Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Romantic/Glitter/Sparkly Bridal Shower

It's fun to host showers that are your style, but this one was fun to do out of my "comfort zone" so to speak. All other showers have had a hint of rustic/country/vintage to them, and while this one was completely different and I really love how it all came together.

It all started with this invitation...Her theme was gold/sparkly/glitter and her colors: pink blush and gold. I knew right away I wanted to use some gold paper doilies. Those aren't as easy to find as I thought they would be!
I didn't have any designer papers that fit this theme, so did some googling and came across Erin Bradley Designs. I love her work and she had the perfect digital designs for me to print in her Pink & Gold Digital Paper Set. I printed the floral design, then ran it back through the printer and printed the info on top of that. I love how pretty it is and how it worked perfectly with my gold doilies.

With pink and gold as the color theme, I knew it needed to be "girly". I borrowed the ruffly curtain from a friend to cover the ugly marker board that is usually seen and receive lots of compliments on that accent alone!

In front of that was the food table. We used a gold plastic table cover and a fabric lace one that I got at 90% off at Dollar General in January when they were marking all their Christmas stuff down. I thought it added the perfect touch to the gold.


I also bought a gold spray paint can and used the whole can spraying things for this table. You might be able to see it better by clicking on the photo, but I bought some glass cut glasses and spray painted them gold, then glued them to some old white dishes. The three cups and plates were 10¢ each. Love happy bargains like this.

The little container holding the nuts, I found at a second hand store for 10¢...SCORE! It was already gold, but tarnished on the outside, so I sprayed (the outside only) the tin and you can see the difference in the golds. I wrapped some lovely May Arts ribbon around it and added some paper flowers.

The mints were a new recipe as well. They were butter mints and I'll post the recipe at the bottom. They were quite a hit as well. (with DH too as I had several left over to bring home)

See the gold on the pink plastic spoon? As I'm spray painting several items, it came to me to try to paint just the top of the spoon. It worked so well, that I took all the pink forks outside too and lined them up, then laid a newspaper over the part that would be touching food and sprayed the handles. This was so much fun and I've never seen this done anywhere, so was excited that I thought of something like that. Ü

The tray holding the dipped rice krispie bars, is a clear plastic tray you can get at the dollar stores. I just turned it over and spray painted the back. The gold color shone through perfectly. We have several gals that have to eat gluten free, so I wanted a snack that they could eat as well. The bars are just the regular rice krispie treat recipe and then I colored some white almond bark and dipped 1/2 the bar in to get a "pink & gold" look.
We had 3 different flavors of cupcakes to choose from: chocolate, lemon with lemon curd in the center, and vanilla. I piped the rose frosting onto all of them the same.

To add a little whimsy, we had gold straws to drink our pink lemonade with. Perfect for a hot summer day. I added some pink flags to each straw. The straws I picked up in the dollar section at Target. The tray this is all sitting on was also a dollar clear plastic tray that I spray painted the bottom with.

Here is a closer look at the forks spray painted. The gold polka dot  napkins are from Party City.

Underneath the rose jars are several layers of white tulle. The jars and tulle were borrowed from a friend's daughter's wedding decor. The roses were from a large rose bush that I got 1/2 off at Hobby Lobby. To decorate the jars, I cut 3 layers of crepe paper ribbon and then cut a fringe on each long side, overlapped the ends and tied with gold string.

The sign in table...I spray painted a jar and then added some ribbons and flowers to it.. The sign in sheet was another of the prints that came in the digital set that I used for the invites.


Friday, July 24, 2015

N*O*E*L

Today I have another Christmas in July project for you as the guest designer for Pretty Paper Pretty Ribbon. I like to look at files and try to find other ways to use them. For my project today I used 4 different files from PPPR.


The "blocks" are from their Puzzle Cube file. I opened in my Silhouette and then chose to cut the outline only. If I would have chosen to  just "cut", it would have cut markings for where to put all the little pieces to look like a Rubics Cube.

The "n" and "e" come from Fall Phrases. I just took the letters from the fall words that had an "n" and "e" and then separated them from the rest of the words so that I only cut the letters I needed.

To create the "O", I used Ornament Trio. I just used the background of the candy striped ornament. and then for the "L", I used the stocking from Christmas Stockings and flipped the stocking horizontally so that it looked like and "L". I'm thinking this stocking could also be a "J" for spelling "JOY" (flipped the other way of course Ü)


To finish the blocks off, I added designer paper behind my "N*O*E*L" letters and glued to the boxes while they were flat and then adhered the finish blocks together and added some May Arts ribbon and red and white berries. The beautiful papers are from Fancy Pants Designs' "Oh, Deer!" collection.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed this project.

