Alison's Baby Shower

My sister-in-law, Alison, is having a baby boy in April. We planned a surprise shower for her last weekend that went off without a hitch!

The nursery decor is blue, tan, brown and white argyle, so we took our shower decor cue from that, and added the teddy bear theme as Alison and Matt have temporarily named the baby "Ted" until his debut.

My talented friend Danielle designed the lovely invitations.

We had the shower at one of Alison's favorite restaurants, City Kitchen, and it was a great choice! We had the entire restaurant for the private party, had plenty of time to set up, and were given a wonderful staff to work with. On top of all of that, the food was delicious as usual!

The Sunday before the shower, we, the hosts, got together at my house for a craft day where we assembled the favors, made the diaper cakes, sewed the pennant banners, and assembled the take-home cupcake boxes.

The favors were chocolate covered pretzels made by my other sister-in-law, Carol. She makes these yummy treats every Christmas, so we asked her to make them with blue tinted white chocolate drizzled on top for the occasion.

I searched everywhere for the argyle scrapbook paper for the tops of the bags, but eventually found it!

I made the pennant banner for the shower, but hope that Alison will hang it in the baby's room in the future...

We had lots of fun games, courtesy of our game master, Claudine.

And we had a lot of fun creating the two diaper cakes.

The day before the shower I did the baking and flower arranging...

I had a lot of fun creating the cake and cupcakes for the shower. Details on the cake will come in a separate post tomorrow :)

The cupcakes were equally delicious and we made up single cupcake boxes so that everyone could take one home.

Loved the dessert tables and surrounding decorations!

The gift table was overflowing...

Happy Shower, Alison!

My Best Friend's Wedding - the invitations

The wedding invitations are complete! Mailed out early last week, they have a quick turnaround time, but as this is a destination wedding, a lot of information has been communicated via email and the couple's website. The invitations were more of a formality, but what a fun one! As mentioned previously, the colors we're using for this wedding are turquoise, red, and orange, so naturally these were the colors we used in the invitations.

The end result:

The elements:

The paper components were ordered from invitationoutlet.com. I found the paper to be of good quality, but not too thick. This worked well for me, as I was printing them at home. Invitation Outlet was quick, efficient, economical, and even found me a better deal when I called them to make a change to the order!

The invitations were individually hand stamped using rubber stamps from Paper Source. LOVE THEM! Such great quality stamps, and they really came out well. Very consistent.

I used a combination of the solid and outline mum stamp in different colors. 

All stamped and ready to be assembled...

Remember the fabrics I chose several months back? You can find the post on those HERE.

Well, those fabrics were cut into 8" by 8" squares and one square was included in each invitation with this notecard explaining what to do with it:

You'll see more on that project when the time comes :)

The response card was fun and casual, with plenty of space for invitees to write a nice note:

Part of Zett and Bryan's wonderful story is how they met: while working diligently in Florida on the Obama election campaign. And since President Obama was essentially the one who brought them together, he should of course be invited to the wedding! I had fun addressing this invite (went through 4 envelopes just to make sure it was perfect!)

Did you know that there's a whole office in the White House dedicated to dealing with correspondence such as this?? Well, there is! Find the address below.

They have included a letter with the invitation, explaining their story, and our hope is that they at least get a standard response from an intern with a rubber-stamped signature! We shall see...

(That smudge is from my photo editing to remove the house number)

As you can see, I decided to use a more casual handwriting font, rather than a traditional calligraphy. Fun to use, and easier on my wrists with 175 addresses to write!

All in all, I love the finished product. More importantly, so do the bride and groom! And the great thing about the rubber stamps is that we can use them again and again - favors, place cards, programs, table numbers - anything!

So, what do you think?

Posting to these fabulous websites:

Joel's Baby Shower - The Results!

Oh my, have I been busy these past few weeks! What with planning Joel's shower, designing, printing, and addressing Zett's wedding invitations, turning 30 (!), Easter weekend, and full work weeks in between - it's been a lot to take in. The shower was a huge success and I would like to thank all of the lovely ladies who attended and made such a special day for my girl. She looked so adorable with her baby belly and we all had a wonderful time.

