Cactus Themed Baby Shower

With one of our monthly dinner girls about to give birth to her first child, I decided to theme our monthly dinner in her honor with a little baby shower.  She and her husband are decorating the baby's room with light pink and cactus (inspired by Palm Springs), so I went with this theme for the evening.

Invite:  The party decor and invitation used shades of greens and pinks.  I created the invitation on Photoshop with cactus images I found for free online.  I love that they look like watercolor, and they are soft colors.  Seemed perfect for the arrival of a little baby girl.

Decor: I made this easy cactus banner with my Cricut.  I just taped the cactus onto a pink ribbon.  I switched out the "O" of my HOME sign with a ceramic cactus I found at Michaels.

I had some fun creating the centerpiece for this party because I don't own any cactus plants (real or artificial), and large cactus are a bit too expensive to purchase, so I made them myself.

I started with a diaper cake made to look like a cactus.  This was quite a challenge to figure out how to do, but I think it turned out cute. I rolled 4 diapers for each section and put a skewer in the middle to keep all the sections together and in a straight line.  The green ribbon hid the rubber bands I used to keep each bundle together.  I stuck a skewer in each side and slid a single diaper (rolled up) for the arms of the cactus.  The homemade pink fabric flowers are attached to hair clips, so they can definitely be used for baby Cora in the future.

Next I made cacti out of cardstock.  I used my Cricut to make two types of cacti and pink flower pots for them.  I filled a small bowl with tissue paper and topped it with rocks for the inside.  I also made the sign with the cute saying on Photoshop to add to the table decor.

For placecards, I made these rock cactus flower pots. I bought the pots and the rocks at the dollar store.  The pots were 3 for $1.  I painted them white and then painted the larger rocks three different shades of green.  Once they were dry, I added the white paint.  The name card I designed to look like the invitation.

For the napkins I cut out a cactus and pink flowers and just set it in on each folded napkin.

Wine labels are always fun for me to design.  It was a little hard to come up with ideas to combine cactus, babies, and wine.  These are the best I could come up with, but they made me smile.

For wine charms, I cut various types of cactus out of cardstock and lightly glued them onto my wine stem.  Simple and cute.

Menu:  We started with chips and salsa.  I bought a cactus cookie cutter and cut green tortillas into cactus shapes before baking them to make some cactus-shaped chips to place along with the black tortilla chips.

The mom-to-be is a on a special diet with gestational diabetes, so the main dishes needed to be something she could eat.  After asking her husband for suggestions, I found out that my friend had been craving lettuce wrapped tacos, so that is what I decided to serve.  We served this dish buffet-style, so guests could put whatever toppings they personally wanted on their tacos.

I roasted some peppers and green beans to serve as a side, and heated some black beans for those guests that could have them.

My friend's husband also said she had been craving cheesecake.  I looked up several recipes for cheesecake that was Keto friendly (no carb).  I decided to make these, but I made them without the sauce and only a strawberry cut like a flower on top.  I didn't do the sauce because I put them into these cupcake wrappers.  I printed the cactus pattern on green cardstock and then cut them out and assembled them.  I used a cardstock stand to hold them up high, and I knew it would be too messy with the sauce, so I just left that out.  The guests really liked them.  Just a tip if you are planning to make these...use cupcake liners.  I didn't the first time as it wasn't mentioned in the recipe, and I couldn't get them out of the pan!  I had to make a second batch with cupcake liners.

Favor:  I originally ordered cactus candles to give as a parting gift, but they were too small for the dollar store pots, so I went to my local nursery and bought live cactus plants.  They were a bit more expensive that I normally spend, but a cute party favor.  I planted them in the dollar store pots I painted light pink.

It was fun to come up with the sayings that matched for the cactus/baby theme as I wanted each one to be different.  My favorite was "Sometimes I wet my plants" and "I will never desert you."

What a great time we had showering Maria and her baby with a little love.  Can't wait to meet Cora!

We Love Pinterest!

I hosted a Pinterest party for our monthly dinner this month, and it was so much fun!  We had a menu created from Pinterest recipes, a Valentine craft inspired by Pinterest, and a gift exchange of Pinterest inspired items!  February was the perfect month for this theme because the red and white of the Pinterest logo fits with Valentine colors, and I could not be happier with how it turned out!

 

Invite:  I first told guests about this event 2 months ago, and I let them know that they would be asked to bring a Pinterest item they create for a gift exchange.  This could be a recipe they made, a scarf they knitted, a craft item they made, whatever they chose to create.  Giving them advance notice helped because my friends are some busy ladies and this gave them time to plan.  I also sent a PicCollage reminder 3 weeks before as another reminder, and then of course this invitation.  I made this invitation on PhotoShop and combined Pinterest with Valentine's Day images and colors.

