"Tickled Pink" Baby Shower

A couple weekends ago, I had the chance to help out with a baby shower for cute little AMY EVANS. She is not only a friend, she serves in YW with me, & is my sons 2nd grade teacher. She is just a doll!! Love her! Was so excited when she announced that she was preggers with her first baby and even more excited when she announced it was a GIRL!! Poor thing...I called dibs on helping with her shower about 5 minutes after she posted the sex of the baby news on Facebook!

My house {filled with 4 boys}, is defiantly lacking in pink!! I get a little bit of a 'GIRLY' fix since I serve in YW but always love when I get a chance to let my girly side let loose.

 

Amy won't have a nursery quite yet, but had sent me pictures via Pinterest of the nurseries that she liked. All of which were in the colors of raspberry, watermelon & aqua blue. Here is the invite that I came up with to match those colors.

I'm kind of a theme girl. More for the sake of my sanity than for any other reason. As I plan a party, having a theme helps me organize my thoughts and pull it all together.

So for Amy's shower I came up with

"TICKLED PINK~IT'S A GIRL!"

I had cut put paper into flowers & butterflies & asked guests to write wishes, words of wisdom & advice on them & then hang on the wishing tree that greeted them in my foyer as they arrived.

Here is what it looked like at the end of the shower when it was full.

Here is a look at the gift table. My friend RACHEL BLASER made the adorable tutu banner. Didn't it turn our cute? and oh so girly!!

Here is a look at the serving table

 

~Pre Food~

 

~Post Food~

The LADY who did the food, is a friend of mine & also Amy's aunt.

The food was AH-MAY-ZING!! We are talking gourmet menu. It not only sounded good but tasted better! I'm not a fan of planning the food so I was happy that she took that portion of the shower over. Thanks Risa!!

 

 

 

 For drinks, we served 3 different types of *PINK* lemonade. I had also bought hot pink straws and made custom water bottles for the drinks {which were applied by my friend BRITTANY BARNARD}.

Misc. ACCENTS

For accents, I think it's ALL in the small details. So I  added coordinating scrapbook paper & ribbon to candles that I already had. I also bought bunches of flowers in different shades of pink from the dollar tree and then put them in Ball jars that I dyed blue. Yep!! I dyed Ball jars blue...who knew?!

Here are the ones that I did...

Here is the tutorial that I followed. It was actually REALLY simple to do!

Amy's Country Corner Tutorial

I had found a couple of cute free printable online over at

Seriously Daisies

that I just printed and framed in white frames.

 

I also made some pinwheels that we hung around the shower.

Of course we HAD to do a baby clothes line.

And FINALLY...the FAVORS!! 

 My GREAT friend, JAMIE PIEPER, put together Raspberry Vanilla Bath Salts for every guest to take as they left. They were pink...{of course}...and put them in empty baby food jars. DARLING!!

 

 

Everything about the shower turned out wonderful!! I have to say one more thank you to all the ladies who helped put this shower together: Brittany, Jamie, Risa, Amanda & Rachel (left before we took the picture). It was just FABULOUS and the perfect way to celebrate Amy & baby girl Evans!!

UPDATE: I am adding copies of the files that I used for signs, etc at the shower. To download, just right click on the image you want, then save to your computer.

Everyone is welcome to use it. Please, if you post to your blog/site, link the file back to my blog. Thanks!!

 

 

 

 

My *FIRST* Reception

Because I could go on and on...I'm going to TRY to keep the words to a minimum. Let me start by saying that back in October, I decided (after MUCH coaxing from friends, thought & consideration) to start hiring out my services as a "consult" for weddings & home decor. I LOVE to do this anyway, so why not?!

Anyway, my first *OFFICIAL* reception was for a YW who I have known since she was about 10. She happened to be one of my YW, babysat my kids, helped me as a youth consult for LDS prom...and now she was getting MARRIED!?! {it was a moment when I realized I was getting old}. So I was HONORED to help out!! Here are the pics of how it turned out.
 

