Tis the season to go retro

The words "Christmas party" tend to conjure up similar and often stale thoughts in most people's minds. Someone usually brings a ham, someone else supplies the green bean casserole. Most of the women show up in red sweaters and the guys end up gathered in a room talking about sports. There's usually pumpkin pie, apple cider and a jazz rendition of Winter Wonderful playing softly in the background. Yeah. Been there. Done that. Not this year. This year it was pizza and chips. It was big hair and neon colors. It was Bon Jovi and Run DMC. Like, totally.

I've been desperate to host an 80's party for my gang for years and since the proper opportunity never seemed to present itself I decided to throw conventional wisdom out the window and seize the day. I gave my peeps a heads up a couple of months ago and began my planning. Everyone was instructed to head to goodwill and start coordinating their outfits. After several weeks of gathering memorabilia from my mom, printing pictures of 80's icons off the internet and downloading songs from ITunes I was in 80's heaven. Even if my friends hated the party, I had already had enough fun to last a lifetime.

I have to give my buds credit. They are not afraid to embarrass themselves for the sake of winning a silly prize at a party. They went all out. I myself put the hot rollers and Aqua Net to great use and my bangs saw a height that they has not been realized since 1988. Some shopped for their attire and some wore authentic pieces from their youth. I can't tell you how proud I was to see the variety of fashion choices parade through my living room. My girls had the hair goin on and the fashion was gnarly. We had a pink prom dress, a green taffeta suit, twist-a-beads, stirrup pants, off-the-shoulder sweaters, ankle boots, scrunchies, a fluorescent ski suit, banana clips, leggings and leg warmers. The guys didn't do so bad either. One wore his high school basketball jersey along with some rather authentic looking shorts. It was a scary but courageous choice. We had a couple of mullet wigs and an AC/DC t-shirt. My hubby was especially proud that his pieces were all authentic. He actually still has so many of his skinny ties that he periodically changed throughout the night and still had about 6 that he never put on. Also, his multi-colored parachute pants were a big hit.

I do not profess to be crafty in any sense of the word so you can imagine how proud I was to display my backdrop which I hand made for picture taking purposes. I hung some of my favorite records from the light fixtures and made LP bowls filled with VHS tapes like "Pretty in Pink" and "Back to the Future" as well as candy from the era. There were pop rocks, bottle caps, candy cigarettes, chicklets.....ahhh the memories. The soundtrack, of course, was my favorite part. We cleared out our living room and made a dance floor where we rocked out to the sounds of Prince, Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton-John and Duran Duran and even had a slow dance to "Hard Habit to Break".

My gang tends to be a little competitive so I knew I had to provide activities that would allow them to turn on each other and lose all their religion. I came up with a little something I like to call the 80's Olympics. We divided into three teams which competed against each other in the following categories: The Rubix Cube race, the aerobics challenge (complete with leg warmers and headbands), the moonwalk race, the Reese's Pieces eating/Tab drinking contest (I could write an entire blog about my search for Tab) and the all important Dance Contest. Team 3 won the coveted "Kool and the Gang" award for teamwork but it was under suspicious circumstances. Later we played guys vs. girls in a "guess the TV theme song" game and ended up, thankfully, in a tie. Sitting there singing the theme to "Growing Pains" and "The Greatest American Hero" totally put me in the holiday mood. OK. Not really. But it made me happy. So happy.

I must tell you that the only thing about our party that had even a hint of holiday spirit was a round of Dirty Santa. I can not and will not discuss what went on during that game. Those details are on a need-to-know basis and my mother reads this blog so.....enough said.

I hope everyone who attended had a good time. I know I did. It was fun to relive the decade of my youth. It was especially fun to relive it as a popular, semi-cool person that I totally wasn't back then. We even talked about how funny it was that most of us, had we known each other back in the day would probably never have been friends.

The cold hard truth is this. In high school I was never invited to a party, never went to a dance and never talked to the girls who wore taffetta dresses. Last night, my teenage dreams finally came true. The coolest party in town was at my house, I slow danced with the cutest boy and I got to sit at the cool table. It was like, Totally Awesome!

Now for your view pleasure I present the following:

Me and my date:


The guys:


The cool table:


I had the time of my. Yes I swear. It's the truth. And I owe it all to you.
Deck the Hall & Oates with films by Molly (Ringwald) Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Goodbye.
Somebody stop me.