Outdoor Party Decorating

I just had my birthday party this past weekend and it was just perfect (minus a few good friends that couldnt make it)... an evening surrounded by friends, food, fire and fun! (It was a bon fire and croquet themed party) I wasn't planning on decorating... but then I spent a little too much time on pinterest and got inspired. This is what the drink table looked like:I learnt how to do the tissue pom poms from this site.
The old door and window are from our house... and the bunting banner is made from vintage sheet fabric.

Baby Shower Game

I got to be in charge of doing a little game for the baby shower, so I did a baby food guessing game. I choose mostly fruit purees, but I did through in a beef, spaghetti and veggies mix. (Poor babies!... I mean the ones that really have to eat that)
If you are wanting to do this a little tip, I provided pretzels for the tasters.

Baby Shower Invites

One of my good friends had a baby shower the other day and I got make the invitation... I had so much fun putting these together. They were all slightly different because I kept wanting to try different things.

A Christmas Dinner

Last weekend we hosted a Christmas dinner for our friends. It was such a good night. I had so much fun decorating my table. So I have two projects that I want to talk about. The first was my little party favor... I did chocolate snowflakes. I was actually looking for a snowflake cookie cutter and could only find this chocolate making kit at the store... so I thought why not. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Second project is my silver table runners... I thought it would be something different then place mats. The flowers are organza fabric cut into circles and then you melt the edges by bring them close to a candle flame.



And here are a few fun pictures from the evening : )

Halloween Treats

A few treats me and mom made this year.

Sexy Invites

I hosted a bachlorette party for my good friend last month. It was so fun to throw. I got a little carried away with the invitations. At the time I was finished work and waiting for Max to be born, so I had lots of time to kill and be creative was the perfect way to take my mind of my huge belly. After some internet research this is what I came up with:

And my mom helped (helped= I measured out the flour... my mom did the rest) me make a cake to match! (Thanks mom!) It looked so pretty, but also tasted amazing!

Pinata!!!

I made this pinata for a welcome home fiesta party. I am quite proud of it!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween all! Here's some Halloween food ideas we, me and my mom, tried out this year....

Sugar cookies with red icing and an almond for a finger nail
Witch hat cookie


Poop cupcakes... surprisingly we had lots of these left over :)

Double Double Toil and Trouble!

I want to put out all my Halloween ideas before Halloween, so I'm doing a double post today!
This is my "Pick Your Poison" Table. I had so much fun doing it. I painted 5 gourds, three black and two white. Super easy to do, I varnish the black ones. I also made new labels for the drinks... the bottle are empty now... but you can imagine them full. I'll post some of the labels too, if you want to print them off. I have this amazing plan for our punch... I'll post pictures after the party.

Favors

For our favors we went slightly out of character and bought a pre-made item... a metal tin. We filled them with an different candies. It was my husbands idea, he wanted people to trade them or something. I don't know, I don't claim to understand him all of the time. So some were filled with cinnomin hearts, some with peppermints, some with those colorful licorish candies, some with Wethers, some with bubble gum ... and list goes on. In the end I couldn't just use the tin... I needed to stay true to my character, so I added a little tag. I used Amy Buttler paper, ribbon and pink staples to comple our favors.

One, Two, Three, Four... Tell Me That You Love Me More

Our table numbers... probably my favorite part of our wedding! (I think I have said that at least three times in the past month!) I think instead of using words I'll let the pictures explain this time:

Placement Cards

Some people do placement charts, some do cards, some people don't assign seating. It's a personal choice. I choose placement cards, mostly because it seemed like a fun project. (tip: I also made a placement chart for the bridesmaids that were handing out the cards, just in case I made a mistake) My cards featured the guests name on the front and their table number inside. I had them paper-clipped alphabetically to a board and had two of my bridesmaids had them out. The part that took the most time, and was the most fun, was the glass decorative bead. Me and my sister took about a hundred images off the web of couples or romance or wedding themed. We punched out the pictures and glued them to the back of a glass bead. It seems tedious, but we had a lot of fun with it. We made a game out of it, we would try to match guests with the pictures. Like we had one of two horses kind of necking each other and we have a friend that loves horses so we gave it to her. For my maid of honor I gave her a picture of Cheri Oteri and Will Ferrel dressed as the Spartan Cheerleaders from SNL because we use to watch SNL as teenagers together all the time. Not everyone's was the specialized, but you get the idea.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I thought I'd take a break from the wedding blogging for this Mexican holiday. If you are throwing a Cinco de Mayo fiesta here are a few recipes to spice up the party.
1. Blue Margaritas
2. Avocado Fruit Salad
3. Scarlet Margaritas
4. Lime Chile Beer
5. Fiesta Dip
6. Black Bean Tacos

Setting the Mood

Invitations! So fun. I think after Jonas proposed to me my mind went straight to new scrapbooking techniques I could use for our invitations. Ok... not quite true, but it was one of my favorite wedding projects.Things I wanted in our invitation:
1. to sew something. I love the look of paper stitched
2. for the invitation to represent both of us (Jonas drew the above picture)
3. a photo
4. to set the mood for the wedding... and because of this I was prepared for a lot of work to go into making these invites. The little pink bead took the most work.In the end I got everything checked off my list.

The Best Way To Recycle!

Um... I always write my title to my blog and the regret it... or at least reconsider. In this case I maybe was a little over dramatic, but it is a way to recycle non-the-less. I think "A Way To Recycle" would not have been as impressive a title... don't you agree?
Anyway, moving on... Clothing Swap Parties! The plot: invite all your girl friends over and tell them to bring their unwanted, but still cool, clothing, jewelery and purses. Then you swap! The picture is our pile of clothes. I have done this two times now, and usually their is a lot of clothing at the end and we just brought it to Salvation Army... goes to a good cause. Now, being that it is spring cleaning time, is a great time to hold this type of event. It gives you insentive to clean out your closets... or drawers in my case. (I yurn and pine for a closet!)

Flavour Favor

If you need small gifts for multiple people, like a party favor, stock stuffer, or birthday gifts then I suggest a trip to your local bulk store. This Christmas I made tea as a gift. I made two separate types of tea, but before I get into recipes lets talk supplies. First you need the tea bags, I tried two different types and I highly recommend the bags that iron close. They work really well. If you want to make tags then you need a tag punch, string and a stapler. Then you have to think of how you'll wrap them. You could make little fabric bags, buy small plastic bags, paper envelopes or you could do what I did and use tins. I went through about 5 different cups of tea to perfect my recipe... but this is the funnest part, so I recommend you don't follow my recipe but create your own.
My first tea is called A Spice City Showdown Featuring: Pear. I used darjeeling tea as my base tea because it is a light tea and blends well with other flavors. Then I added 4 cloves, 4 black pepper corns, 5 little white chocolate chips, 6 pieces of dried pear, a piece of vanilla bean (halved then cut about 5 mm long), a piece of cinnamon bark and a dash of all spice. It has a small resemblance to Chai tea. The next tea I made I called A Lover's Trist: A Ginger and Apricot Romance. This tea had ginger tea as it's base, I added dried apricot, cinnamon bark and all spice. If you want to make your gifts a little fuller then you can add a few sticks of homemade biscotti to bulk it up.