Welcome to my last post of the Cinco de Mayo series!  Now that you’re looking sharp in your new costume, you can go about setting your house with decor for your Mexican fiesta.  I did have some inspiration for pulling this off.  Muchas gracias to Brittany at Grey Grey Designs for the creative ideas.

To achieve the piñata wall, I bought a package of tissue paper from Dollar Giant in several bright colors.

Image 1.  Fold 3-4 pieces of tissue paper in half and secure with binder clips at the fold.

Image 2.  All the layers of tissue paper.

Image 3.  Lay down a ruler to mark where you need to cut.  I didn’t draw lines or anything; just cut on an imaginary line keeping as straight as possible.

Image 4.  Each fringe was cut about one inch wide, stopping about two inches from the fold.

When hanging the piñata strips, start from the bottom and work your way up, overlapping each layer of color.  I just affixed the tissue with Scotch tape, which held up pretty well.

I also made a smaller scale version into a bunting.  This one says “Happy birthday,” but it can easily be done to read any message you want.  To get the writing on the tissue, print out your message on regular bond paper, then trace the letters onto the tissue paper with a Sharpie pen.  The name of the font I used was “Burrito,” which can be downloaded for free here.  To see how I strung the papers onto the string, see the past post I wrote about my wedding bunting here.

I also converted one of our blank walls into a backdrop for a photo booth.  This was accomplished with rolls of paper streamers that I found at Dollar Giant, plus a roll of green ribbon.  Unfortunately, Dollar Giant didn’t have any blue streamers.

Here’s my husband wearing the costume I made for him… my adorable birthday boy!  (He really likes neon green.)  I also made a few mustache props for our guests to use in the photo booth, as well as poncho and sombrero costumes.  His friend brought the Mexican wrestler mask – funny guy!

….The whole reason why we decided to do a Mexican fiesta for Mr. M’s birthday bash!  Our friend said he could get margarita machines from another friend, so we told him if he could get the margarita machines, we’d design a Mexican-themed party around it.  This was a commercial machine, so it required a ton of power and a lot more bottles of margarita and daiquiri mix.  It was a huge hit, though!  (Oh, and check out that table cover… does it look familiar?)  If you haven’t got friends with high connections, you could always have pre-mixed pitchers of maragaritas and daiquiris on hand.

I don’t have pictures of the food as I was too busy being a hostess to think about being a blogger at the time.  (Sorry, guys!)  I prepared a light meal of quesadillas, chicken enchilada casserole, and a taco bar.  The taco bar was so much fun because the guests could assemble their tacos the way they liked.

This party turned out really well and we got a lot of compliments from the decor to the costumes.  I only had two weeks to pull this whole thing off!  This time frame included a trivia quiz centered around the birthday boy… that took up a bit of mental energy and coordination, that’s for sure.

Hope I’ve given you some good ideas to organize your own Mexican fiesta.  If you have a celebration at home for Cinco de Mayo, make sure you let me know how it turns out!  Salud!

Other Cinco de Mayo projects related to this post:

Fiesta Sombreros
Fiesta Ponchos

Linking to: Somewhat Simple, Just Wingin’ It , 36th Avenue, House of Hepworths, Tatertots & Jello, Simple Home Life, The Shabby Nest

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