Recently one of my co-workers, Brenda, announced her plans to retire. She has been with our agency for over 20 years and has decided to move to Texas to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. Brenda is a very elegant woman.

She dresses well, coordinates her jewelry to what she is wearing and is quite a perfectionist. She did not like being teased about moving to Texas to find a cowboy. In fact several things about moving to Texas concerned her, including the enthusiasms for college football. She is not a sports fan and she thought this might hinder her being accepted. Those of us planning her retirement party thought that it would be fun to have a theme around longhorn stuff.

The University of Texas men's and women's teams are referred to as the Longhorns.

One of my co-workers and I were placed in charge of the decorations for the party. We thought that it would be easy to incorporate longhorn stuff into the look of the room. We soon found that we would be able to have anything we wanted with longhorn stuff on it. The items with longhorn stuff ranges from disposable cups, plates and napkins to vehicles! The first decision we needed to make was if we wanted to go with an elegant theme that incorporated a few longhorn things, or if we wanted to go over board with the longhorn stuff. We decided that since it is the tradition to have two retirement parties for a person, one that was an open house for clients, workers from other departments and colleagues, and one that was usually held at a local bar, we could do both elegant and over board. The second party at the local bar is usually people getting together after the first party to have a few drinks and tell stories about the person retiring. We contacted the bar owner and asked if we could bring in decorations for the backroom that we had reserved. He did not mind, as long as we removed them at the end of the evening.

My co-worker and I went to work. We ordered the longhorn stuff for the second party from a college supplier. We went with the disposable plates and napkins. We found a large glass mug with the longhorn logo etched into it, so we bought that for Brenda’s drinks to be served in. We had posters, coasters and placemats with longhorn stuff on them. We found several of the longhorn skulls as well as mounts of the longhorns which we could use to place around the room.

For the agency party we did use one of the skulls to place on the table by the guestbook. We had a cactus by it as well as a bouquet of yellow roses. Brenda thought that incorporating things from her new adventure was nice.

When she saw the room for the second party she started laughing. We had her put on a t-shirt with the longhorn logo and she was drinking from her etched mug. We took many pictures of her surrounded by her longhorn stuff.