Inside Decor:  Red, white, and black were my party colors - the Pinterest colors. I set my table with simple items I already owned, but added a bit of a Valentine/Pinterest touch.  

I found a red and white striped dry-erase board at a garage sale to place under my centerpiece (the red hearts are just scrapbook paper confetti).  I already owned the Valentine table runner. I bought some Valentine's ribbon and wrapped it around my cake platter, candle, and vase.  Created a mini heart banner for a white pitcher I borrowed from a friend, added a red heart to a chalkboard sign I made, and filled a heart dish I purchased for $2.50 at Target for red and white gumballs I stole out of our family's gumball machine!

I dressed up my dinner plates by topping them with these red heart-shaped paper plates I found at Michaels.  I cut the white Pinterest logo out with my Cricut machine to place in the center.  We used these plates for our first course of the dinner.

I also added the pinterest logo to the napkin.

I had fun creating these placecards.  At first, I looked up DIY place cards on Pinterest and thought I might create something inspired by Pinterest.  However, I decided instead to make my place card directly Pinterest themed.  I created a fake Pinterest board and called it Amazing Friends.  I just used random numbers for "pins".  I went through my photos from past monthly dinners, and I made the main photo a single photo of my guest, and the two side photos group photos with the featured guest in them.

To cover up the place card stand and add a little fun, my daughter and I quickly crafted these yarn puff balls in the party colors.

I already had mantle decor for Valentine's Day, so I put these up.  To add a bit more, I created this easy heart banner out of cardstock.  After cutting strips of red, white, and black, I stapled them together in a heart shape.  Super quick and easy.

I created simple wine labels that combined the Valentine and Pinterest theme.  I usually like to come up with something clever for my wine labels, but not this time.  Just stayed simple.

For wine charms, I found these metal circles etched with various words in the scrapbook section at Michael's.  I used my Cricut to create a slightly large red circle behind them and tied them to the stem of each glass.  I chose the etchings that were related to our theme (xoxo, love, create, heart, etc.) although some were other kinds of words (faith, happy, etc.)

I love using Pinterest for crafts, so I wanted to have a simple, quick craft that guests could create as they arrived and chatted.  This craft was perfect!  I set out all my wine corks for guests to use to create a wine cork heart as a Valentine display.  

All the supplies were set on the table - corks, glue guns, heart template, red paint, and a paint brush.  Guests used the heart template to line up the corks in a heart shape before hot gluing them together.  Then they painted the top of the corks red, and they were done!  You can make your heart template any size.  Just make sure you have enough corks for all your guests to be able to do it.  My template used 24 corks for each heart.

Menu:  It was easy to find a menu for this dinner because there are a TON of recipes I have pinned over the years and always wanted to try.  I paired some of these recipes with Valentine's related menu items.  We started with a simple spinach salad with strawberries cut into hearts.  It also had blueberries, toasted almonds, and feta cheese.  I served it with a strawberry vinaigrette dressing.

For the main dish I made a simple smoked Tri-Tip on our Traeger grill.  I always love the Traeger because I don't have to babysit the meat while it grills, and I can put it on a leave.  Plus, we love everything we cook on the Traeger! So yummy!  I made two of these tri-tips and just refilled the tray when this one was finished.

Lately I have been loving brussel sprouts and I haven't served them at a monthly dinner yet, so I made these roasted parmesan sprouts.  They were tasty.

I also made these cute heart-shaped potatoes.  To be honest, I didn't really follow the Pinterest recipe on this one as I make potato bites often for my family (just not in hearts).  These were simple to make, but it does take time to cut the heart shape out with a cookie cutter.  Make sure you place the cut potatoes in water so they don't brown while you get them all cut out.

For dessert, we had a simple chocolate caramel fondue that I found on Pinterest.  I used my centerpiece heart bowl to hold the chocolate and surrounded it with strawberries, bananas, angel food cake, and vanilla wafers. I had to incorporate chocolate into the menu as a chocolate dipped strawberries are a favorite Valentine treat!

Party Activity - My favorite part of the night was the Pinterest gift exchange!  I had the guests wrap their creations, and we drew numbers for choosing gifts.  Like at Christmas time gift exchanges, we decided each creation could be stolen one time before it was "frozen."  These girls came up with some super fun and crafty gifts.  These are just some of them.  Top left is a guide to writing cool fonts with a metal tin and the supplies/items to create as you learn those fonts.  Bottom left is a WIFI sign to put up in your home.  On the right is a cute Valentine decor sign made with buttons!

Here are some more from the gift exchange. Left is what I made - a giant wooden welcome sign I painted. Top right is individual sugar scrubs that are hearts!  Bottom right is chocolate dipped Oreos and pretzels made to look like cute little bees. Yumzzzzz!

Favor:  Speaking of chocolate dipped Oreos, I made these dipped Oreos to look like the Pinterest logo for guests as a parting gift.  I piped the "P" on the front in white chocolate.

