Green produce bags and Halloween Soup Night

So today I made plans to have some of my family over for dinner. I have been wanting to make soup since I haven't ever made it unless it was in a can. My mom makes wonderful soup so I knew I had the ability in me somewhere! The day started out by going grocery shopping. I am a huge fan of Adams Fairacre Farms. They have numerous locations but the one closest is in Kingston. They have great produce and their employees are knowledable and freindly. The soup was zucchini and bread crumb stoup. It was one of Rachel Ray's recipes. Though I am not a huge fan of hers I found this recipe and thought it looked and sounded delicious! I also loveeee zucchini so I figured I couldn't go wrong. In addition to my soup I had another choice for my guests. My boyfriend made avgolemono soup. It's a Greek lemon soup that he learned how to make from his yaiyai (grandma). It is fabulous! So, at the grocery store I needed to get a lot of ingredients! I recently ordered these new 'green' produce bags that you can wash and reuse instead of using those terrible plastic bags. They worked great! I ordered them from 3B Bags. If you order 4 sets you get the 4th free. So for 12 bags I paid $25 and change which included shipping and handling. Not bad at all! I highly suggest them!

In the bags were apples, parsley, and zucchini. Each packet comes with two 'smaller' bags and one large bag. The small bags are pretty large

It's great because your produce can breath in these bags as opposed to the plastic were they can sweat and get moldy

 So, after I went shopping it was time to come home and start prepping for my guests. On my kitchen table, I had fake glittery candelabras and gourds. So I decided to decorate the table more instead of just leaving it plain. I had purchased cute napkin holders at Pier 1 that are extremely versatile. They will go great with many different occasions. I already had place mats that added a nice detail to the table.

These gourds are going to be reused for Thanksgiving. Wait to see what I am going to create for that table scape!

After I was done decorating it was time to start cooking! Our kitchen is tiny so it was very interesting trying to cook with two people, two different kinds of soup. In addition, I also made grill cheese. In the end everything came out great! Some people like the lemon soup better and some like the vegetable soup more. I will have to say, for my first time making soup I did a pretty good job! Can't wait for my next creation... any suggestions?

My most recent work

These last two events that I planned and helped out with I absolutely love! The first one was my cousins bridal shower. It was held at Arielle in Rhinebeck. The shower was small and intimate. We had one long table that everyone sat at and the bride sat at the head of the table. I decided to do red as the color scheme because I wanted a dark, rich color. The invitation was red and had an embossed image of a wedding dress. I also added a lacy punch out to the edge of the invitation. For flowers I used white hydrangea that I ordered off of Sam's Club. At first I was extremely hesitant to order them but I decided to go ahead and do it which  I am very happy I did. I also had many candles lining the table. Each person had there own menu that had a lace accent on the top. Finally, I made chocolate covered strawberries that were placed on the dessert spoon of each guest.

Room View. The long table in the middle was for lunch and the table behind it was the cake, gift, and favor table

I placed individual heads of hydrangea in alternating size vases

The table

I made the favors. Each guest got a jar of cookies and a cone of M&Ms. The jars were recycled jars that I frosted designs onto. I made the cones by using large pieces of paper and folding them into rectangular cones

We played several games, one being a crossword puzzle all about the bride

This was actually her idea! She wanted to do the toilet paper bridal gown game!



Table Detail

 This next event was my bosses wedding from when I did my internship. My last semester at school I interned at Full Moon Resort located in Big Indian, N.Y. I learned many things while doing this internship, met a lot of people, and gain a lot of helpful information about the industry. At the same time as I was doing my internship, my boss at Full Moon was also planning her own wedding which she was having at The Moon! That's right, she got married where she works because she is that passionate and loves Full Moon so much. She asked me to come back over the summer to help out the day of her event. In addition to day of assistance I designed and created her reception menus and ceremony programs. They came out great! I am so glad I was given the chance to make them.

Me with the new couple!

The Menu

View of the tent and tables

This was the ceremony program. They were fans which worked out great because it was literally the hottest day of the summer! Each fern was hand stamped onto each program (200 total!) I picked ferns, painted the fern, then pressed them onto the paper.

Each guest had a program waiting for them at their seat

Full Moon puts on quit the spread! Yummy!

Here goes the long stretch...The rest of the events I have done!

I love sharing all of the hard work that I put into each event. This blog has allowed me to do just that! I also love hearing what people are thinking about my work so please leave a comment!

