Let's go to the hop! Turn your kitchen into a do-it-yourself malt shop, complete with hamburgers. Remove your furniture and your shoes. Invite the guys—or don't invite them! Wear poodle skirts, hire a DJ, and have a dance! You provide neckerchiefs or bobby sox for the girls. Offer a bowl of fake tattoos for the young toughs; serve bubble gum cigarettes.

For great invitations, take a regular paper napkin and frill the edges out by scalloping them with scissors. On very cheap white paper, print out the party directions. Insert it into the paper napkin you cut and crinkle it like a waitress in a diner might have a crinkled handkerchief in her name pin in the ‘50s. Then, tie a knot with curling ribbon. Write the would-be guest's name on a piece of cardboard you might have even decorated, like the waitress's pin, and hot glue it to the knot in the curling ribbon.