A Sweet Baby Shower

With only a few more days to go until our little one arrives, I thought it was time to share pictures from my baby shower which was held a few weeks ago. I was honored with the pure joy of family and friends gathered to celebrate our little baby on the way. I am seriously the luckiest girl and have such great family and friends who traveled from Northern California just to attend and my sister who flew from Florida so that she wouldn’t miss the day – seriously blessed! All of the decorations in the world can’t compared to the love that filled the room as the shower wouldn’t be the same without these people there.

The invitations were one of the my favorite elements of the shower. I wanted them to be simple and classy with just a touch of baby. Because we are not finding out the gender of the baby, this made it difficult to incorporate gender neutral colors. While we could have gone with something more neutral such as green or yellow, I ultimately love pink and wanted to incorporate that color into the shower, so we settled on baby blue and blush pink.

As I mentioned before, my family is a 7 hour drive away but they were still just as invovled as if they lived right around the corner.  We made the invitations ourselves, while my Mom printed the envelopes and glued the envelope liners.  I love the classic look of envelope seals and thought this would be the perfect touch of baby. At our wedding 3 years ago, we created a candy buffet which I loved so much, so I wanted to create a station where guests could pick dessert items as they wished. For the baby blocks, my Mom and I found unpainted wooden ABC blocks at Hobby Lobby. I had Ryan scrape off one of the “C”‘s and glued a “Y” on instead. We used white hyngragea’s in decorated glass vases.

The wonderful ladies at Sweet & Saucy made the adorable carrot cake which I loved so much I didn’t want to cut into it.

Above the gift table, I displayed my weekly pictures which I have been taking since week 8. Because my family does not live close by and cannot see the baby’s progress I began taking these so they could see the growth throughout my pregnancy. I decided it might be a fun way for guests to also track the progress.

As I mentioned before, I love decorating with pink, so my Mom had to continuously remind me to use blue as well. She found these plates at Kirkland and because she is the best mom ever, she picked up 25 plates for us to use. I made salted carmel macrons for each guest to enjoy and placed them in the mini dessert cups.   

I am not a huge fan of traditional baby shower games, but the celebrity game never gets old. I took 15 celebrity baby bumps and using Photoshop put my head over their face. Guests had to guess who the celebrity bump was!

I loved the idea of a onesie decorating station which I had seen on many other blogs, but when it came down to it my Mom had a good point which was, “Shan, you are going to have so many cute baby clothes, I can’t really see you putting your kid in one of these homemade onesies.” Which, well, is true. She brainstormed different ideas and came up with a onesie cookie decorating station. “Perfect”, I said!

I made a double batch of sugar cookies using this recipe (which made about 40 onesie cookies total) the weekend before and froze them. I was nervous that they weren’t going to be fresh, as I had never froze the cookies before, but thankfully, I couldn’t even tell a difference and they tasted as if they were just baked. I made 6 different colors of royal icing which was more than enough and filled them in 12oz bottles.

Each guest decorated a sugar cookie which was placed on the voting paper for everyone to cast their vote for the favorite cookie.

My sister ended up with the winning cookie!!!!!!! Seriously, some of the cookies turned out awesome. Once the cookies were dried, we packaged them up for each guest to take home. 

I was so blessed to have so much love at the baby shower and to have so many family and friends in the same room all together to celebrate our little one with us.  So many people came together to help pull off such an amazing event. It seriously could not have been done without the help of everyone involved.

xoxo

DIY | Love Story Beverage Tray

If you remember, we hosted a bridal shower for my sister-in-law a few months ago posted here. One of the many projects was a beverage tray for the champagne buffet.  When I couldn’t find a tray that matched the theme, I resorted to making my own {actually, I made two}! The best part, the whole cost of the project was under $14!

Because my hands were full of either paint or glue, I was not able to take step-by-step pictures, but in short…

SUPPLIES:
– Wooden tray from Michaels – $3 with 40% off coupon
– Mod Podge – $6
– Paint Brush – free
– Gold Stamp Pad– free
– Custom Paper {psd or .jpg} – free
– Paint – I used an ivory acrylic paint– $1.79
– Sand Paper {not pictured} – free
– Twine {not pictured} – free
– Hot Glue {not pictured} – free

DIRECTIONS
– Download paper from links above {or use your own}
– Print paper onto 11×17 paper and cut to fit inside of tray
– Paint wooden tray
– Sand edges to give a worn look
– Apply light amounts of gold (I used an ink pad) to sanded edges and wipe off excess
– Place paper inside of tray to test fit. Remove paper and apply a thin layer of mod podge to bottom of tray. Place paper into bottom of tray pressing out any air bubbles. Let dry.
– Apply one or two layers of mod podge to top of paper to give it a “seal”.
– Wrap twine around handles for accent and hot glue the end making sure the twine end stops on the backside of the handle.
– Grab drinks and place onto tray for display!

xoxo

Bridal Shower | Love Story

It seems as if from the first day she walked into our lives she became family. Corynne’s first time meeting the family was during our family portrait — yikes! Of all situations to meet your future in laws, I am sure this may be one of the worst, but Corynne was gracious, loving, and won over our hearts. There could not be a better girl for my little brother and I am so happy for their upcoming wedding in July.

We started the wedding festivities off with a “Love Story” themed bridal shower. My Mom, sister, and I started planning this bridal shower months ago, but we do not all live in the same town so coordination was key!  We wanted to incorporate many vintage details because we had leftover decorations from my own wedding so it would save on costs and fit perfectly with the venue, my parent’s home which is modeled after French country influences.

