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A person's 18th birthday is an important milestone and for Conrad's we wanted to do something special. He knew he was going to have a party. What he didn't know was that we were giving his party an 'Ozzy' theme. Ozzy Osbourne was one of Conrad's greatest music influences and, like his dad, Conrad was a real fan.
Months before his birthday the planning had begun. The colors were to be black and purple. We needed crosses and bats and anything we could think of that would give Conrad's party that 'Ozzy' feel.
While Conrad was away at school we would make things for the party. The first thing we started on were the crosses. We had wanted to use balsa wood but we couldn't find any big enough. So we settled on styrofoam. Cutting the cross shape was easy. It was when it came time to paint them that we ran into trouble. We had bought regular 'ol spraypaint from the craft store. And when we painted the crosses they started to melt! Did you know that regular spraypaint melts styrofoam? We didn't. They didn't stop dissolving for hours. In a panic, we called the craft store and they told us that to paint styrofoam we needed a special paint. Figures. Fortunately, they had four cans of purple and four cans of black of that special styrofoam paint. The special paint worked. Even the parts of the crosses that had melted worked to our advantage. The melting had given the crosses an old world gothic texture. Perfect! We also made headless styrofoam bats and that special paint came in handy for them, too.
We had purple and black balloons floating everywhere. Attached to each balloon was a ribbon with a bloody headless dove tied to it. In addition to the headless bats that were hung from the ceiling in every room, we also hung black stars. Purple lights accented the doorways and black lights were in the corners.
We printed pictures of Ozzy from various times in his career and framed them. We placed them all over the house… on the walls, in the bathroom, everywhere. We put a big poster of Ozzy’s old band, Black Sabbath, on the ceiling in the living room. There was even a picture of the Alamo on the toilet. (Ozzy is infamous for being arrested after peeing on the Alamo while drunk back in the 80’s)
We also had a special Ozzy cake made, too. The bakery transferred an edible photo of Ozzy on top and decorated the cake with little bats and white and purple frosting. Conrad loved it.
We sprung our little surprise on Conrad the day of the party. He was in heaven. We had a great time, too. Conrad saved all the decorations and put them up in his room.
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