I’m a mom and with that I wear many hats, one of which is a semi-professional online shopper. Okay, maybe not so much a profession as it is an addiction, but what’s not to love about the convenience of online commerce? Computer, iPhone, iPad…I’ve got the one-handed-browse-and-purchase routine down. Luckily, I’m also a bargain hunter…most of the time.

So in honor of Mother’s Day approaching on May 12th, I put together this board with some of my favorite online items for the mom in your life – whether it’s yourself, your mom, friends who are moms, or a mom-like figure…here are a few things that can show you care – with just a click of a mouse. Easily send a personalized Mother’s Day Card {2} from Treat.com (the newest member to the Shutterfly and TinyPrints family), personalize and buy online and they’ll even mail to your recipient for you – how amazing is that? As much as I love the online world, nothing beats getting a card in the real mail. Speaking of loving things, have you noticed the macaron {3} trend lately? Now these beautiful and delicious treats can be ordered and mailed…fabulous, right? And if your looking for a little freebie, download my Celebrate Mom printable banner for a little festive decor (each letter is individual – so use for other occasions, too!). Resource guide to all the items shown is below the image. Happy shopping and Happy early Mother’s Day to all you mamas out there! xo



{Resources} 1. Vintage Pinboard. $39.95 | 2. Greeting Cards from Treat.com, $1.99+ :: birthday :: mother’s day | 3. La Petite Sucre Macarons, $22+, photo credit La Petite Sucre | 4. Summer Tote, $148.00 | 5. Free Celebrate Mom – Free Printable Banner, Le Partie Sugar | 6. Ikat Apron, $36.95 | 7. Tiramasu French Toast Recipe, photo credit How Sweets Eats

This summer I’ve had the pleasure of working on several custom projects for brides. From shower invitations to wedding materials to planning and styling bridal party dinners, it’s all been so much fun! Today I’m sharing the invitations I designed for a Champagne Bridal Shower. The hostesses wanted to throw a sophisticated shower to celebrate the bride’s impending nuptials – and nothing says ‘celebrate’ better than popping some bubbly! The invitations complemented the bride’s navy and white wedding colors, and were designed with a wrap-around band reading “bubbly and bliss”, which when removed revealed all the shower details. Enjoy the photos!

On Monday I shared with you the Christmas Partie Kit, and today I’m thrilled to share this New Year’s Eve kit – which happens to be featured on Daily Candy today (along with the Christmas Partie Kit and Hanukkah Partie Kit)! What a thrill to have such a great feature, and I really hope these kits can help with your party planning and truly let you be the hostess with the mostess! So without further ado, here is the NYE Partie Kit channeling a bit of a hollywood regency style in a classic black, white and gold color scheme. Say hello to 2012 in style with these invitations and a partie kit that contains plenty of signs and labels for all your festivities. Party styling tips and suggestions for hosting a NYE bash are below the pictures!

And here are some tips for hosting your New Year’s Eve Party this year using this partie kit:

• Bubbly Bottle Swap – Have your guests each bring a bottle of their favorite bubbly to the party. Upon arriving, guests will sign their bottle and on the way out they’ll take someone else’s favorite for celebrating a milestone or event in 2012.
• Countdown Station – Have a countdown station set up with lots of New Year’s Eve party accessories like noise makers, party poppers, sparklers and confetti for the 2012 countdown at midnight.
• Food and Drink – Since this party will be going past midnight it’s a good idea to start this party around 8:00pm, after dinner time. Have plenty of hors d’oeuvres and beverages around for guests to mingle, nibble and sip their way to midnight!
• Favors – Send your guests off with breakfast for the morning. I suggest packing oatmeal to-go in these cute muslin bags. Fill your bags first with sliced almonds, cranberries and golden raisin, then the oatmeal (this way when your guest pours it out the next morning the oatmeal will be on the bottom).

