Inspiration

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This blogging thing constantly amazes me. I am so honored when I get emails from people, lovely, talented people, telling me that I am an inspiration to them. WOW! That is the highest compliment I could get! Here are some pictures from Tricia of her daughter's princess party that she sent me. She told me that I had inspired her. Here is her story...

So in honor of Sofia's two passions in life (cupcakes & princesses) I decided to have an intimate party at home. I focused my attention on THE DETAILS. The countless DETAILS. Oh, what a labor of love exists in the DETAILS!

My party colors were light pink, hot white & white. I tried to carry the colors all throughout. I tried to incorporate the princess & cupcake theme consistently, as well. The ceiling featured floating pink & white party poms. We had balloons everywhere. I created simple but elegant floral arrangements with roses and mini cupcake cards. I decorated the staircase with pink tulle & ribbons & my favorite pictures of Sofia from the past 3 years.

Every party guest came dressed as a princess for Sofia's party. I created a "throne" from cardboard & a pink tablecloth & pink feather boas, and put it underneath a white mosquito net. My husband created a whimsical frame from cardboard, and we painted it & decorated it for the princess throne. Each guest had their princess portrait taken & I was able to customize their thank-you note with their picture. We decorated magic wands and crowns with glitter and played "pin the princess on the castle" and had a princess parade and a cupcake pinata. And we danced as only princesses could.

Our table settings featured adorable cupcake china I found on clearance at TJ Maxx. I even giftwrapped the juice boxes with cupcake wrapping paper. And I used candy bracelets as napkin holders. The peanut butter & jelly sandwiches were heart-shaped, as were the cheese sandwiches. I baked customized "Sofia" tiara cookies in pink & white. We had a colorful cupcake tower with a pretty princess cake on the top. For the children's goodies, we put customized stickers on pink chinese food take-out containers and attached ribbons & balloons to each one.

In honor of Sofia's birth mother in Guatemala, I wrote & framed a little note to her which was surrounded with roses on a table at the party.

Many thanks for all of the divine inspiration I received from your site! Also, here are my featured Etsy sellers! I will forever support the amazing & creative Etsy artists!

1. Party Poms by Prost to the Host: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7199184

2. Happy Birthday Banner by AEScrapbooking: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7665322

3. Custom Cupcake Stickers by LittlebeaneBoutique: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5375234

4. Mini Cupcake Cards in the flower arrangements by Auntie's Card Shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5322093

I hope that Tricia can now be an inspiration to you!

Just paying it forward!

Don't throw away those candy wrappers!

Eating all that Halloween candy should be good for something, right? Make a decorative pail for next year. I bought inexpensive 6" metal pails but you can go bigger depending on how much candy you ate!

I trimmed the wrappers and then just Modge Podged them artisticly on the pail.

Let dry and add a festive bow. I passed these out to teachers before Halloween with the flowering plants. You could also use these as favor buckets for parties or make large ones to hold next years candy hand outs. The possibilities are endless it just depends on how much candy you are willing to consume!

Now, go eat some more candy for the sake of crafting!

Halloween Children's Tea

First, this gorgeous ghost costume by Martha Stewart was my inspiration for my own costume. But I was not about to pay $150 for it. I made my own for $40. I LOVE to sit on my porch to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters and decorate my house like Disney's Haunted Mansion. This year I covered myself in white tulle and had a black light on me. People thought I was a hologram and I had adults "get in my face" to see if I was real! You can see the effect in the last picture of the post. On to the children's Halloween tea!

I hosted 2 seatings at the Tea Gardens, a local tea shop, for children and adults, dressed as the Queen of Hearts. I got to be rude and (sort of) yell at people. We played Halloween bingo, toilet paper mummy wrapping, eyeball on a spoon relay races and spider ring toss.

Kids came in costume and came with parents and grandparents. I even had tables with all adults. They enjoyed delicacies such as PB&J witches fingers and chicken curry ghost sandwiches.

I love that Spiderman wrapped up Bat Girl in TP!

Here is Chasen dressed as a geek in front of our graveyard in front of our house. See the hitch hiking ghosts from the Haunted Mansion? I got them at Disney.com a few years ago and they are my prized possesion! OK, here is the money shot....

