Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Holiday Party: Snowflakes

For the past several years, our good friends have a holiday party to celebrate the season with good food and friends.  This year, I helped with the decor and had a blast!  We provided a few desserts (like some delicious peppermint patty balls) and asked the guests to bring a dish to share.  The colors were blue and white with pops of red.  We hung puffs from the ceiling and placed small snowflakes throughout the house.  A fun find was a felt snowflake table runner we used on the coffee table.  This small touch of snow was on sale and perfect for tying the rooms together!
 The main activity for the party was a cookie bar.  We made simple sugar cookies and frosting and had guests decorate their own.  Because the party guests were all ages, this was a big hit!  The kids loved it and the parents appreciated having something festive for their kids to do.
 We sent each family home with a bag (or two) of homemade puppy chow.... the snack, not the real thing.  It was a delicious and inexpensive small thing to say thank you for coming.  We used blue cello bags with red ribbon tied around them.  I found a bag of little wooden white snowflakes in the craft section at Michael's and hot glued them on to tie into the snowflake theme.
We had a great time planning this gathering and a great time attending!  Guests enjoyed the casual atmosphere, good food and friends!  It was a perfect way to kick off the holiday season.

What are your holiday party plans?

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Shower Sunday: Blackberry Pie & Cocoa

I love baby showers!  They are so fun and the themes are endless.  My sister-in-law is expecting a baby girl and we were so excited to plan her shower.  The inspiration for this shower came in the strangest form - dessert!  Kaysee loves blackberry pie and the colors were perfect for a baby girl shower.

All of the decorations came together perfectly!  We kept the decor simple with lots of small things making a beautiful tablescape.  The home decor of the hostess just so happened to fit perfectly.  Purple napkins, raspberry pink and purple M&Ms, red and purple mugs, fun pink & purple tissue paper puffs and a soft, purple blanket draped over a white tablecloth for a pop of color and texture to the table.
For drinks, we again kept it simple.  For an evening shower (7:00-9:00pm) in November, hot cocoa was the perfect warm beverage.  We had four flavors of cocoa (regular, dark, mint and salted caramel), three flavors of marshmallows, whip cream, sprinkles and crushed candy canes for toppings. Delicious!
Our inspiration was blackberry pie - so obviously, that's what we served for dessert.  Delicious at any temperature, we made the pies earlier in the day to avoid a time crunch.  They were delicious!  Serving only one dessert choice made the menu simple and delicious.
We kept our activities simple, too.  I don't know many moms-to-be who really enjoy the typical shower games.  They can often be awkward for guests, too.  We had three activities - the first two were as close to "shower games" as we got.
This final activity was harder than I anticipated!  We each wrote down wishes for Addison and Kaysee collected them for her memory box.  This activity would only work for moms that want to remember by keeping mementos.  I printed out extras for people who were not at the shower to fill out.
 Finally, we included a "station" for addressing your thank you card.  Even if you say you don't, most guests do like to receive thank you cards from the mom-to-be.  This makes it a little easier for mom.
Overall, it was a great shower!  It was small, but beautiful - fun, but simple.  
We're so excited for Baby Addison to arrive!
It's in the small things!