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



It seems like these celebrations were yesterday...

Looking back at all of these old events that I have planned brings back such good memories. I had such a good experience in high school. Good friends, great teachers, and I have always been a family person. Senior year was filled with so many celebrations. Senior year party, winterball, senior sendoff, my graduation party, and my farewell dinner. This first event shown here was 'Senior Sendoff' also known as baccalaureate. For some reason the school made us change the name so we came up with Senior Sendoff. It was held at Steel House Restaurant in Kingston, N.Y. Our budget was very low; our class was to pay for each student while parents had to pay per head. Because of the low budget, my fellow officers and myself (I was co-secretary), went out into the fields of Rhinebeck and picked our own flowers. Hundreds of daisies, black eyed Susans, grasses, and wild rose bush branches. To supplement these flowers we purchased a few purple flowers. Rhinebeck school colors are gold and purple so with the purple flowers that we bought and the yellow blacked eyed Susans, we were able to incorporate the colors we sported throughout our education. I also made special candle holders. You simply take soda cans, cut of the top, cut down the sides of the can and roll each section out so that the name and display of the can disappears. Even though there were tears of joy about graduating, tears of sadness of the thought of leaving friends and family, the evening was a giant success. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Invitation, Handmade. The Graduation cap was embossed onto each invite with gold embossing powder



         

Large floral pieces. This was my first time working with floral foam...I now know how to properly use it (hehe)



Overall table look. Each table had different flowers because we didn't have enough vases that were all the same.

Another table, different floral arrangement

This is a close up of the details. The candle holder is the soda can and the graduation cap is a welcome/thank you to parents and faculty.

This next event was only a few weeks after the senior sendoff. It was my graduation party where all my family, friends and a few of my teachers celebrated. My favorite type of food is Italian/Mediterranean so why not through a Mediterranean Evening? The colors were crisp white and cool blue. On the invitations I had simple line fish that were wearing graduation caps. I requested that my grandfather cut some of his grape vine and tie it to the edge of the tent which came out great. However, because of the heat they wilted quickly. Dinner consisted of typical hot dogs and hamburgers but was accompanied by Italian and Greek dishes. I had such a wonderful time, celebrating the end of highschool and the start of the next step in my life.

Cheese, meat and bread bar

This table had my graduation picture, diploma, awards, and this wonderful picture of my classmates and me throwing up our caps! (I also painted this table!)

Welcome sign designed and painted by myself, created by my grandfather

It was hot and windy that day. In this picture you can see the grape leaf detail

Centerpieces

Lettuce cups. They had all the vegetables inside, all the guests had to do was choose which salad dressing they wanted

The bar, however a drink spilled on it almost immediatley

Invitation

The next event was my farewell dinner. I invited my close friends to my house for a last goodbye before everyone left for college. I strategically planned the day so that it was about a week before everyone had to leave. The invitation was extremely special. Over the years I had video taped school events, parties, and just us being silly. So the invitation consisted of bits and pieces of all of these events in order starting from our preschool graduation ending with our Highschool graduation. At the very end it was me inviting everyone to my house for dinner. The table was set of the floor and raised up with bricks. All my guests sat on pillows as we dug into Chinese food from a local Chinese restaurant. The center of the table was also risen and had candles placed all the way down. At the head of the table were photo albums for everyone to enjoy and reminisce.

This was the outside of the invitation, the DVD was wrapped up inside of it

When you opened it this is what you saw

Overall table

Each setting received chop sticks. Also underneath the clear plate I had white pieces of paper with this Chinese word embossed on it. The word says 'love'

A view at night with the lanterns lit up

I added these tall vases with gladiolas in them. One of my favorite flowers

Head of the table with the photo albums

More Past Events

 So back to the past. There are many more events that I still need to post. Tonight I thought I'd add a few more. First is Winterball 2005. I had this awesome idea of doing a winter wonderland, whites and blues, glitter, snow and turn it into a whimsical room. The one problem I had was selling my high school on 1) changing the location from a church hall where winterball took place EVERY year to another hall where 2)we would also have a full buffet dinner. In the past there was no food at winterball only snacky foods. Well the school liked the idea so I proceeded with my many decorating ideas. First, the invitations were created and I loved the way they came out. Blue snow flakes on white card stock topped with clear vellum that had the writing on them. The vellum was attached with white glitter glue. For the centrepieces my best friend and I cut down tree branches and spray painted them white with glitter. Last minute we decided to hang candy canes on the branches so that our fellow students could take them off and eat them as the night went by. Though all of these ideas were imagined to create the ultimate wonderland, a few weeks before the winterball  I went to look at the room again and the owners had hung up red, green and gold Christmas decorations! OH NO I thought! I was so mad I immediately asked them if they could take them down but they said no. So what was I suppose to do..? Make it work!

Invitation

These were the menus for the table. We made a couple for each table and layed them around

View of half the room

Winter Tree

Another winter tree

The next event I did was my first baby shower! I was soooooo excited to do this, that I believe I went a little bit over board. Instead of using real flowers I chose silk ones. Typically I am strongly, strongggllllyyyy, against silk flowers but I had to urge to use them for this shower. I found these foam topiarys in Joann Fabrics and the silk flowers were from Michael's Craft Stores. After multiple trips to Michael's, I finally had enough flowers to complete 10 topiarys. For the invitations, I wanted something special and memorable. I used the baby's sonogram pictures, photocopied it, and used it as the back ground. I placed the sonogram on a piece of card stock using clear corners, this way the guests could take the picture out and keep it. For favors, we filled mini bottles with baby lotion. The top part of the bottom had a hole in it (like a real bottle), so guests could squeeze the cream out when needed. Also for the menu I wanted to have it typed on a 'baby' and the 'welcome'  be on a diaper that was on the baby.

Center pieces, Guests were able to take home. Mommy to be was able to put one in the nursery and now the baby has it!

View of the room

Close up of table setting

Invitation

Baby menu, and favor in the top left corner