Party Guest}Sweet Pea First Birthday

Today I am excited to share with you an amazing first birthday party that one of my blog readers, Jessica put together for her sweet one year old baby.  Jessica is also the daughter in law of a couple at church – a family I love!!

The party Jessica put together was amazing.  So much love and care went into it.

Jessica  had been told by people told that a first birthday celebration was just for her, since the baby won’t remember.   This may be true but Jessica wanted to…

“celebrate big, make a fuss, hand-make every decoration, stay up late cooking and crafting and gluing, and invite all of Annalise’s little friends and their families over. I’ve been thinking about this party, this event to celebrate the life and miracle of my angel baby girl, for months, but I couldn’t articulate to myself why I wanted such a big fuss. Then I read a post from this blog and was struck by a short quote from a mother who lost her daughter to a choking accident two weeks shy of her second birthday. In a letter to her son on his first birthday, she wrote, “Dearest Little Peter Boy, I didn’t know that your sister, Lucy, would have only one birthday. Just one. We had a small party for her. And it was sweet and wonderful. But after she passed away, I realized what a big deal birthdays are. Another year alive. Another year with our loved ones. And I vowed that I would make your first birthday a huge celebration. And we did! It was all I could have hoped for and more.” I agree. They’re a big deal and they are indeed a miracle. One which I do not take for granted and Annalise’s party was my way of expressing that and reveling in it. I thank God for my precious baby.”

I have to say I totally agree with Jessica!!

The theme of the party was Sweet Pea,which is her daughter’s nickname.

Jessica carried that fun theme through all the details of the party and created a beautiful, not to be forgotten event!

For Jessica, the name of the game was THRIFTY.  She wanted to put together a fun party from scratch without spending a lot of money. Look what Jessica did with some dollar store finds.  It is amazing what a little spray paint, glue and imagination can do!

Glass bowls and candlesticks from the dollar store become lovely serving pieces!

A little inexpensive tissue paper and craft paper and look what you have –

I also love what she did with this fun little sign she found at the Dollar Store that fit her theme so perfectly!

Before:

After:  So much cuter!

Jessica’s attention to detail was wonderful.  She printed off labels at home to dress up and personalize her water bottles.

She used utensils and paper goods from the Dollar Store but dressed them up a bit!

Add  a fun vintage store find that was originally broken and dark brown.  I love spray paint!!

Jessica then took an out grown tutu she already had and stuffed it into a vase and had an amazing party decoration

There were lots of fun pink treats and some sweet peas too!!

She even printed off some fun birthday themed artwork and changed out the artwork in her frames over the table for the party!  A detail woman after my own heart!!

As you can see Jessica is also an amazing photographer so her sweet pea will remember this amazing first birthday as she relives it through the wonderful pictures her mother has taken.

Thank you Jessica for sharing your party with us.  The love and devotion you have to your daughter shines through every detail.

Happy Birthday Sweet Pea!

Back To School Breakfast

School starts tomorrow here in Portland.

Even though it is later than most of the country I am still not ready.

I am not ready for my baby to start her last first day of school!

I decided that this momentous occasion called for a special celebration, a special back to school breakfast.

I knew how unrealistic it was to expect Tessa to be up and ready in time to enjoy a specially prepared breakfast on the first day of school – especially since school starts at 7:30 a.m.!

We decided that we would celebrate a day early so Tessa invited two of her sweet friends to join her for our special Back to School Breakfast.

I made a quick trip to the Dollar Store and to my closet for the decor for the table.

This summer I had purchased these great chalkboard signs from the clearance table at a little gift shop in the Multnomah Village area of Portland.  I got both of them for $7.77.  It was at that time that the idea for some type of back to school breakfast began to formulate in my head.  I mean, how perfect is a chalkboard sign for a back to school breakfast!?  I added a little piece of red ribbon to finish it off.

I love having the menu for any event or party displayed for people.  I don’t know about you but I really like to know what I’m eating!

I carried the chalkboard theme over to the placecards.  I bought some inexpensive ($1.00) frames at Craft Warehouse.  I took out the inside piece that you are suppose to put the picture in front of and sprayed it with black chalkboard paint to turn it into a little chalkboard.  Each girl knew exactly where they were suppose to sit!  Some little stands I found at the dollar store and have used for various other parties were the perfect thing to hold the chalkboards.

I bought a three pack of the little, tiny composition notebooks from the Dollar Store too to put at each place setting along with a crayon in case they felt like coloring.

Two packs of crayons from the Dollar Store worked perfect to fill an small apothecary jar I have for part of the table decor.