The chalkboard frame was purchased from the Santa Monica flea market. The actual chalkboard was made using masonite and chalkboard paint purchased from Home Depot. (If you measure your dimensions beforehand Home Depot will even cut the masonite for you!)

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to work with vintage books. I fell in love with the cupcake liner pomanders and decided to incorporate books into the design.  Here is a tutorial on my pomander process.

As for the books, I searched several antique shops in the area and came home empty handed. I tried a used book store and found  several linen covered books with the dust jacket still on and therefore not the “old” look I was going for. To give them the vintage distressing they needed, I used sand paper to give the edges a worn look. This saved me a lot of money because I was not paying antique prices.

The bride arrived driven by her fiancé in my Mom’s 1940’s MG TC. An MG TC is actually the car that Ryan O’Neil drove in the movie “Love Story.”

One of the games we played was titled “Crazy Little Game Called Love” in which celebrity wedding photographs were used and the faces of the celebrities were replaced with the face of the bride and groom using Photoshop (Yes, they take as long make as the sentence to explain it!). Each guest received a packet of “playing cards” and a sheet in which to write down their guess.  It was great to see the Mom’s who all knew Grace Kelly’s wedding but were completely clueless when it came time to guess Carrie from Sex and the City.

I spent the first part of the year learning to master the craft of french macaron’s so that I could make for this event. My Mom bought Annie Rigg’s Macaron book from Anthropologie for me and I am proud to say I successfully made 30 vanilla ganache macarons!  

Each guest’s place setting was set with a vintage paper flower. I bought the flowers from Jardin de Papier on Etsy and assembled them myself. My Mom purchased the pink “Love” plates during Valentine’s Day from several TJ Maxx’s around the area.

Instead of a “Marriage Advice for the Bride” we decided to make a “Love Story” book where guest were asked to describe their own love story or write the love story of Corynne and Nick.  This was really sweet for the bride to be able to have all of her guests, including her Moms’ Love Story on paper for her to look back on. 

The best gift of the day goes to Michele, the bride’s Mother, who decided to give her daughter this book…naturally it provided for some good show and tell and lots of laughs!

I also wanted a champagne infusion station where guests would be able to mix together their favorite champagne drink. My Mom bought champagne and peeled the labels off to make our own “branded” bottles. I made labels which read “Love Story”, “Once Upon a Time”, and “Happily Ever After”. We used old wine bottles for the peach nectar and orange juice and used a corresponding design on the juice labels.

We ended the day with mini homemade chocolate mousse desserts and a 3-tiered pink cake masterpiece created by Shirley a San Juan School District’s ROP bakery teacher! 

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 20

Beautiful Mom, beautiful baby, can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday!

XOXO

XOXO

XOXO

XOXO

Friday Picture of the Week | Week 18

There is nothing I love more than a girlie bridal shower! I mean, seriously, it’s one of the only events where pink is fully embraced, mini desserts are ooh’d and ahhh’d over, and girlie the dress the better!  A few weeks ago, my family hosted a bridal shower for a soon-to-be-bride and my future sister-in-law, Corynne. Here is just one of the fabulous details that we put together and stay tuned for more pink cakes, mini dessert cups, fun dresses, and champagne! Guys, I am sure you are only waiting on the edge of your seat to see more!

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Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 14

Why only save it for special occasions when every day is special…

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Summer Series | Part II

nothing like spring tulips to welcome summer

 

kim’s surprise birthday bash.

Our favorite starlet celebrated her 30th birthday two weeks ago with a surprise party organized by her amazing husband Chris. Word on the street is that Kim has never been surprised before — in Elementary school her friends came to drag her out of bed to surprise her but when they arrived she was already ready!!!!! I think he pulled off a successful surprise and quite a party!!!

 

And here she is – the birthday girl arriving at her party!

 

never too old to play dress up.

In order to get a few new pictures for my Dad’s photography website (www.kevingeorgephotography.com), I decided it would be fun to organize a mini-photoshoot! I recruited a few picture loving girls, picked up some of my favorite spring flowers, created a few amazing accessories (check out the flower headbands!), and told my Dad to snap away at all the beauty!

Here was the inspiration board created to give everyone involved the overall vision of the shoot: * sorry, I did not keep track of where all these images are from, but I know some are Jose Villa, Duet Weddings, Style Me Pretty

The day was filled with sunshine and lots of girlieness which always means lots of laughter! I think all the pink, flowers, and hairspray scared any potential snakes away because, thankfully, they all decided to stay home that day!

Although this shoot was set-up for my Dad, I just just couldn’t pass up the chance to take a few pictures myself! These girls were definitely channeling their inner top model and really poured on the fierceness!

See why I was so excited to share! These girls looked totally stunning and everything turned out beautiful! A big thank you to Corynne, Melissa, Kelsey, and Mom!

So Much Girly in One Clutch

This morning I sat down to my computer with my coffee and started my usual visits to the morning websites: Coco + Kelley, Etsy, Style Me Pretty (I know, I really should stop looking at this, but they feature such amazing weddings I can’t help myself), and a little celeb gossip Perez Hilton. I came across these totally cute clutches that I am dying to own! I am actually dying to buy one so that I can take it apart and learn how to make them myself! These are a perfect mix of sophisticated girly!

Range in price from $80-155

The clutches are all designed by two sisters Fumi and Himi Bull who started the company called Davie & Chiyo.  The clutches can be bought from their store on Etsy or their website, www.davieandchiyo.com.