Cocktails and Confetti

Happy New Year!!  After moving from the beach (and chased away by Sandy) we are all settled into our new place.  We celebrated with our annual Winter Cocktail Party which doubled as a great housewarming!  Last years theme focused more on silvery snowflakes but this year I decided to warm it up a bit.  I am obsessed with the look of gold confetti dots, they just scream glamorous party to me!  Check out my Pinterest board for this party and you'll see the trend.  So from the invites to the buffet table - everything had a healthy dose of confetti!

I'm also getting more into champagne and aside from a signature cocktail, we offered up mini individual sized champagnes for guests to grab up - encouraged by a lipstick message on the mirror.  Liquor bottles were available for mix-your-own and kept neat in a gold tray.  Garnishes were elevated and classy in martini and wine glassware.  They included white rock candy swizzles and gold rimming sugar for guests to sweeten up their cocktails.

This year's all white dessert display featured candies and cookies including candied grapefruit, white chocolate covered gummi bears and champagne bubble gumdrops!!  I upped the glitz by laying a long mirror on the dining table before parading out my display towers, mercury glass ornaments, winter scenes in cloches, traditional poppers, candles, and a sprinkling of 'snow' and hand punched confetti.

Photo Credit: my wonderful friend Joan Tsen of Applesky Photography

Leave No Milestone Left Unturned

A garden brings life and beauty to the table. - Alice Waters (via Talula's Garden)

This past weekend I had the honor of hosting a milestone birthday celebration for one of my best girlfriends!  The birthday girl chose the venue and then tossed the reins over to myself and another co-conspirator to run with it.  We were immediately inspired by the farm to table menu and cozy atmosphere at Talula's Garden in Philadelphia!

After deciding to incorporate floral elements, we developed a modern palette of lilac, peach, and crimson with golden highlights to pop against the weathered garden setting.  I wanted to create some party elements while keeping it simple since we would be in a restaurant and not have a lot of room on the communal table or a lot of time prior to our seating to set up...

The solution was bright tissue paper flowers wrapped around colorful 'seed bombs' in gold flower pots that performed double duty as table decoration and party favor... and with the swipe of a paint marker could have served as placecards too!  Similar instructions can be found from Martha Stewart.  The whole table was visually tied together with a roll of gold web ribbon and pre-made dimensional flower stickers running down the center.

As pretty as the party table turned out, we still needed to highlight that this was no ordinary birthday - this was the big 3-0!  So, taking more cues from the garden setting, I created a pair of 3-0 topiaries out of styrofoam wreaths (dollar store!!) and adhesive backed sheet moss.  I modified one of the wreaths into a three with some strategic cuts and toothpicks to hold it all back together.  I spray painted some dowels with the same gold paint used on the flower pots and inserted them into the wreaths and a block of styrofoam in a flower pot. (psst! would make great table numbers too!)  Lastly, I added some more moss and fairy critters to the base and some ribbons in the party colors to the topiary stem!

The Birthday Girl has a soft spot for all things magical!

Another way to celebrate my friend's special birthday, we displayed some photos of her as a baby and growing up!  Some were framed in gold frames while others with coordinating lilac and crimson floral scrapbooking papers and they were all tucked in amongst the restaurants existing display of found objects. 

Both the guest of honor and all of the guests got a kick out of seeing the birthday girl on the day she was born, her 1st birthday, her college graduation day, her wedding day, etc. which made a great conversation starter!  We all had a great time and great food - including the birthday girl's favorite: donuts and s'mores!

Love Is Sweet

"The most dangerous food is wedding cake"~ James Thurber

Dessert Table

One of my best friends is getting married and we've been having lots of fun celebrating!  Fresh off our trip to NOLA for the Bachelorette, we gathered friends and family together for her Bridal Shower this past weekend.  The black and white wedding colors inspired a fun dessert table full of black and white treats!  Each of the bridesmaids contributed confections like:

• Custom Oreo Cake
• Almond Bars
• Brownies
• Portuguese Egg Custards (the Bride's fave!)
• Chocolate Dipped Strawberries
• Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake Bites
• Black and White Cupcakes

In order to display the desserts we used a combination of tiered stands and boxes covered in pretty coordinating wrapping paper. The same wrapping paper was used to make a decorative paper rosette garland strung with tulle ribbon.  See this previous post for how to make the rosettes.  Dessert labels and other signs for the shower were printed and mounted to die cut scalloped shapes from Paper Presentation - a wonderful DIY stationary supply store in NYC with an online shop!

Dessert Table Details

Another sweet way to tie in the black and white theme and provide a fun activity was an M&M guessing game!

