Sixty is a big milestone birthday, so I wanted to make her think as little about her age as possible. I decided the best way to do that was by throwing her a theme party. Samantha loves watching musicals so I decided that would be the theme.

I found invitations with African drawings on them which were a lot like the ones on the poster "Lion King Musical" that we saw in New York. I sent them to family members and her ten closest friends. Inside the card were the party details of location, date and time.

My daughter Josie helped me with the decorations We put up five African paper masks we found at the party store. We made a stage out of cardboard and poster board like the one in "Sound of Music" for Josie's marionettes I had a lot of fun making the stage. I hardly do anything creative lately. We hung posters we found at a party store on the walls. There were ones from "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang", "The Sound of Music", "The Wizard of Oz", "My Fair Lady", and "Little Shop of Horrors". They looked fantastic!

We put in the extra leaf of our table to make sure it was big enough for the buffet. Covered it with an African print tablecloth we found at a department store. For the centerpiece, Josie and I made one out of post card stills from musicals we bought at the music store. We pasted them together and cut out flower shapes and arranged them like a bouquet in a crystal vase.

Samatha could not believe her eyes when she walked in. She was so excited! Samantha started singing along to the CD of "The Sound of Music" playing on the stereo. I took a picture of her twirling around like Julie Andrews.

Josie made us all laugh with the marionette show she put on for us. She tried to do the same from "The Sound of Music" though she didn't have enough puppets. She did a good job improvising though.

Josie and I put out the buffet. There was New York steak or baked fish with scalloped or baked potatoes, asparagus or fried green beans in mushroom sauce. Josie cooked the food, but I helped by cutting the meat, potatoes asparagus and green beans. It was superb. There wasSebastiani wine and Sparkling apple cider to drink.

After the meal Josie brought out a cake decorated to look like the one from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". The bakery did a terrific job puting all kinds of candy on the top, from bite-size gobstoppers to M & M's. "Have a musical birthday", was written in the middle. It was delicious.

Once we were all stuffed, everyone watched Samantha's favorite musical, "The Sound of Music". Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Samantha squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek as a way to say, "Thank-You from the bottom of my heart".