~78~ Jake's 30th Name Day

**Disclaimer: I totally wrote this post the weekend after Jake's birthday.  And yet, here it is almost 3 months later and I'm finally getting around to publishing it!**

Over Memorial weekend, Jake turned the big 3-0!  I wanted to make this birthday extra special for my man, so I turned to his favorite show, The Game of Thrones, (on HBO), or as those familiar with the show say, GoT, for inspiration. 

While perusing on Pinterest for some GoT party-ware, I stumbled across directions for making the Iron Throne, which is basically the piece de resistance of GoT.  As soon as I saw it, I became determined to make it for Jake.  Luckily with him working nights at Home Depot now, I had time to put it together without him knowing about it. 

I purchased a plastic adirondack chair, yard sticks, liquid nails, grey spray paint, and way too much insulation board from Home Depot and quickly got to work.  Screwing in the yard sticks to the chair ended up being more time consuming, but not as hard to do as I had thought.  I had to pre-drill the chair before screwing in the yard sticks.  If only I had thought to do the same with the yard sticks-as many of them split as I was screwing them into place.

 

Next, I cut out sword shapes using the insulation board and attached it using liquid nails to both sides of the yard sticks.  If I had more time, I would have carefully sanded each one to make it look smoother, but they still turned out pretty good.   Once all of the foam pieces were in place, I added thinner foam strips to look like strapping all over the chair. The final touch was spray painting all of it.

This is where I have to give a HUGE shout-out to my best friend, Lauren who came to visit and was instrumental in getting the Iron Throne and the other party components completed in time.  I could not have done it without her and her willingness to come visit and work proved why I am so lucky to have her as a best friend.  Thank you so much Lauren!!

Jake was very much surprised and excited to have an iron throne all of his own.  And, I must say that he looked great in it :)

In addition to his throne, the rest of the party carried a GoT theme. 

The beer:

And the Cake:

Unfortunately, I ran out of time and of frosting on his cake.  I wanted the top tier to have the Direwolf from the Stark house on top and for the bottom tier to have "30 is Coming" written along the side.  However, he did enjoy all of the house sigils adorning his cake.

Here's hoping 30 is his best year yet!

Until next time,