Guessing Game

Instead of a guest book or traditional games, we provided the guests with tags on string to fill out wishes and advice for the new married couple.  The tags (also from Paper Presentation) were then hung on a live potted "Wishing Tree" to display at the shower and later taken home by the Bride.

Wishing Tree

The guests loved it and really got creative with their words of wisdom and the Bride was touched by all of the sweet thoughts!

Wish Details

Have Your Cheesecake And Eat It Too

I just tried out a new dessert idea that I think is going to be one of my new "go to" for bringing to parties: Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries!!  I love anything bite size, delicious and easy to make and these little guys fit all requirements perfectly!  They were a hit!

Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

Directions:

1. Select medium to large strawberries, rinse, and cut off tops
2. With a paring knife, carefully carve out the hull
3. Crush Nilla Wafers with rolling pin in a zip lock bag and empty onto small plate
4. Fill a zip lock bag with ready made Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cheesecake Filling (1 tub makes about 4 dozen or use your own no bake recipe!)
5. Cut off one small corner of bag and squeeze cheese cake into strawberries, swirling some on top
6. Dip cheesecake end into cookie crumbs, squishing the cheesecake down a bit
7. Optional: dip in chocolate or drizzle with chocolate

Super Yummy

I "made" dessert for a Super Bowl party we went to this weekend... for the home team colors I needed red, white, and blue... so I picked up some mini red velvet cupcakes at the grocery store and a tube of blue decorating icing.  With a writing tip, I drew a blue "NY", trying to copy the logo's font, on each cupcake.  I'm pretty sure their team spirit helped the team win!

Go Giants!!

Winter Cocktail Fete

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake… - Sir Francis Bacon

This winter we gathered some friends and threw a cocktail party at our little apartment.  I love extending the sparkle of the holidays into the New Year to help brighten the darkest days of the year!  We have lots of great things to look forward to this year and this was a fantastic way to kick it off!

For a frosty effect, I pooled together my most sparkly Christmas decorations and my white and metallic everyday items.  This included my ever expanding mercury glass collection comprised of candlesticks, vases, and ornaments.  I used the pieces in little groupings on the food table.  To continue the winter effect into the living room, I created a tall arrangement for the coffee table using found sticks and white carnations.  It was very easy and was inspired by this post from Gibson King!

Outside, we lined the driveway in luminaries to greet guests and lead them to the back entrance.  They were simple to assemble: LED tea lights from the dollar store in white paper favor bags from the party store with some sand from the beach to weight them down.

Our tree features more of my Mercury Glass collection and glittery snowflakes plus some ornaments inspired by our beach side home.  This year I upped the frosty feeling by weaving in white feather boas among the branches - it was a beautiful glowy snowy effect!!

Awhile back I had scooped up some beautiful multi-tiered serving dishes from Home Goods and couldn't wait to use them for a beautiful dessert display.  For this party, I was very excited to use them to create an all winter white Dessert Bar!  I paraded them 3 in a row down the center of a runner so they could double as decoration!

Here are some "Winter White Dessert Bar" Suggestions...

• Sugar Cookies
• Mini Vanilla Cupcakes
• Powdered Donut Holes or Mini Donuts
• Merangues
• White Chocolate Covered Pretzels
• White M&M's
• White Chocolate Truffles
• Kettle Corn

My latest cocktail obsession is St. Germain liquor!  For the feature cocktail of the evening, I poured up glasses of chilled Champagne, topped them off with some St. Germain and dropped in a few raspberries!  The drink was refreshing and a huge hit!  While sipping cocktails, nothing is better in the winter than a cozy fire!  We don't have a fireplace, but my boyfriend was excited to get the bonfire pit going for guests to gather around!

Happy 4th of July!

A beautiful weekend with great friends and a few American classics...


Plus my favorite cocktail this summer: The Dark N' Stormy...
(1/2 can ginger beer, 1.5 oz. Dark Jamaican Rum, mix with ice & lime)

Let Them Eat Cookies

This year I celebrated my birthday with a fabulous brunch followed by a rooftop bar hop! For the brunch, I mixed up my guests a bit with the use of fun place cards. I printed each guests name on a strip of stiff paper, folded them in half, cut the ends to look like a flag and tacked them together with a small bit of glue. I opened up multicolored cocktail umbrellas, threaded them through the flags and poked each of them into a ripe clementine. They were easy and really brightened up the table without cluttering it with flowers or any other type of centerpiece, plus they were a great treat at the end of the meal!

Ok maybe the birthday girl was the centerpiece! ;)


And forget cake... we enjoyed adorable cookies from Eleni's NYC! They ship anywhere!