I’ve been working on some holiday partie kits the past few weeks, and excited to share with you the Christmas Invitation and Christmas Partie Kit today. There are a variety of components from food labels to more formal dinner napkin menu wraps, water bottle wraps to favor bag toppers and more. So whether you’re hosting a neighborhood Christmas Open House or a more formal family Christmas Dinner, this printable invitation and partie kit gives you the all the tools you need! Available now on my Etsy Shop, a la carte items start at $12 and the entire customized printable kit is $40 – a PDF file with all your customized items is emailed within 48 – 72 hours of purchase and you can print as many as you need!

And some tips for planning and styling your Christmas party:

• Have a selection of drinks pre-made and poured for your guests, so they can easily grab something upon arriving. Starting with champagne or champagne cocktail (such as this Pear-Rosemary Sparkler) is a festive way to get guests in the holiday spirit, plus it’s easy to make!
• Set up a “party triangle”, to keep your guests moving around the room. I like to have drinks in one area, appetizers in another, then a  seating area with a few easy to grab appetizers (like nuts or a small cheese tray).
• Be specific on your invite, let people know what they can expect in terms of food & drink. If you’re planning to do hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, specify that on the invite so they can come ready to just nibble and not expect a full meal.
  

  
  

With Thanksgiving only 10 days away, I guess it’s about time I shared the printable Thanksgiving Dinner Partie Kit available on my Etsy shop. The kit is customizable for your menu and guests, and since it’s printable it can be ordered up until the day before! And in the spirit of giving, don’t forget to send your guests home with some delicious Thanksgiving leftovers in these kraft to-go boxes. Complete list of items included in the kit below the photos.

The Thanksgiving Partie Kit includes:

- 5″ x 7″ Dinner Menu Card, customized with your dinner items

- 5″ x 7″ Drink Menu Card, customized with your drink items

- 2″ Circle “Happy Thanksgiving” Topper, perfect for cupcakes, pies or favor tags

- 2″ Circle Leftover Tag, customized with guest’s first name

- 1.5″ Initial Drink Tag Circle, customized with guest’s first initial

- 3″ x 2″ Food Labels, customized with your Appetizer and/or Dessert items {can also be used as placecards for table}

- Three Water Bottle Label Wraps

All items are available on my Etsy Shop as part of the kit or a la carte. Happy Thanksgiving!

I love to use custom drink wraps for water bottles at parties. They are an easy way to carry the theme into your food and drink. Once you have your custom labels, there are several ways to to adhere them to the water bottle – and after some trial and error I’ve found that a simple two-sided tape is the easiest way to do it! Below are my instructions for applying bottle labels – try it out this Halloween with my FREE Halloween Water Bottle Labels {click here to begin download}. Perfect for those of you throwing a Halloween Party this weekend!



To start you’ll need water bottles, water bottle labels {download my Free Halloween labels here}, Tape Runner XL or double-sided tape, and Fiskars Paper Trimmer or scissors.




And here are some of my learning experiences from previous trial & error:

Alright, here we go with Part 2 of the Backyard Baby-Q Bash breakdown! Today I’m focusing on the decor, favors and games. I’ll share the menu cards and food displays in tomorrow’s “Food + Drink” post, even though it’s kinda all part of the decor. If you missed it, be sure to check out the invitations and party overview! click on the But back to the breakdown…the shower was in the backyard, with the best way to get there through the front door. So we had paper luminaries lining the walkway up to the door and a sign directing people to the back.

There were about 60 people attending the couples shower, and there were three spaces for the guests to gather. I had three round tables with 12 chairs each for people who wanted to grab a seat, there were two cocktail tables for the standers and in the very back there was a heated white tent with lounge seating which was perfect for the loving grandparents who attended. It was pretty chilly that day, and a family friend was sweet to set it up the tent for us earlier in the day. I had a few different pieces pulled together for the shower (vintage pieces for serving tables and rented pieces for seating), so to tie it all together I used lots of burlap.

I used one of their baby gifts (the navy crib) to house all their other baby gifts. It was a fun way for the guests to see where the baby would be sleeping, and everyone was totally in love with the idea of a navy crib.

