'My Favorite Things' Party

As you can tell from reading my blog (and the reason this blog even exists) I love to plan parties! So this year I wanted to have a Christmas party with my girlfriends. I decided to have a "My Favorite Things" party - it's a great way to exchange gifts with friends and it not be a burden on people's already tight Christmas budgets.

How a "My Favorite Things" party works... I asked everyone to bring one of their most favorite things within a $10 budget - and then buy three of the item and bring them wrapped separately. I also asked everyone to bring their favorite appetizer or dessert to share.

My evite read - 

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes,
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
Silver white winters that melt into springs,
These are a few of my favorite things...

Think of something that you LOVE (around $10). Bring THREE of that item. We will draw names and everyone will go home with THREE new favorite things. Please wrap each gift separately.

Also, bring your favorite holiday appetizer or dessert to share. I will provide the wine and drinks. Come celebrate the holidays with a night out with the girls.

Then I started to plan what the night would look like - first, the color scheme - I found cute snow flake plates at Dollar Tree so I went with the red and white colors. I found fun decorations at Dollar Tree and at Michael's (three weeks from Christmas it was all 70% off).

Next, I thought about what fun drinks to have. I found out that the day I picked was National Hot Cocoa Day so that helped a lot - I went with a Hot Chocolate Bar - of course with everything you need to spike it a little too. I made homemade crock pot hot chocolate found here and paired it with peppermint sticks (matched color scheme too), mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and Pirouettes. To spike it I had Peppermint Schnapps and Marshmallow Vodka. I designed tags for everything to dress it up a bit and used ribbon I found at 70% off at Michael's to attach the tags.

I wanted another drink option (mostly because I wanted to use those cute paper straws - these were found at Target - $4.99). I found a red drink recipe here and called it Pomegranate Champagne. It was so fun and whimsical. I found plastic champagne glasses 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree.

And of course I had a few bottles of wine and wanted to dress them a bit so I made them into reindeer with pipe cleaners and googly eyes.

The food was kept pretty simple as it was brought by everyone so I couldn't make tags or anything but the girls brought some fun festive options so I wanted to share!

So how the sharing of gifts works... I made little sheets of paper that matched the theme and had the girls all write their name on three sheets and place them in a glass jar. We went around the room and each girl picked three names from the jar. Just to add a little to it I found this fun favorite things game that I had each girl read their answers before giving their gifts out. When the three picked had their gifts they all opened them and then if necessary the gift was explained by the giver. Some of the items the girls brought were an oil mister, favorite bottle of wine, scarves, Starbucks gift card, candles, nail polish, fresh tea cup, egg boiling timer, chocolates and make up brushes. It was so fun to learn something new about my friends and receive great gifts!

As an extra bonus, I gave each girl a notebook and pen to keep track of the other favorite things so they could add it to their list for Santa. I found the notebooks in the dollar bin at Michael's.

For the party favor I had my friend make some of my favorite cookies (Kim's Cookies). They were so cute! 

Hope this helps you plan this fun party for your girlfriends!

A Ladybug Baptism

My daughter was recently baptized and being someone who loves to plan a party - I had to have a cute theme for the BBQ following the ceremony. So we had a ladybug BBQ party!

I found a lot of the decorations on this great discounted website - Birthday in a Box. I supplemented the decorations with solid colored plates, napkins, utensils and table clothes from the Dollar Store (red checkered table cloth from Party City).

 

 

 

I made the cookies with a friend who is great at decorating - but we bought the little ladybug candies from a local baking shop.

 

The pretzel is from a local pretzel store - Pretzel Boys.

And of course after the baptism I had to change the little one out of her gown and into an appropriate ladybug outfit :) (Carter's from Kohl's)

Baby Gender Reveal Party

As I approach our due date I decided I wanted to blog about our Gender Reveal Party. We kept it simple but there are so many great ways to do this I wanted to share ours too.

We invited the immediate family over for dinner on the night of our ultrasound - I had to hold the exciting news in ALL day!! My husband and I decided to find out in the Dr.'s office but surprise our family with the news.

I had pink and blue everything - plates, napkins, forks etc. I asked everyone to wear the color of the sex they thought it would be (i.e. wear blue for boy, pink for girl) and my husband and I stragetically wore both colors.

For the reveal we decided to do cupcakes so everyone had a part - instead of one or two people cutting into  a cake. Because it was all the same day - I had blue and pink filled cupcakes made and then served the color that it was. On the outside they were identical - but inside they were filled with pink or blue so you had to bite into it to see the gender color.

It was so exciting and a great way to include everyone in on the news!

Also, my sister is having a baby this year too! Just 4 months behind me - so I wanted to share how she did her gender reveal as well.

They invited the immediate family to dinner at a nice restaurant in town. They chose not to find out at the Dr.'s office and had the ultrasound technicial seal it in an envelope. We ate our dinner and when we were finished it was time (my brother in law enjoyed the suspense and making us all anxious for the news).

They opened the envelope as a couple and read it aloud to the group - it was so fun!

So we are having a girl (any day now) and their having a boy (in July) - such a great time in our lives!

Purple Elephant Shower

I'm getting ready to have my first baby so the next few posts will be about my baby showers. Today's post is about an elephant shower with accent colors of purples, greens and browns. It was so cute I just had to share it with all of you! My friend that had the Breast Cancer Party I have written about in an earlier post hosted this shower.

In the bags on the mantel was a game - each bag was filled with an item off my registry starting with that letter (i.e."B" bag had a blanket in it) Each guest had to guess what was in the bag. Then I opened them one by one. It was so cute and made for great decorations too!

For the party favor Kim made mini elephant sugar cookies and wrapped them in clear boxes. 

In the green and purple bags was another game called The Left Right Baby Shower Game - everyone has a gift (or you can play with just one gift) and they pass to right every time you read the word "right" or left every time you read the word "left" at the end everyone opens their gift (or the one with the gift at the end opens it). Here is a link to the poem Kim used.

Kim also had a calendar and a baby feet stamp and had each guest stamp a day to guess what day my baby was going to born on. I took the framed calendar home.

Kim hand made all the elephants and found the green doilies at Party City.

 

Thank you Kim for such a wonderful, creative shower!