I also used a domed cake stand I already owned and filled it with a few red apples.  What’s a back to school breakfast without apples?!

The red cake stand holding the blueberry muffins added color and interest to the table too.

I am loving my new bottle from Ikea (about $2.00.) It that looks great on the table filled with orange juice.  I have been noticing these bottles at a lot of local restaurants lately filled with water and placed on each table.

For recipes from our back to school breakfast be sure and visit me over at Your Homebased Mom.

The girls had a great time eating, visiting and laughing together.  Ready to start their first day of their senior year together!

Do you do anything special for your kid’s first day of school?

Vintage Baby Shower

Several weeks ago I purchased an antique baby scale for my photographer friend Meg. I knew she wanted one for her newborn photo shoots and I wanted to thank her for the amazing job she had done on Tessa’s senior photos. I was excited to find one at a local vintage shop.  When I gave it to her I said there was only one stipulation.  She had to let me borrow it for a baby shower I was doing.  She of course agreed!

I knew that the vintage baby scale would be the perfect thing for the table decor.

It was also the perfect thing to hold a photo of Baby Hope laying in the same scale!  And to hold baby Hope!

I collected other vintage items from around my house and especially Tessa’s room.  I had to dig out the box of baby nursery decor that had been packed away years ago.  There are advantages to saving stuff!  It will come in handy!

The old baby booties with a votive candle holder inside became the perfect thing to put on top of the Peter Rabbit books.

I also covered the table with a lovely old vintage quilt I had picked up in a vintage shop.

And the vintage baby chair I just had to have was perfect!

The pink pom poms from Tessa’s sixteenth birthday party were also a perfect addition hanging from the kitchen nook ceiling.

I also used lots of pictures of pretty Baby Hope on the table.

In frames….

as a collage on a vintage wire rack….

I also hung some little vintage dresses that usually hang as a valance in Tessa’s room on a ribbon clothesline.

Remember that invitation....

I have to say I think this was my favorite part of the decor.  Those old baby shoes came in handy again….

I used my mother’s hostess trays.  I love those things and remember my mother using them at various showers she would hold while I was growing up.

The shower was in the evening so for food I wanted a combination of sweet and savory.

We had fruit salsa and cinnamon chips.

Hummus and Pita Chips

Sundried Tomato Pesto Palmiers (recipe coming soon to Your Homebased Mom)

And this yummy St. Louis Ooey Gooey Berry Cake!  So good!

There were also Lovely Lime Cupcakes.

The food was yummy and the company delightful.  The new mommy and baby got lots of darling things too!    Every new mommy deserves a special party!

Vintage Birthday Party

Today is my mother’s 80th birthday and to help her celebrate I put on a vintage birthday luncheon for her this past week.

I love everything vintage and have recently developed a fondness for vintage tablecloths so I wanted to incorporate those into the party.

The luncheon was held out on the patio in our garden.  Fortunately we had wonderful weather.  After a very rainy spring and early summer I was a little worried but the weather came through and it was almost too warm and sunny.  We pulled out the sun hats and sunglasses and everyone did fine.

I also have a little collection of vintage aprons.  Since I had to use my ugly folding chairs I decided to dress them up a bit with the vintage aprons.  I used a double sided tape to tape them onto the top of the chairs.  It worked great.

For the table decor I used my blue mason jars I had picked up last year for the backyard wedding reception I helped with.

I filled them with flowers from my garden and placed a jar on each table along with a couple of old, vintage books.

The only flowers I had to buy was one bunch of hydrangea from Costco which I used in the arrangement I put on the serving table.

I also used the blue and clear canning jars to display pictures of my mother through the ages.  People loved looking at the photos!

I also added some vintage inspired pinwheels into some of the jars.

I borrowed an old vintage quilt from a friend to use as a backdrop.  The serving table was right up against our fireplace and there was an ugly black vent I needed to cover up.  I ran a wire line and used clothes pins to hang it behind the table.  It worked perfect.

I basically just found every vintage type thing in my house and used it to decorate with.  An old shelf from my girl’s room that was in the garage, a sign from Tessa’s room, books from the family room.  I just went around the house collecting things.

My Aunt Pam came down from Canada for the party and brought me this beautiful hat she found at a garage sale.  It very quickly became part of the decor.

I like to use signage on my serving table.  I always like to know what I am eating and besides that it looks pretty!

The menu consisted of three types of quiche, four salads, bread, cupcakes and cake.  For more details on the menu check out the recipes I’ll be posting over at Your Homebased Mom.

The desserts were on a separate serving table.  I found an old rusty shelf at a vintage shop that I used to give the table some height.  I added more flowers and books.