Monday, July 20, 2015

rustic vintage bridal shower

This is a dual post. It is combining the next Cutting Café challenge and the next in line shower that I helped host.

The Cutting Café theme is Anything Goes (each design team member can create with any CC file they choose) and the shower's theme was rustic/vintage and we used lots of jars.

This is probably my favorite shower to date that I've done. Not only do I love the theme, I just love how everything came together. The bride also has a special place in my heart as she is marrying a young man that is not only good friends with my boys, but we have a special relationship too. A special one in the way that a mother/son have without the angst of raising a young man at times. LOL!

The invite I created uses Cutting Cafe's 13 SHAKER CARD TEMPLATES AND CUTTING FILES. The bride-to-be's wedding colors are teal and coral with hints of silver, navy, and yellow. I stretched the file out so that it would fit in a regular sized envelope. The invite size is 3.5" x 5.75". I used this jar many times and in many ways for the shower.


I also used the jar file to make banners and stretched and squatted them so that I have 4 different sizes. Here is a small one that we tied to an old wagon wheel that we had on the farm and Hannah is going to use at the reception.


 This was right when you walked in the door of where the reception was held. All the other showers were in our church gym, but this one was held at the youth group center. It is more rustic and fit the theme better.
 



Even the sign in sheet had a jar on it:

The "H" and "Z" were not only part of the decor, but part of my gift to the bride


Straws just make everything more fun! Tea and water served in jars...

You can see another longer jar banner here hanging on an old window that was in our basement. I cleaned it up and now am going to use it on the wall in my living room.
We used yarrow growing wild in the ditches and fields for the flowers

Dessert was fruit crisps made and served in jelly jars: peach, cherry, rhubarb, and blueberry. Sorry for the blurry photos!



 
Here you see the jar once more shrunk way down to make tags for each jar naming the flavor of the crisps.

We also had jars homemade vanilla, caramel, and chocolate toppings as well as chopped nuts to add to the frozen yogurt served on the crisps.



 I was so busy taking photos of the sign in and food table I forgot to take a picture of what was on the tables, so I kinda recreated it at home. It was a tree slice with a white doily and then a coral doily cut from cardstock. On that was this candle holder...


single turquoise flower in a cold coffee drink jar with coral chevron burlap and not pictured below a burlap and doily wrapped soup can with lots of white yarrow.


The cut doily and banner on the invite were cutting files from Pretty Paper Pretty Ribbon called:
Doilies 1 Cutting File and Simple Banner Shapes.

Many thanks to the gals that helped me with this shower. It was fun to pool all our vintage goodies together to create this special day for Hannah and her family and friends.

thank you for stopping by and be sure to visit the Cutting Cafe Blog on the 7th and 21st of every month to see the design team's projects in which you can leave a comment to be entered into a drawing to win 3 FREE sets of your choice from the online store.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

BFB Hiding in the Light

http://www.amazon.com/Hiding-Light-Risked-Everything-Follow/dp/1601426968


Hiding in the Light: Why I risked Everything to Leave Islam and Follow Jesus was a powerful book. The subtitle really tells it all without giving a lot of details away. This is a true story of a young Muslim girl's journey of leaving her family's faith to follow Jesus and what happened because of it.


It is so hard to understand how family can cut off another because of their beliefs and a reminder of how "easy" we really have it in America. This is an eye opener of what could come and may very well already be seeping in to our culture.


This young lady is truly an inspiration and I would strongly encourage you to read her story.


I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review

Monday, July 6, 2015

Christmas in July

We are celebrating Christmas in July over at the Cutting Cafe this week. It has been too hot here for me and I was hoping that thinking about Christmas would make it feel cooler...only worked by being in the house with the AC running. But today it IS cooler, so maybe it did work! LOL

The design team was given free reign over all the Christmas files. So much fun, but so hard to choose! I had changed my mind so many times on what to create. My ideas ran all over the gamut from cards to banners to blocks to...you get the idea. LOL. 

I finally decided to make a Peppermint Candy Box using the file by the same name. When it is holiday baking time, I will make some peppermint fudge and put in the box to gift someone.


The fun glittery peppermint accent to the center of the box was one of six fun little ornaments in a pkg that I got at Dollar General after Christmas for 10¢. I knew they would come in handy some time!

Be sure to visit the Cutting Cafe Blog on the 7th and 21st of every month to see the design team's projects in which you can leave a comment to be entered into a drawing to win 3 FREE sets of your choice from the online store.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Lilla Rose winner

Congratultions Sue  Horky, you are the Winer! Please send me your e-mail and mailing address.