Lovely "LOVE" Luncheon

I KNOW! I am SOOOO behind in posting on this blog. It's sad really. But I wanted to share what I've been doing that's been keeping me too busy to post.

Back in September, a friend of mine {TRACY LOVE}, called and asked if she could hire me to help out with her sons wedding luncheon. HECK YES!! I LOVE party planning & decorating. It is one of my favorite things. And to think...I could get paid for it!

Well...OF COURSE I'd be interested in that.

The wedding was to be the Friday before Thanksgiving (11.16.13). Best of all, the wedding planner in charge of the reception was my freind Shauna!! So excited to work on the wedding plans with her.

You see, there is a back story to Shauna & I. We had both been in charge of the Multi-Stake LDS prom that our stakes did together. I was in charge of it in 2010 for Peoria North Stake. She in 2011 for Glendale North Stake. So we had gotten to know each other pretty well from that. :) However, we had never had the chance to work together. So I was thrilled to be working with her on this wedding. She on the reception for the brides family and I, the luncheon for the grooms family.

 

I wish I could take credit for the theme of the wedding but I couldn't...it was all Shauna & I just followed her lead. So what was the theme? Fall done in METALLICS. She had the vision of pumpkins & leaves all painting in beautiful metallic colors. LOVED IT!! 

Since I was doing the luncheon. My decor was much more casual than the reception that followed. But I still wanted it to coordinate with the reception theme. Sooo...how did I dress it down? With one of my favorite things...BURLAP of course.

Shauna & I used all the same color theme...red, black, white & metallics. But I added in burlap, to keep the luncheon much more casual.
Being that we live in the "Valley of the Sun." I suggested that we have the luncheon outside. We held it in a ramada at a church building in our stake and we could not have asked for more beautiful weather.

I set the tables up in a "U" with the Bride, Groom and their parents sitting at the hea d table. I used white table clothes as the base. Topped with cranberry toppers and then burlap runners going down each table. We placed bunches of metallic pumpkins down the table as centerpieces.

Here is a look at the serving table. Instead of burlap runners, I just placed smaller burlap toppers on the serving table to cover up the white table clothes & soften where the cranberry toppers met each other.

I placed a large grouping of the metallic pumpkins in the center as the centerpiece.

We served the food out of CASUAL platters and baskets. I wrapped mason jars with burlap & glued on a metallic leaf to serve the silverware out of.
Cute!

The only table I actually "set" with place settings was the Bride & Grooms "head" table. Again, the centerpiece was a grouping of metallic pumpkins. I put a large white pumpkin in the center with a large "L" on it for there last name of "LOVE."

 

 

At each place setting, I had white lace doily as the place mat with a clear plastic plate on it. I also had a name card, silverware wrapped in a napkin {that I tied with burlap ribbon & metallic leaf}, & and mason jar for them to drink out of.

I think my favorite thing was the name cards :)

Turned out so dang cute!!

To decorate the actual Ramada. All we did was tie up bunches of will branches & fall leaves with burlap & bronze ribbon to all the pillars of the Ramada. It was all it needed I think to pull that little bit of fall into the space. And although it was countless hours of work {spray painting pumpkins & leaves, wrapping/tying silverware, & numerous trips to Michael's & Hobby Lobby}, I had a BLAST putting it all together.

So grateful for the opportunity my friend Tracy gave me to do it!!

 

Wedding Day

Since July, I've known that one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world was GETTING MARRIED!! There are a handful of girlfriends in my life who (behind RJ) know everything about me...but Em is one of those people. Which is kind of scary that she knows me that will and has still stuck by my CrAzY after all these years.

So I was thrilled that I had the opportunity to help with the wedding.

I offered to have the wedding at my house. Although my house is small & simple...I was happy to host. Emily's sister was going to be in charge of flowers & her Mom, in charge of the food. Which left me with ONLY decorations to cover! (squeal...MY FAVE!!!) The instructions that I got from Emily was to keep it simple! The ceremony was family only-Small and intimate, and I think she wanted the decore to match. I did my best to try!