I am the glowing blue figure on the right. I danced and waved my arms all night. (my shoulders were really sore this morning!) I have the soundtrack of the HM ride playing in the background while I pass out the treats and a blue light illuminating my cemetary. Hope you had fun yesterday! Now, onto Thanksgiving!

Halloween Chocolate Party

For our Brownie meeting on Tuesday, our troop went to a local cake decorating and candy supply shop to make some sweet and scary Halloween chocolate creations. The girls dipped marshmallows in green chocolate and chocolate sprinkles to make a Frankenstein.

They also dipped pretzels and Oreos in chocolate and made a witches finger out of twisted pretzel rods and slivered almonds. They even learned how to paint a chocolate mold to make a lollipop! I have known the owner, Nanci, since I was 12. The girls had a great time! Abby ate everything before she got home!

When I got home, I made some too! It was Chasen's turn to bring snack for his Boy Scout patrol meeting. I made the Frankensteins and the witches fingers. They were a HUGE hit! Even the dads enjoyed them.

Happy Halloween!

Wicked Tea

On Monday, I got together with my tea group and we shared a witches tea. Marina made all of us some homemade pumpkin bread in these adorable wood baskets from Whole Foods.

Debbie and Sandy hosted the tea and they served pumpkin muffins, quiche, 2 kinds of salads, cucumber sandwiches and Fluffernutters (marshmallow fluff and peanut butter). We (kinda) had a costume contest. I came as Samantha Stevens from "Bewitched" and Marina had some very sparkly eyelashes and her cute witch outfit (she's not wearing her hat) so she won the prize. It was pumpkin bread mix, pumpkin butter and a framed picture of all of us at our Witches tea last year that I hosted.

For dessert, Sandy bought cupcakes from the Kupcake Kitchen (same baker of the fabulous Mad Hatter cupcakes last week). We had S'More and lemon raspberry...AMAZING!

Suzie brought all of us these pretty pink brooms and Suzanne gave us a beautiful Fall leaf dish towel from Pottery Barn.

Our next BIG tea is in December and we will also have a cookie exchange!

Halloween Double Feature

On Friday night, we hosted a Halloween Party/Movie night. We served pizza, fruit, cookies and cupcakes. I had a craft for our guests: Halloween flashlight necklaces. They could be decorated as mummy, vampire, witch or a ghost. They can use them on Halloween night when they trick-or-treat.

I also had a couple of games. I put powdered donuts on strings and they had to eat them without using their hands. Powdered donuts are best because it get all over your face!

The second game was "Scary Mummy". They stuffed cheese balls in their mouths and say "Scary Mummy" after each one. One girl got 20 in her mouth before we couldn't understand her anymore. I also passed out glow-in-the-dark bracelets (15 for $1 at Michael's)

I used cupcake picks from Paper and Cake. Sorry the pictures are bad. I was very busy with the kids. :) We showed "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" first because we had little ones and they left before the next movie. At intermission, I made hot chocolate with Halloween marshmallow peeps. The final movie was "The Nightmare before Christmas".

I'm already planning for a Christmas movie get together. Last year, we showed "Elf" and decorated cookies.

Maybe I should just be concentrating getting my Halloween decor up :)

I WON!

Last Saturday, a local charity held a Rubber Ducky Regatta. They launched 3,500 ducks in the local lake and the first 25 ducks to cross the finish line would win a prize. People could adopt a duck for $5 or a dozen for $50 and the Grand Prize was a trip for 4 to Washington DC for 8 days and 7 nights. I bought 2 dozen and kind of forgot about it.

On Monday morning, my friend Corey called and he said "Congratulations!" and I said "for what?" He went on to tell me that he calls friends whose name appears in the newspaper and he said that I won the Grand Prize for the Rubber Ducky Regatta. I was so surprised! It wasn't until the foundation called me that I truly believed it.

So I will be taking my kids to DC in April for the Cherry Blossom Festival and the Easter Egg Roll at the White House! I have only been to DC once before when I was a college grad and my boyfriend was from New Jersey. We drove down in his Jeep and we ate popcorn for meals. This time, I will be staying at The Madison and order room service! LOL

I can't wait to show my kids our nation's capital and visit Williamsburg and Monticello. Living in California, we don't get a real sense of our history. I'm so excited!
Do you have any recommendations for our visit?