DIY 40th Birthday Party Decorations

When it comes to milestone birthday parties, there are definitely ways to go all out. But there is also something to be said about sweet, small get togethers full of DIY touches. Check out a few DIY 40^th birthday party decorations you can make for your special someone turning 40.

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Back in November Derek turned the big 4-0! Earlier in the year (read: before corona) we talked about doing our first adult’s only party at our new house with the kids over at Grammie’s for their first overnight. We, of course, needed to put those plans on the back burner as we were back into round two of a semi-quarantined life right around the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. But we still wanted to celebrate our special guy so a small home style birthday it was!

I worked up a few DIY 40^th birthday party decorations to decorate our space for our quarantine style birthday celebration. The key feature to this 40^th birthday celebration was the photo garland featuring 39 years of his life!

Long time followers and real life friends will know that Derek and I knew each other in college so I’ve known him almost half my life at that point!

I had plenty of access to his life pre-me photos (including those beloved school photos) so I was able to scan them all in and print a copy of each for this special garland.

This garland was made with my Cricut Maker with a combo of the pen for writing the numbers and the fine point blade to cut out each of the shades in these multi-dimensional party hats.

I have to say I was pretty mad seeing this all put together and realize my guy never had any awkward photo years! He was a cute kid and now a handsome guy, don’t you agree?

DIY 40th Birthday Party Decorations - color your own cupcake picks | spotofteadesigns.com

In addition to the party hat photo garland, I also created some simple 40^th birthday cupcake toppers with the same pen and cut technique on my Cricut. You can grab the 40th birthday cupcake picks SVG cut file here. Make sure you designate the inner dots and lines to be “draw” under linetype and the outer shapes to be “cut”.

Highlight both pieces and right click, choosing “attach” so Cricut Design Space knows to draw then color these pieces together.

Once it goes to do it’s thing, make sure to NOT unload the mat in between the draw and cut steps. This will make sure everything lines up.

These simple designs allowed the girls to easily color them how they wanted, like a coloring book, putting a special handmade touch our at home quarantine birthday party.