I asked for help from a mutual friend, Holly Moore. She is one of the most creative women that I know! For the last month or so, Holly & I have had a great time researching decoration online & bouncing ideas back and forth until we decided on every last detail.

Here's what we came up with...

~WELCOMING GUESTS~

This framed 'M' hung on the front door.

As guests arrived they had a chance to write notes to the happy couple on the entry way table in a small notebook I found at Ross.

I personalized the book by adding their name & wedding date in vinyl on the binding.

The table was decorated with a framed copy of their invite.

A small black sofa table adorned the hallway for guests to leave their gifts.

 Decorated with a lantern, small bundle of flowers & a custom wedding tile.

 One of my favorite details of the decorations were the small pearl buttons we attached to many of the decorations. So CUTE!!

 Hanging over the table in front of the den doors, was a printed version of Dean & Emily's "Love Story." So guests could read about their courtship.

The back patio was decorated with another sofa table & black park bench.

Even my outside sconces got a make over for the wedding. A quick coat of black paint, vase from the dollar tree and flowers.

 The table was filled with pictures of the Bride & Groom from when they were younger. As well as one large pic of them together.

 I edited the childhood pictures to be black and white with small touches of blue in each one. For Example:

(Aren't they so darn cute!! I mean Emily & Dean.)

We also filled a couple small milk glass vases with blue candy...just to add some more blue to that table.

~FAVORS~

Found small wedding bubbles on sale at Hobby lobby 50 for $5.00 so I HAD to buy them!!

Added a small tag with initials and wedding date that matched the wedding tile I made them :)

~THE CEREMONY SPACE~

30 freshly painted black wedding chairs faced a small white drapery backdrop framed in with a topiary tree & lantern on each side of it.

Large lanterns and white rose pedals decorated the aisle

 The backdrop did great until about 10 minutes before the ceremony started, when it blew over twice!! UGH!! I'm grateful for a hubby who quickly put it back together and made sure it didn't do it again by moving 2 HUGE pots behind it to brace it.

~LUNCHEON~

After the ceremony, we had a light lunch before the happy couple left for their honeymoon.

  Don't forget dessert...

 Instead of cake, Emily ordered cupcakes which were made by one of my beautiful Beehives. They were DE-LISH!! Not to mention beautiful.

 We served those on monogrammed paper plates.

 ~EATING AREAS~

(small round table outside)

 We decorated 4 tables that guests could eat at. 3 outside and 1 inside. All had black table clothes and a B&W table runner on them. The table scape was a lantern centerpiece filled with a blue candle, 2 cylinder vases (wrapped with ribbon & filled with flowers), 2 small mercury vases (with a small baby's breath arrangement), & 4 small glass votive holders (that I had decorated with vinyl-either and 'M' or a Fleur dE lis).

Because of the wind and the cold, most everyone ate inside. But the tables looked beautiful anyhow :)

Inside Kitchen table

~BATHROOM~

I really LOVE to make my bathroom match any event I have at my house.

~DETAILS~

Decorating is all in the little details...I've gathered a few pics of things that Holly and I made/created for the wedding that I LOVED!! Little things that probably no one else even noticed but I love to do.

Matching tags for all the food.

 Well Wishes sign with small jewel as the i dot.

 Vases wrapped with ribbon & jewel

 Vinyl on all of the glass votive holders

 Large candles in lanterns wrapped with ribbon and jewel

 Homemade mercury glass vases (yes!! I did them)

 Vases & flowers wrapped with ribbon and intricate paper

 Home made cupcake stands made out of my milk glass platters and glass candle stick holders. Then ribbon weaved through the edges...soooo cute!!

Tile tied with ribbon & jewel.

Congrats to the happy couple, Dean and Emily! So excited for both of you.

Thanks for the chance to help with your important day.