This next event was my boyfriend's graduation dinner from the Culinary Institute of America. He is also a big poker fan so I decided to theme the night around poker. We had the dinner at Double O Grill. For the invitation I made mini poker tables. The front side was felt and I made mini cards to put at each 'place setting'. For poker chips I used multi colored sequins. Even thought each one took about 30 minutes to make it was well worth it!

Front of the invitation.

Back of the invitation. The invitation says Eveready Diner however, the venue got changed after the invitation was made.

I was on a low budget for decoration so for flowers I bought red mums and left them in to plastic holders but simply glued ribbon around the outside. I also sprinkled the table with poker chips and hung playing cards from the ceiling. I was able to find mini playing cards that I put into the tops of the cupcakes and also glued them to the outside of the favor bags. The cake had hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.

Dessert and Favor Table

Centerpiece

Hanging Cards

The Cake!

The next event was Thanksgiving 2006. I found these awesome charge presenters at the Christmas Tree Shop. From these charge presenters I designed the rest of the table. The invitation color matched the presents. The other part of my theme was acorns. On the invitation there was an acorn, the place card was embellished with a stamp of acorns and each napkin holder had two acorns on them. The napkin holders were actually hand made by my grandfather. I told him what I wanted and how they should be made and he did it!. I had red candles that lined the table and fall, rusty colors for the flowers. This particular thanksgiving I also did a lot of the plating and cooking my self.

This was the outside of the invitation. I sewed felt together to make it into an envelope and cut out a little peep hole. Through the hole you could see the acorn stamp. To read the invitation you simply pulled out the piece of the paper.

Inside of the invite

Table Setting

Place card detail

Long Table View

Candles and Flowers

Pigs in a blanket! Ultimate Classic

Cheese Board

Smoked Salmon

Shrimp Cocktail

I placed lemon slices inside of the over sized martini glass

I love doing baby showers! This next one was for a friend that I worked with. I along with a few other girls planned this. I designed and made each welcome and menu card that was placed on each table. The theme of the shower and the nursery was lady bugs so the colors were red, pink, and white. I also painted rocks to look like lady bugs and put magnets on the back of each of them as part of the favor. We also found chocolates that were wrapped in foil to look like ladybugs. So we bought little mesh bags to put the chocolate in. For the flowers we used Gerber daisies and on the outside of the vases I attached wooden lady bugs and ribbon. Finally, I also made clay lady bugs and attached them to skewers that I inserted into the floral arrangements.

Welcome and Menu

Place Setting

Flowers with the clay ladybug peeking out

Table View

This was the head table where the mommy to be sat!

My good friend from high school called one day saying "Help! I need to throw my mom a shower in a week." The problem was that my friend was in the city and the shower was to be the Hudson Valley. So in a week I put together favors and flowers. I loved how this small shower turned out! The bride and groom were both getting married for the second time and the wedding/shower was in the spring time. So I potted flowers in mini vases and put a nice tag on it which said 'Starting Fresh' with their names and the date on the back of the tag. All the flowers were white but to at a touch in the tall vases I added apples. The floral budget was that large so I supplemented the flowers with wild Lilly of the valley.

Favors, the front of the tag

Back of the tag

Flower arrangement with the apples

Lower arrangement for the buffet

Small bouquet of Lilly of the valley

In 2008, over the summer I got asked to make invitations for a baby shower. The theme was Winne the pooh. I loved how these came out. In addition to the actual invitation that they chose to go with I made other samples that came our great. Here are the pictures!

This was the final version. The three Winne the poohs on top of the menu were raised up with round sticky foam

This was one of the sample invitations that I created. The white paper was attached at the top and was loose on the bottom

When it was my dad's big 50th birthday, I knew I had to through him a dinner party. He is not the type of guy who likes a lot of attention but he deserved something. So i was able to keep it a big secret and I invited my entire family to my apartment. When he walked up the steps and saw everyone sitting there he was shocked. He is a big Harley Davidson fan but I didn't want to have pictures of motorcycles and black everywhere. So I just used the orange color as the theme. I made really nice menus that were placed at each setting. I also had the 'intelligent' idea to do a served plated dinner. Yup that's right, it meant that I had to be in my tiny kitchen plating each dish, for 11 people. It was also three courses. But that food came out great, my dad was surprised, and my family enjoyed themselves.

I can't get them to be the correct way?! But the was the table

Details of the place setting

I used orange roses (for Harley Davidson) and white mums