And………I’m back! For now at least. I really am going to make an effort to blog much much more. Once a week is the goal, for now. But I totally understand if you don’t believe me when I say that, due to my blogging record. I am going to work really hard to not let that ‘once a week’ turn into ‘once a month’, but there will have to be some exceptions of course. Actually, it may be best you expect the least out of my blogging commitments, and then if/when I blog more you’ll just be impressed.
Anyways, since my last party blog, I have had a few other dinner/cocktail parties in between, but the most important one I will share is the surprise (semi) bridal shower my Mom and I put on for Cassie (long time friend, and now sis-in-law!) Despite all the top-secret e-mail invites saying it’s a “Surprise”, someone may or may not have mentioned the ‘surprise’ shower to Cassie while apologizing that they would not be able to attend, so Cas did know it was happening, but the good news is she didn’t know the date of it. So in the end, it still ended up being a surprise. As you can see…
For this party I came up with a TIFFANY & CO. theme, as what girl doesn’t love that jewelry store! Plus teal/tiffany-blue is Cass’s favorite color. My parents have an excellent backyard for entertaining so we decided to have the party out there.
I took charge of all the decorations, so naturally one of the first things I decided to use was stencil letters out of corrugate (“cardboard”. I’d probably get fired from my job if I still called it that). Thanks to our lovely 10×12 ft. Kongsberg cutting table at work, I had one of our structural designers cut these babies out for me…
And this is how I had the porch decorated…
My marriage advice consisted of something along the lines of telling Cassie to just submit now to Jeremy by giving up her Cowboys and making the Bears her favorite team.
Burlap flowers – thank your Pinterest for this little DIY project idea
Cute I know. Mason jars. Darling paper straws (from ShopSweetLulu.com). Bling for each lady (from Tiffany & Co. ..and by Tiffany & Co. I mean JoAnn Fabrics. Pretty much the same thing. ha)
Beverage table – Peach Bellini or the fabulous, delicious, delectable, Coconut Basil Fizz!
…or H2O with Jer and Cas personalized water bottles.
And for the food we decided to keep it simple… because we’re ladies, and we don’t eat that much.
Per usual, I labeled everything.
We had Cassie be a contestant of “The Newlywed Game”, and then the gift opening began…
Bridal shower gifts are always fun. ;)
The sweetest card of the night came from Max Orleans, a 4 year old. “I am happy you are marrying Jeremy. “
So after a solid 9 months of telling my little sister and her friends that I’d have a party (just because. I mean who doesn’t love parties?) for them, I FINALLY lived up to my promise and made it happen.
To begin with, I of course had to send invitations. You don’t get that special warm fuzzy/I have friends who really care and make me feel special feeling, until you get a good ole’ invitation in the mail. Right? Well, at least that’s how I often feel + invitations are fun and often make for great refrigerator material.
Once again, you can guess what I used to make these. Corrugate + kraft paper of course. Story of my life when it comes to me making invites.
What’s a party without some decorations? So naturally, I made some tissue poms and hung up the good ole’ “Let’s Party” sign/banner.
Once all the girls arrived and the official “Girl’s weekend” kicked off, I started it with giving each girl one of these…
Strawberry Daiquiris in ADORABLE mason jars w/ ADORABLE plastic straws!
Virgin of course! Once again, no need to call Child Protective Services on me. I’m not one of those cheerleader coaches who you often hear about in the news who served all their middle school cheerleaders booze at a party. But really, Strawberry Daiquiris are the best, EVEN w/out alcohol. The girls loved them! To go along with the special beverage, I made stir-fry. Everyone loves stir-fry, so I knew it was the perfect + simple thing to make for 5 picky eaters.
w/ their choice of peanut sauce, general tso sauce or terryaki sauce
After dinner, we tie-dyed shirts. What? We live in Portland, so it is more than COMPLETELY acceptable to sport a tie-dyed shirt. And I must say, they sported them good, real good. As you’ll soon see.
Then we moved onto…wait for it…wait for it…..
….THE AWKWARD PHOTO SESSION! I mean really, are you actually surprised I threw this into the agenda? Well if so, you shouldn’t be. So to get our thinking caps going on different pose ideas, we busted out one of the best gifts that I have ever received (thank you Dani!).
We got a few ideas from the book, and then I started placing the girls in the right positions and snapping away. Being awkward came easy to some of the girls, and not so easy to some of the others, but they all loved it. One of the pictures, just may make the cut in New York Times Bestseller, Â “Awkward Family Photos (part II)” book, coming soon to the stores near you! Just never know.
The Pile On: For that tight-knit group who are so close, they are literally on top of one another. For maximum comfort, go denim.
The Armshelf
a photo session just isn’t complete without mustaches
After part 1 of awkward photo’s we moved onto the pinata. Yes, PINATA, because pinata’s rock and what teen girls don’t love tons of candy?
Not only did I stuff the pinata with a ridiculous amount of unhealthiness, but I also included 10 folded pieces of paper with a little somethin-somethin written on the inside of each. Each girl had to grab 2. And on each one was lame stuff that I came up with like…
And this one was my favorite of course…
I was very happy my sister’s friend Erica got this one, as she gives killer massages!
Then we watched Kassie bust out her Britney Spears moves to the classic song, “Oop’s I Did it Again“. I was proud of her, she didn’t disappoint.
And then it was time for the dance off and some dance lessons from my favorite, John Jacobson!
Watch these video’s, you won’t be disappointed. I promise.
Double Dream Hands
Double Dream Feet
I mean how do these awesome and inspiring video’s not make you want to just dance? Also, have I said that I love John Jacobson yet? I mean really, how could you not.
After the dance madness and burning off so many calories, I felt that all the girls needed some more cals. in their system, so there was no better time than to have a build your own sundae bar.
egg less cookie dough, just to be on the safe side
labels makes everything cuter, even if you already know what each thing is by looking at it
Once I cleaned up this deliciousness, I realized it was already almost 2:30a.m., which meant time to put a chick flick on for the girls and for the old lame one/me, to get to bed.
Sunday morning, aka just a few hours later (literally, for the crazy 5 girls who decided to stay up until 6:30a.m.), we partook of more food. The brunch I made consisted of carbs, carbs and more carbs! Oh, and some protein. Mini blueberry muffins, mini raspberry muffins, pancakes, bacon, and fruit parfaits.
I could eat this everyday.
After we stuffed ourselves with food, once again, I made the girls workout, but first…more photos!
The hippy-ness in them all came out.
The girls managed to talk me out of making them run, but were not so successful in talking me out of making them do lunges up our large hill to our subdivision.
“I don’t know if you heard me counting, but I did over 1,000.” – Ron Burgundy
…and we all definitely felt it the next day.
Finally, after lots of hours together, lots of photos, lots of awkwardness, lots of candy (it would make you sick if I told you how little -to-none candy was left from the pinata), lots of dancing, lots of laughs, and lots of love, it was time for the girl’s to pack their bags and head home.
a sucker [because I happened to have 5 suckers lying around]
boy shorts [because underwear is fun]
bacterial wipes [because I hate germs and the packaging had me sold (I’m a sucker for cute packaging)]
a CD for each girl with all the pictures (130+) I took of them/the girls from the weekend [because how else would they remember all the fun that they had that girls weekend, 60 years from now?]
my life as a miss 
