Cinco de Mayo Dinner Party

Cinco de Mayo is the perfect event for hosting a dinner party.  It's a fun, laid back holiday, no pressure, no hustle and bustle, everyone is just ready for a good time and the decor is bright and cheery!

We used bright table linens, a very loud table cloth partially covered in bright pink.  We brought the tone back down by focusing on only green and white for the tableware, flowers, candles and lanterns overhead.  

Each setting had a cloth napkin with tissue paper pom attached and a place card.  The poms matched the bright green flowers (stems cut very short and placed in shallow bowls) perfectly.  The place cards were backed with bright colored paper and the font had a 'fiesta' vibe.  

We hung more brightly colored, coordinating lanterns in the corner of the room.

The tablescape was bright and funky, but also elegant.

The meal, of course, was the focus!

Guests were greeted with chips and homemade salsa and guacamole and frozen margaritas.

For dinner, we feasted on the most amazing chicken fajitas with all the fixings, sauteed veggies and spanish rice.  The kids had chicken and cheese quesadillas.

The Margaritas were served in mason jars with the cutest pink and white swirled paper straws.  We printed out these freebies and used them as 'charms' on our glasses, on the other side, number the drinks: uno, dos, tres... so guests can keep track of their drink

We even touched up the water with bright limes

AND dessert!!  We kept with traditional mexican fare and finished our meal with Tres Leches cake and cinnamon sugar Sopapillas served with honey.  Oh.  My. Goodness.  What a treat!

Everyone had a wonderful time!

You don't have to wait for next Cinco de Mayo!  It can be any reason to celebrate, just use a Fiesta as the theme!  Plus, who doesn't love Mexican food?!

Barnyard Birthday Party

In March I posted ideas for a Barnyard theme first birthday party.  My friend, whose parties you've seen before, took inspiration and threw this fun party for her son, Colby, who turned one!

We were greeted by a barn door

The table spread:

I love the use of the picnic tablecloth, baskets, bandana and other cute linens like the yellow and red napkins to line bowls and baskets (or in this picture, cover the food until ready to eat).

Some of the food served was BBQ sandwiches on buns, 'Colby' Mac n' Cheese, a 'veggie garden' platter, 'Little Piggies'- mini bigs in a blanket, and potato chips.  

(Click on picture to see larger)

The Cake

Drinks were chilled on ice in a wheelbarrow

also served were sweet tea and lemonade.

Homemade birthday banner, also seen at Claire's party, instructions here.  This garland is so easily customized using scrapbook paper and ribbon or your choice and fills a large space on the wall.

Fun, large animal ballons

Pictures from baby's first year

Favor table

Bandana's and boxes filled with farm themed treats for the older kids

and t-shirts for the other babies at the party

All complete with "Thanks Y'all" tags.

Since we all know kids need to be entertained at a party, one activity was planting seeds to take home and grow.  All supplies were provided and seeds, such as different flowers, vegetables and even herbs, were laid out for easy planting (with parents help).

Outdoor craft table

The other activity was a hayride!  How handy that Colby's dad already had the ATV and trailer, all he had to do was throw a couple bails of hay in the back.  The kids (and parents) loved this!

Lastly, don't forget to dress the part!  Farm attire doesn't have to be overalls, the birthday boy's outfit was found at Gap.

Forest Friends Baby Shower

Voilà the finished product! The table centerpieces were a collaborative effort from myself and my two co-hosts.  One made the topiaries and the other painted the birdhouses.  My contribution was the linens and the Kraft paper runner as well as the river rocks (from The Dollar Tree).

For the place settings, I made edible nests (for the DIY, click here) and little penant flags for the names.

The owl pops were made from an owl mold that I purchased at http://www.bakeitpretty.com/.

For the guest book, we thought it'd be fun to get a theme-related children's book and have guests sign inside of the cover.  What a great, useful keepsake!

For the official favors (guests wrapped up the owl pops and their edible nests as well), I made sugar cookies with chocolate ganache icing in the shapes of a squirrel and an acorn (yes, the cutters were from Bake It Pretty as well!).  I loved the forest friend scrapbook paper I found so I simply printed the message on it and matted it against the green to give more color.  The twine bow helped keep a more nature-like feel.

The banner hung from the mantle.

Here's a few shots of the delicious brunch foods and their presentation.

One Sweet Girl: A tea party baby shower

For my sister in law's second child (another girl), I wanted to throw her an intimate baby shower. In order to make it extra special, I enlisted a few of her best friends and we got to work planning a girly tea party. We chose a color scheme of all shades of pink and wanted to include a candy buffet.  We broke out the fine china and linens and dressed the table for the occasion.  My favorite touch was the fuschia and white striped paper straws  from http://www.bakeitpretty.com/blog/2010/02/soda-shoppe/ ).