I also stacked 3 cake plates on top of each other for the cupcakes.

The finishing touch was a pretty girl in a vintage dress and apron to help serve!

Since the party was back in the garden I wanted people to know which direction to go so I pulled out Daisy and added a sign to her so people knew where the party was!

The best part of the party?  Was just watching my mom enjoy herself with her friends!

Happy Birthday Mom – we love you!

Party Guest:Garden Baby Shower

Today’s party guest is Ashley of Little Miss Momma .

Ashley hosted an amazing  baby shower for a dear friend who was expecting a little boy.  Ashley says that this shower  was an extra fun one to plan for because the guest list was for a dozen lovely ladies {rather than 30}, so she was able to spend some extra time on the details–she even used real plates (a girl after my own heart!)

She chose a “spring time” theme in turquoise, lime green, orange and yellow.

So let me introduce Ashley and have her tell you all about her beautiful baby shower.  Almost makes me want to have another baby (not) but I am stealing some of her ideas for a baby shower I am helping host this summer.

Here’s Ashley:

I chose a “spring time” theme in turquoise, lime green, orange and yellow.

I made these Pom Poms using a tutorial from Leanne at Organize and Decorate Everything. I love them so much–I wish I could leave them up all year round {and maybe I will, lol}.

To stay within the “garden/backyard” theme I bought a 12 pack of mason jars at my local grocery store and used them for cups. I used extra large malt straws purchased from Michael’s.

I made this banner using scrapbook paper and pre-cut letters that come in a pack {also available at Michael’s}. I glue gunned each paper flag down on to a long strand of turquoise ribbon.

Here was my nifty little party favor. I made these earrings using this tutorial.

The theme was “Cute as a Button”.

I glue gunned this trim around vases from the dollar store.

I learned how to make these pinwheels from Gillian at All the Small Things.

I threw some of the pinwheels in with my flower arrangements.

Yummy Spring time cupcakes.

Summer salad with strawberries, mandarin oranges, sliced almonds and a sweet honey vinaigrette dressing.

Homemade chicken salad sandwiches on croissants.

Most of my decorations and favors were used with supplies from the Dollar Tree and the sale section at Michael’s {and I’m not just saying that}. If you want to know where I purchased anything specific leave me a comment over at my blog and I will get back to you.

All in all, one rather awesome baby shower!

Party Guest: Bollywood Bling Party

I am so excited to share this amazing party with you. One of my blog readers, Birdie of Bird Crafts, created this amazing party. She and her husband were celebrating their 6th wedding anniversary and she went all out!

An amazing amount of thought, time and effort went into this event. Birdie lives in the south of France (yes I said France) ans she had  planned to hold outdoors but as Mother Nature has a tendency to do she decided to do her own thing – instead of sunshine she brought a windy and gray day instead,

Birdie was flexible though and set up indoors instead.

Ice Cream Social Table Decor

My friend Dawn is a kindergarten teacher.  She is always doing lots of fun and creative things with her students.

One of their end of the year celebrations is an ice cream social.  Dawn put together these darling table decorations and shared some photos with me.

Using empty ice cream containers and fresh flowers from her garden she not only carried out the theme but saved a lot of money too.  I love it!

She just placed jars inside the containers and placed the flowers in the jars.  She also made some mini bouquets with the tiny teeny new single serve
cartons.

Thanks for sharing your fun table decor idea Dawn!

The Wedding Planner, Part 4

Be sure you have read The Wedding Planner, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3!

My favorite part of any wedding is, no surprise, the food!

The parents of the bride, Andrea and Mark, really wanted the wedding to reflect Nathan & Emily’s tastes so they let them totally choose the menu.

From the start they knew they wanted to have Key Lime pie instead of cake.  After searching around for a place to order pies from, they ended up enlisting some friends and baking 200 individual pies.  It took them about 3 1/2 hours to make them all and they had to raid quite a few stores for all the crusts that they needed.  They were delicious and a fun treat.

For the lunch menu, they wanted Mexican.  They chose a local favorite in the Lansing area called EL AZTECO.  They also decided to let the guest eat upon arrival at the reception rather than have them wait for the wedding party to arrive.  This made for very happy guests with tummies filled with delicious Mexican food when the photos were done.

The food was served buffet style with clear plastic plates from Sam’s Club and plastic silverware that they rolled up into white napkins and tied with twine.  The wedding invitations that Andrea’s daughter,Lauren designed consisted of 5 3×5 cards that were tied together with twine also.

Andrea affectionately calls their wedding style SHABBY CHIC.