Next to the gift “table” was the antique writing desk holding the party favors and one of the games. The party favors were “S’more Kits for Two”, inside each box there were four graham crackers wrapped in bag sealed with a navy sticker and delicious dark chocolate squares and marshmallows in a bag tied with jute. The special part of these favors was the instruction card for heating the s’mores in the oven WITH the a note about giving “s’more love to baby” by signing up to bring the dreary-eyed new parents a meal via MealBaby.com. I love MealBaby and knew the people they loved were at the shower and would be the ones interested in bringing them some food once baby arrived!

My sister and brother-in-law preferred no “traditional” baby shower games, so I designed a Mad Libs style advice card for guests to complete. It was a great way for guests to be involved (the guys even liked it!) and we had a blast reading them back the next day!

Since it was a couples shower I wanted to make sure there was an activity for the men who attended, so off to the side we had a game of cornhole. If you’re not from the Indiana, it’s a Midwest lawn game staple where players take turns throwing cornhole bags (bags filled with feed corn) at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. I promise it’s way more fun that it sounds…and it wasn’t just the men getting in on the cornhole action!

In addition to vintage furniture pieces, lots and lots of burlap and tons of heating lamps, we used lots of mood lighting for after sunset hours. There were globe lights strung around the party area, lots of mason jars filled with candles on the tables and even handmade mason jar lanterns hanging from the trees (thanks to my sweet dad who hung the lights and even made the lanterns).

That’s it for today. Hard to believe I still have more to talk about for this party…but I do! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on the Food + Drink.

So all this baby shower planning I’m in the middle of right now got me thinking about how amazing it was when a friend brought over food during the first few weeks we had our son. So for those of you planning to deliver a meal to some new, dreary-eyed parents here is a free, ready-to-print Meal Instruction Label with space for the name of the dish, heating instructions and a note. There are three color options available, with the wording on the green version more general so it could even be used when delivering a meal to a friend who is sick or recovering from surgery.




And if you’re looking to do some extra goodwill, check out Meal Baby to organize and help plan the meals for your friend. Meal Baby is a free, meal-registry service that let’s friends and family sign-up to deliver food on specific days and time – so no more trying to coordinate when and who is bringing stuff over, it’s all online!  You can even list food allergies, favorite foods or foods to avoid so friends don’t have to guess when taking over breakfast, lunch or dinner. How cool is that?

My oh my, my baby sister is having a boy! Which makes this invite I’m sharing today very special to me, as it was designed for her and her husband’s fall baby shower. I know, I know, you’re thinking “isn’t it a little late in the year for a BBQ?”. And I thought about that, but I decided that the early fall is actually perfect timing. The weather is cool and crisp (no one is baking under the sun), and the fall harvest is just starting to peak with amazing food options like fall squash, pies, hot cider, s’mores and more!

Anyway, back to the invitations. I looked at a lot of retro signage (thanks to Pinterest), which is where I found my inspiration for the type. I knew I wanted the details to feel like a vintage carnival poster with different type combinations fully justified. Since there was a lot going on with the type, I kept it to one color and used the polka-dot envelope liner to add a little pop. To incorporate a bit of a rustic element I used kraft paper for my envelope. The invites are available as a digital ready-to-print file or fully-assembled (as pictured) on my Etsy shop. A full party description to come very soon, for now enjoy these pictures.

I’m so excited to share this Milk and Cookies Sprinkle invite with you! This was designed for my friend throwing a “sprinkle” for a girlfriend having her third baby…finally a little girl! Given it is the third baby, she wanted a casual gathering where the mama-to-be could be sprinkled with some sweet pink things. And what could be more perfect than nibbling on some milk and cookies while unwrapping pretty, frilly bows and pink onesies?

The invites channel a retro vibe, and I can already envision the glass milk bottles and warm cookies that will be at the sprinkle. A finer pink pinstripe is carried through to the back (don’t you love flipping an invite over for another surprise?). The envelopes were kept simple, with a telegram-inspired label printed directly on the envelope.

I also designed these two additional color combinations (aqua/orange and yellow/grey), and all three are available on my Etsy shop – wording can be adjusted for a baby shower or sprinkle. I’m working on some coordinating party pieces for my friend to use, and will have those available after her party in a few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy the invites and look for a post next week on a Milk and Cookies Inspiration Board – so you can get your creative juices flowing for the next baby shower or sprinkle!