Another great night with my closest friends.  If you have girlfriends like mine that love a good night out and a little Pinterest, this is a fun party. Mix up this party however works for you...leave out the gift exchange and ask guests to bring parts of the meal.  Or just do a craft with your meal.  So fun!

Vision for 2020

To usher in 2020, I decided to host my January monthly dinner with a 20/20 vision theme.  We raised our "glasses" to the new year and created "vision" boards of what we want in this upcoming year.  This was easy to decorate for and so much fun.  You might find what I did a bit "corne-a", but if you've been following my blog for a while, you know that corny is right up my alley!  Check out the details of the party & host one of your own!

Invite:  I found a background image that had lots of styles of glasses in various colors, so these colors became the colors of the party.  I created the invitation using the concept of an eye exam chart having the eye chart spell out "A Spectacular Vision for 2020 Dinner!" I tried to use words like spectacular (to go with specs) and vision to reference the theme.  Same thing with the "eye" hope to "see" you there.

I had fun decorating the table for this theme.  Lots of colorful eyeballs and glasses to create the centerpiece and place settings.

For the centerpiece, I had a sign that read "Raise your GLASSES to the new year!" with vision glasses being raised.  I also spray-painted some empty wine bottles and vases with the colors of the invite.  Then I added reading glasses to each.  To secure them on the back I used rubber bands that held them in place.  I was planning to cut a wine cork and glue it the bottle to look like a nose which would then help hold the glasses up too, but I ran out of time.  I also bought two pairs of giant glasses from Party City to add a bit of fun and use as photo props.

It was easy to make the plates look like eyeballs.  I simply printed various color irises the size to fit the inside of my white plates.

I had fun creating the place cards.  I made mini glasses out of glitter cardstock in three different styles of glasses.  These were placed in front of an eye exam chart with the guest's name and then something about them.  For me it was my name and then The Hostess. I used a eye chart creator I found online, so it had to be a specific number of letters or it would add random letters to the end.  I had to be creative with dashes or exclamation points or things to make it fit well.

Above my beverage table, I made a banner out of card stock.  I used my Cricut to cut out different styles of glasses in the same colors at the invitation.  I then attached them together with brads that were the same color as each of the glasses.

A fun sign for the wine table.

I found these cute rubber wine charms on Amazon and couldn't pass them up. They came with the black glasses wine stopper seen in the above photo as well.  The pack only came with 6, so I did use my Cricut to make a couple additional ones out of card stock for the remaining guests.

I always have fun coming up with what creative way I can represent my theme in my wine labels.  For this theme I went with an eye chart of the red wine and changed up the font color for  "SEEING RED".  The rest of the label used the same colors and images of the invitation.  The side of the label which can't be seen in the photo has an eyeball looking at a bottle of red wine.  For the white wine, I went with the saying "I love white wine" switching out the letter "I" for an eyeball.

Menu: Trying to figure out what to serve for this dinner that went with the theme was a challenge.  So many eye-related recipes I saw were geared toward Halloween or just appetizers. While some of my menu items looked like eyeballs, I went with more of a vision pun/new years vibe with my menu.  The appetizers was simple white chips and guacamole. I tried to arrange the chips to be the white of the eye, the guacamole the iris, and cut up black olives for the pupil.

As I mentioned, the menu cards gave a recommendation or wish for 2020 with some sort of silly pun.  "Don't rub avocados on your eyes; you could get Guacoma" was this one.

For the main dish, I made meatballs to look like eyeballs. After making a thumbprint divot in the meatball, I put a teaspoon of pasta sauce, then a bit of a mozzarella ball, and topped it with a slice of black olive.

After they were cooked, I put two meatballs on a bed of spaetzle (a German pasta).  The menu card for these read "Make a SPEC-tzle of yourself.  Be more than MEATS the eye".

A side dish was corn as I reminded guests to make their jokes the CORN-ea the better in 2020!

For dessert I made new years festive cupcakes in black and white with silver glitter sprinkles.  I added glasses cupcake toppers I made using my Cricut.  The cupcake menu card asked guests in 2020 to "See Cupcakes as pieces of EYE candy."

Favors:  How cute are these chocolate glasses?  I bought this chocolate mold forever ago for an 80s party, but it went perfect with this theme as well.  It took some time to make these because of the color changes, but I love how they turned out.  I created another eye chart for the tag that read "Eye see great things for you in 2020."

Activity:  Since this was a happy new year party paired with a 20/20 vision as a theme, I set up a station for guests to create vision boards for 2020.  Magazines, scissors, glue sticks, and 12x12 cardstock made for a simple activity.  This was an easy activity to do while chatting, and a fun way to "focus" on the year ahead.

Thanks for reading!  EYE hope you enVISION a 2020 that is PERFECT!