this party concept we had a basic plan to roughly build the Route out in order. In essence you would start at the front door in Illinois, and finish upstairs at the Santa Monica Pier experiencing everything in between in order, including hitting the MidPoint cafe directly in the middle. After actually making the entire trip, we mixed up what we wanted to recreate or at least pay homage to and that made doing things in order impossible (at least within the confines of our house and yard.) With that we abandoned any notion of “in order” but decided to create the decoration based on what best fit into the current architecture and immovable furniture in our house. We decided to let the lack of order work for us and use it as the party game. Guests would be encouraged to find all of the decorations, gather stickers from key ones, and ultimately put them in order. (I’ll write more on the game and the invitations later). We picked a variety of places to use as decorations based on our favorites, friends favorites and places to give a little variety to the party.

Once we had our list of places, it was time to start figuring out how to create them. We certainly aren’t new to figuring out how to creatively transform our house into something different. Afterall, we did create a funeral home/speakeasy complete with a coffin and secret door last year. Even so, most of our previous projects consisted of basic woodworking projects, king sized sheets and acrylic paint. Creating the Mother Road involved pool noodles, chicken wire, pvc pipes, funky LED lights, hula hoops, dowels, sheets, even more chicken wire, our usual acrylic paint, styrofoam, newspaper, glue, and a ton of masonite. In fact, I would say if there was a hero of this party it was definitely masonite.

This party was probably our most detailed yet, and involved a myriad of different projects and concepts that are blog posts in their own right. To get things started, I’m going to highlight some major decorations and the place that inspired them in this post. Then I’ll work my way through how we built the big ones, and other key details we loved like all the lights!