My intention is to supplement this post with some additional posts about some of the individual elements that went into the planning and execution of the party. So this will be a fun one with lots of photos! (I must admit, that I am not the best photographer, and I am terrible about remembering to take photos - so most of these photos are courtesy of my friend - the lovely and talented Danielle).

Also created by the lovely and talented Danielle were the invitations and thank-you cards. She used the crib quilt design that Jo registered for at Land of Nod as inspiration. 

Aren't they fantastic??!!

The shower was at lunchtime, and we had just enough people that I could make a large table in the kitchen to seat 12, and have the food served buffet style on the kitchen countertops. The dining room table was set with the desserts and the elements for a game, and then in the corner of the kitchen I set up a small table with the self-serve candy "bar" - as part of the favors. Gifts and appetizers were in the living room.

The menu:

Soups from Panera Bread: Cheese and Broccoli, Low Fat Chicken Noodle, French Onion, and Vegetarian Creamy Tomato.

Breads also from Panera Bread: French, Wheat, and Sourdough

Homemade sandwiches: Egg salad on whole grain white, smoked turkey and cheddar on wheat, and imported ham and swiss on rye.

Egyptian Bread Salad (recipe coming soon)

Field greens mix with balsamic vinaigrette

Dessert:

Two-tiered chocolate cake with fondant icing

Buttermilk vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing

I had such fun decorating the cupcakes and making the cake. Both were delicious. I'd never worked with fondant on a large scale before, so was thrilled with the end result. It also tasted great as I made the fondant from scratch - so much better than anything store bought. 

The chrysanthemum cupcakes were from Martha Stewart's Cupcake book - page 267 - yum! A bit tedious, but once I got in the groove with the piping they were done in no time.

The favors were lovely narcissus in pots, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a ribbon. 

The other part of the favor was this candy bar, where guests were invited to take a selection of candies home with them.

Jelly beans, rock candy, jelly apple slices, candied grapefruit slices, meringues, gumdrops, chocolates and more - all in the same color palette as the shower. 

The table was decorated with a lovely paisley blue and green tablecloth. I had various white jugs, urns, and vases with gorgeous assortments of white, green, and yellow flowers. The giant pompoms hanging above were handmade by me - some also adorned the front porch to greet guests (forgot to get a photo).

I really loved the way the decor turned out - everything looked so crisp and elegant. The sunshine outside certainly helped also - a gorgeous day despite the chill in the air. (The yellow kitchen and newly painted white cabinets helped also!) :)

Flowers everywhere! Just some potted tulips - 3 pots per metal container - covered in some spanish moss to make them look like they are actually planted in the containers.

We decorated the four windows in the living room with clothes line and baby clothes in the same color palette as the shower decor. So cute!

Danielle made this lovely diaper cake - so easy and so adorable!

A success! We all had a great time, and can't wait for the arrival of Baby S in May!

Check back soon for updates to this post on the cake and cupcakes, recipes, decorations, and more!


Posting to these fabulous blogs:

Joel's Bridal Shower

Joel and Eric got married in August of 2008 in Washington, DC. They were living in Charlottesville at the time, and we threw her a shower at her parents home in Falls Church, VA. Joel is an avid reader, enjoys her time in the kitchen, and also loves to travel. We incorporated all of these ideas into her theme, where we asked guests to bring a book and a recipe. The food was from all over the globe, and very tasty!

Invitation designed by a talented friend, Danielle Birmingham.

Coordinating thank-you cards for Joel.

Menu:

Cheese fondue

Tabbouleh

Cold minted potato salad

Samosas

Potato skins

Baba ghannouj

Bruschetta

Vegetarian egg rolls

Chicken shawarma

Hummus

Potstickers

Sangria

I made the desserts - vanilla book cake, tiffin, chocolate cupcakes, and sugar cookies.

Homemade sugar cookies with Joel and Eric's monogram as favors, in addition to the same heart-shaped cookie cutters.

We finished the shower with a lovely dinner in Old Town Alexandria, followed by a bachelorette pub crawl complete with personalized t-shirts and lots of fun!