Animals in the Park

This weekend I enjoyed a sweet day in Central Park, NYC celebrating my girlfriend's new baby!  It was a wonderfully casual gathering of friends for a potluck picnic under the guise of a baby shower!

The mommy-to-be loves animals so we made sure to include little animal details here and there.  I picked up some balloons so fellow guests could easily find our little party under some shade trees and weighed them down with a couple of cute stuffed animals for the baby.

One of my favorite, easiest ways to add a festive pop and tie in a theme is with custom party stickers!!  I have mentioned them in previous posts and made some more for this special occasion with little animal characters plus the occasion and date.  The stickers were used to make custom food picks, straws, and decorate the favor bags!  One of the talented guests baked up some large animal shaped cookies for yummy favors for us to take home, slipping each one inside a clear cello bag sealed with a party sticker.

My contribution to the potluck was an easy riff on a cheese platter: kabob style perfect for picking up and sharing!  I combined green grapes with white cheddar cheese cubes and cherry tomatoes with mini mozzarella balls rolled in herbs on skewers - yum!  Other potluck items were egg salad sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches, fresh berries, cupcakes, and a homemade apple pie.  Plus there were three different types of pickles, in case someone was having a craving...

The mommy's sister-in-law strung up a clothes line between the trees and handed out colorful baby t-shirts and onesies on clipboards for us to decorate with iron-set crayons.  Everyone had a lot of fun designing the new little baby's wardrobe!!

They all came out adorable and the parents-to-be voted on their favorites for prizes! My penguin design was a special request from the mommy-to-be so I was a shoe in!

A little game we played was guess how many animal crackers in the big baby bottle... would you believe 287 fit in there!?!  And the winner was......... the mommy-to-be!

Sip of Summer

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right" ~ Mark Twain

*Cheers!*

I had a lovely visit this weekend from my friend Claire over at Gibson King and we enjoyed trying out a recipe she had saved on one of her amazing Pinterest boards.  Lately, I've been obsessed with these refreshing cocktail ingredients: Champagne, St. Germain, Cucumbers, Mint - so why not throw them all together for the perfect Summer Cocktail?!  Yes please!!  Whip some up and save me a glass:

Toss 4-6 thin cucumber slices and 2-3 "bruised" mint leaves into a glass with a few ice cubes.  Fill glass a bit more than halfway with Champagne and top with a splash (or two!) of St. Germain.  Give a quick stir and enjoy!

I also got to try out my new cocktail ice cube tray - ah the little things!  I'm sure this could be made "pitcher" style too - fantastic for brunches and showers!

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

A Good Vintage

Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words. - Plautus

One of my best friends is getting married and this is cause for celebration! Her bridesmaids and I threw her an intimate shower at a rustic vineyard for a wonderful afternoon surrounded by friends and family. The color of the bride's beautiful engagement ring, aquamarine, was inspiration for many of the little handmade touches.  Photo Credit: My good friend Joan of Applesky Photography took all of the beautiful photographs for the day including a mini engagement shoot of the happy couple in the vineyard after the shower!

For contrast and to soften the rustic setting, we created some simple feminine decorations. Swinging from the rafters were tissue paper puffs in multiple shades of aqua. Create a puff by cutting 3 layers of tissue paper in half and stack for a total of 6 layers, then accordion fold the layers - about 1" folds. After folding, tie at the center with wire or ribbon, and cut the ends into a point or half rounds. Pull up each layer one at the time, fluffing into a ball.  Hung on the walls were faux vintage pendant banners, instead of messing with fabrics and sewing, I went to the craft store and selected a few fabric print scrap-booking papers, cutting them into triangles. I attached the paper triangles to an aqua ribbon with some brass fasteners. I used leftover papers for labeling the buffet food (held up by wine corks like in a previous post) and for custom cupcake wrappers to tie it all together.

As guests arrived and mingled, they were treated to a wine tasting. One of the little activities at the shower was a "Guess how many corks in the jar" game with the winner receiving a bottle of wine from the vineyard to take home! Every guest received a keepsake wine glass with the name of the vineyard filled with custom chocolates made by one of the bridesmaids.

On each table was a custom labeled wine bottle accompanied by a silver paint marker that doubled as a guest book. Each label (printed by one of the bridesmaids to match the invites) said "One Month Anniversary", "3 Month Anniversary" etc. for the newlyweds to open throughout their first few years and read the well wishes written on the bottles from their loved ones.


I printed up some custom stickers (as described in a previous post) to match the invites and with the Bride and Groom's initials to make the desserts extra sweet!

An Elephant Never Forgets

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know. - Groucho Marx

Sometimes life sneaks up on you, including parties! A friend of mine was set to hostess a baby shower in her back patio on a sunny weekend in DC but only got as far as picking the theme and menu when the party was suddenly upon her! I was up in NJ so I couldn't run around and do the shopping for her (as much as I would have loved to!) plus there was no time to order or ship anything. So instead, I whipped up some simple printable decorations that I could email and she could print and assemble to create an adorable baby blue elephant baby shower!


Items like these are readily available to purchase on sites like etsy but you can also make your own with programs like Adobe PhotoShop or Illustrator and Microsoft Office Word. The simplest item I made that had the most impact was custom stickers the hostess used for everything from food picks to napkin rings to customizing favors. I downloaded a template from Avery to layout the images and had the hostess purchase the same sticker sheets (Avery Round Labels, 20 per sheet - Product #8293) from an office supply store.

Other items included a coordinating pendant sign - just cut out the triangles and tape to some ribbon and little pop up centerpieces - just cut out, 3 folds and a piece of tape!  These custom touches allowed the hostess to just pick up some simple solid color items found anywhere to tie it all together!