They also had a fun candy bar at the reception.

They chose candy that they liked!  They made it the favor for everyone to take home.  Andrea learned that the tricky part of doing a candy bar is that you need 2-3 times the amount of candy that will actually be taken home or consumed in order to make it look FULL.  A great tip they had was to put small bowls overturned inside some of the big punch bowls that they used to take up space and make it look fuller.

Again, Andrea enlisted help and gave one of her friends the list of all the candy and she bought it all at Sam’s Club and Gordon Food Service in bulk.  They bought little plastic gusseted bags that had white lace printed on them and came with silver twist ties.  They were a little bigger than they wanted people to have so they trimmed them down.  I was surprised how many people loved it!  Even the older people still loved the candy!

This was definitely a wedding full of love and attention to what really matters!  Andrea was able to put together an amazing, not to be forgotten, wedding of her dreams for her daughter while staying within their families budget and not going totally crazy!

Thanks Andrea for sharing your photos and all the great information!!

The Wedding Planner, Part 3

Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of The Wedding Planner.

The flowers are an important part of a wedding but they can also be an expensive part!  One of the best ways to save money on flowers is to do it yourself.  It’s easier than you think!

Andrea said they had never done flower arranging before except to help with her sister’s wedding last year, but they decided to give it a try.  She searched the Internet for sites to order flowers from and chose fiftyflowers.com because they had wonderful reviews from their customers.  Andrea was a little scared to order because she really wasn’t sure how many to get, but she just ordered what they could afford and figured if they didn’t have enough, they’d buy local at the last minute.

The flowers arrived on Thursday morning via FedEx.  They trimmed them all and placed them into large buckets from home depot for the next 24 hrs.

Some of them were still not opened and fiftyflowers told them to mix a solution of 1 tsp of vinegar, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp of sugar  with a 1/2 gallon of water and that would force the blooms to open.  Nathan, the groom, is an IT major at Michigan State University, so they decided to break up some computer parts (ram, floppy drive, etc) and mingle it in with the boutonnieres for him and all his groomsmen.  They were cute!

The bouquet for all the women were made next and then the rest of the corsages.

All the flowers that were left were arranged at the reception site on Friday afternoon.

They used White Ranunculus, Color me Purple Garden Centerpiece (which gave them a great variety) and then Purple Lisianthus.  They borrowed clear vases of all different shapes and sizes for the tables.  Some tables had one, some had more if the vases were small.

I loved how they used all different vases and Mason jars!

Jars of flowers were hung from the pews in the church too – lovely!

Next Up:  The Wedding Food!

The Wedding Planner, Part 2

Of course one of the first steps in planning a wedding is deciding on a color scheme for the event.

Emily chose the colors for the wedding after she went dress shopping which I think was a brilliant idea.  Instead of deciding on a color scheme and then trying to find dresses that matched she first found the dresses she loved and the colors they were available in and then used that to establish her color scheme!

She really liked the combination of green & purple (actually LAPIS and CLOVER) that were available in the dresses she chose.  With 7 bridesmaids she thought it would be good to break it up with more than one color.

Even though those were the COLORS for the wedding, they decided not to go too crazy with everything in purple & green all over the place.  This is Andrea and Mark’s second 2nd daughter to get married and they told both of them that the wedding is a special day, but it is just A DAY, not A MARRIAGE.  They wanted it to be pretty, fun, original & special, but they did it on reasonable budget.  So wise!

The main thing they did in the color scheme was the paper lanterns.  They saw some fun ideas for using them at receptions online and  ordered them all, on sale, from asianideas.com. They ordered green too, but in the end, they sent the green back and went for purple, light purple and white.

They even used them at the front of the church to bring the theme of the reception into the beginning of the event.

They hung them all with fishing line.  It took a long time to hang them all and a few got ruined in the TORRENTIAL RAIN they had for 2 days prior to the wedding, but it really made the tents look magical.  They strung inexpensive tulle around the whole tent wrapped with white Christmas lights.  They borrowed the lights from all their friends and just had them tape their names onto each so they could return in the end.

About a week before the wedding they decided they wanted to have assigned seating at the tables and thought of the idea of Names for table titles instead of numbers.  The Names consisted of of things that were important to the couple and told the story about them to the people sitting there.

They picked up sticks in the woods and attached the table signs with twine to them and stuck them into the centerpieces.  We hung the individual names or family cards from twine clothes line that was attached to cedar posts and cemented into buckets.  Her friend Chantelle came up with this idea.  As people walked up to the location, they just removed their name from the clothes pin and searched for their table.

Next Up:  The Wedding Flowers!

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