 

The Hello Kitty Cake Pops were a huge hit! They were NOT easy to make, but here is a close up shot for you! 

in case you missed the original post, you can find a link to the DIY tutorial here. 

  

I made this mini fabric flower garland to add extra beauty to the decor as well. It was simple but very tedious and time consuming. Find the tutorial here.  

  

I was inspired by some cupcake pennants that I saw for sale on Etsy.  These are just scrapbook paper, double-sided tape and toothpicks.  I made the template myself. I will post the template as soon as I figure out how to convert the pdf into a webpage. For the macaron recipe, click here.  

I was inspired to make the tea bag-shaped place cards from Martha Stewart (Who else?). A friend handmade these napkin rings for the occasion and gave them to the mama-to-be as part of her gift.

Here's the food display...

Here is the best shot of the table.  Sorry you cannot get the full effect.

"La Petite Boulangerie" First Birthday Party

La petite Claire recently turned one year old. 

To celebrate this occasion, I created the following French Bakery themed party. 

As you will see, there are several elements that made this party stand out.  The first of which, of course, was the theme.  I cannot take credit for it, however, since I got the idea off of a party blog (see previous "inspiration" post). In random order, here are some things I did and how I did them.

 The Paris Postcard Invitations

 I used a customizable postcard of the Eiffel Tower on www.zazzle.com and added in the text and photos to both sides. Before mailing them out, I added a vintage postmarks from Paris from a rubber stamp collection (being a French teacher, I own these kinds of things). I thought they were the perfect invitation to set the tone for the entire event.

The Pastries

 I used the lovely assistance of David Lebovitz and Julia Child in making the pastries pictured above. The tartes aux fraises (strawberry tarts) and the babas au rhum (rum soaked mini cakes) were from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook by Julia. The macarons au chocolat (French chocolate macarons) and the madeleines (shell-shaped little cakes) were from David's website (click here). I used a Martha Stewart recipe for the raspberry macaron base and got creative by making a raspberry chocolate ganache filling for them using the leftover chocolate ganache from the chocolate macaron filling and adding in high quality raspberry preserves. I made a few pains au chocolat (chocolate croissants) as well. The cream puffs and éclairs were just prepackaged ones from Sam's Club, but I couldn't make ALL the pastries!!!

The cake was obviously homemade and not too French.  I did that because I wanted it to look cute and wanted the cherry chip cupcakes as a cheap and easy choice for the little kids to eat. The black and white damask cupcake liners as well as the pink bakery treat boxes were purchased at www.bakeitpretty.com.
        The Piroulines were on clearance at Marshall's (of all places!) as were the "C" black damask napkins pictured on the "café" table. The black damask stands that held the food labels were just 3x5 notecards from Target cut in half. Double sided "permanent" scotch tape is my best friend with party decor.

In the other room I set up this café area with typical French café beverages and snacks.  I found the black metal letters in the dollar bins at Michael's and bought a simple chalkboard at Hobby Lobby.  I simply covered the oak frame with hot pink ribbon.

The Foods and Beverages

I made miniature French baguettes and made two types of sandwiches out of them: Les hot-dogs (small sausages in French baguettes) and sandwichs au jambon (sandwiches made of ham, butter and baguettes). I set out a jar of Grey Poupon for the hot dogs as well as some croissants, Brie cheese and red grapes. I added Nutella last minute just because I love it. 

    In true French café fashion, I got Coke in glass bottles, Orangina, limonade (a lightly sweetened, lemon flavored soda) and Perrier. To accompany the many sweets being served, I had milk available. I fully intended to have coffee too, but got too busy.

Party favors for the kids

For all of the kids age 2 and older, I ordered these kids cloth aprons online and personalized them with fabric paints before hanging them on display.  After a while, I announced that each child could come and get his or her apron to put on for our baking activity.  They were thrilled. I was fun to see how excited they got when discovering their names on their very own aprons.

Baking time

Once they put on their aprons, I took groups of two or three to go to the baking stations to make their own "Pains au chocolat" which is basically chocolate-filled croissants.  I didn't use actual croissant dough for this, but just used pre-frozen puff pastry dough and chocolate pieces along with an egg wash on top.  The kids seems to enjoy rolling them and painting them with the egg.  After I baked them, I put them in the pastry boxes for them to take home as their party favor.

 

I used www.picnik.com to edit some snapshots that I took of Claire throughout her first year of life.  I then added hot pink, black and white borders as well as her age at the times of each shot (written in both French and English).  I did a similar treatment on some recent photos of Paris taken by a friend and then interspersed themwith the shots of Claire and displayed them on the wall.

The birthday girl

I think that the party was a huge success overall. Claire had all over her grandparents, several aunts and uncles, cousins and lots of friends there with her. The guests all seem to have had a great time trying new pastries and enjoying one another's company. 

Now it's time for those darned thank you notes...