Hoppy Easter!

After a busy weekend, I managed to whip up a simple but cute table for Easter dinner.

I took a large antique bowl, filled it with giant lemons from the tree outside, and then clipped some fresh gardenias and stuck them in. I finished it off with some egg garland, found at Michaels last year. 

A closeup of the beautiful, fresh centerpiece:

 Then I made all the napkins into bunnies, using this Martha Stewart tutorial. It was a little difficult, since the napkins we had were really thick. I just helped secure the napkin folds with a small clear rubber band.

Hope you all had a wonderful and hoppy Easter celebration!

Jellyfish Chandelier

I saw this chandelier on Pinterest and knew it would be perfect for our Under The Sea baby shower, I just had to figure out how to make it myself.

After a trip to Michaels, I found a bunch of wire ribbon in their $1 ribbon bins that were pretty colors of the ocean. I picked greens, light blues, a few lavender, and some deep ocean blue glittery spools.

Since each spool was 3 yards, I cut them to lengths of 1 yard long (3 ribbons per spool), 9 inches (4 per spool), and 6 inches (6 per spool). I liked the varied lengths, and tried to alternate colors and lengths to keep things more interesting.

You can see in this photo, I just tied each piece of ribbon in different places along the chandelier arms with a simple knot.

After tying your ribbons on, simply scrunch up the ribbon in your hand. I did a messy accordion fold all the way up to the knot. Hold for a few seconds, so that the warmth from your hand can set the ribbon.
 

Release. With the wire in the ribbon, it should stay and look like this:

Next, grab the bottom of the ribbon, and gently pull downward, until you get the ribbon to the length and kinks you desire. You can always adjust a little bit. 

And here is how it looks with all the ribbons completed. Forgive the dark photo, it was late at night when I was decorating! One last step left... the jellyfish body.

I hunted around for rice paper, as they originally used for this chandelier, but there was just no way to make it work around my ancient fixture. So I thought of the next best thing... tulle. I bought 2 spools of 12" x 25 foot long tulle, also at Michaels, found in the wedding supply aisle for $2.99/spool. I actually ended up only using one spool for the whole light, because I liked the translucency of it.

I just took the spool and tied the first end to the top of the chandelier. Then I wrapped the whole chandelier a few times, being sure to get even coverage. Then I tucked the other end into the top of the chandelier, so that I would know where it would be when I wanted to remove it.

Here is how it looked with the lights on:

I actually was fearful that the tulle would melt or burn by leaving the lights on, so since we have a ton of natural light in our dining room, it worked out perfect as just a cool centerpiece with the lights off. In the original chandelier inspiration photo., they actually have shades over the bulbs, all of which were covered with the rice paper. This allows them to keep the lights on without becoming flammable! But mine was pretty enough without being lit.

I was really happy with how it turned out and how easy it was to create! Stay tuned for one of my longest posts on how to make the other star, Wally the Whale cake, later in the week!

Easy Table Decor

I had a really hard time this year decorating my dining room table for Christmas. I have done really cute things in the past. The truth of it is, I was a little tired of my decorations, and I am trying to keep things simple, since our house is on the market.


Rather than spending a fortune on new decorations that I didn't love, I decided to use gold and silver ornaments and garland from the dollar store to add a shimmery touch to the table. I bought about 8 sets of 7-12 ornaments in silver and gold, including some with glitter to give a little sparkle.

First, I draped one length of garland around the chandelier. Before:

After, with a little more shimmer:

Then, I used some ornament hooks to add ornaments to hang from the bottom of the garland.

Next, I pulled out several vintage brass and silver pieces for the table centerpiece to hold the rest of the ornaments, but decided on my antique Candlewick glassware, since I love how the round ornaments mimic the glass beading on the edges of the Candlewick.

I first set the table using a red herringbone Ralph Lauren table cloth from HomeGoods (I think it was $10 when I bought it two years ago), and a gold-ish geometric table runner that I believe is Thomas O'Brien for Target, purchased many many years ago. I like that it is a little muted, and I actually use this runner throughout the year. 

I pulled out the Candlewick cake stand, 4 footed fluted bowl, and small bowl to use for the ornaments. I just kind of piled the larger ones on the cake stand, the medium and small ones in the two bowls, and tried to keep an even mix of silver and gold ornaments.

I also added red taper candles to my Candlewick candlesticks, just to complete the table. 

Here's how it all looks together:

I love how it is simple but festive, and I love using my Candlewick this time of the year, since my grandmother always used the set for our entire family for Christmas dinner. After they stopped hosting Christmas, all three of the granddaughters got to split up the set, so I now have place settings, glasses, and serving ware for 8+. What a lucky girl I am!

What are some of your favorite decorations?

Monkey Baby Shower

This past Saturday, I helped host a baby shower for my dear friend Janet, who is due in August to give birth to her son, Max. Since she is doing a monkey theme in the nursery, we decided to have a shower that had a bit of a monkey theme. We kept the colors to yellow, green, and brown, and I used the monkeys sparingly. However, I did make some great banners in the party colors, and they are kind of the grown up versions of vines (which monkey's swing on- get it?). There will be a post later on how-to make the banners. Here is a look at what we put together:

For flowers- I love fresh flowers! Simple is usually best, and can be a great accent to any party decor, even if they are in small bunches. I bought these bunches of mums and daisies at Publix 3 bunches for $12. I love how the white daisies have green centers. I simply put them in clear glass vases and tied the brown and white polka dot ribbon, that we used on the invitations, around them.

For decorations, I made three banners using fabric quarters from Joanns and the brown and white polka-dot ribbon from Michaels. I also used some green glass ornaments to hang on the chandelier to give a pop of green.

Since we wanted to keep things simple, we opted for a dessert shower... lunch is sometimes hard to do with more than 10 people and no where to formally seat them. We had the shower at 1:00PM and served punch with champagne, fruits and veggies, some small veggie wraps, cookie bars and mini cupcakes, banana bread, and a candy bar with Runts, Lemonheads, Twizzlers, and pear, banana, and chocolate flavored saltwater taffy (bonus points for those of you who noticed the "banana" references).
 

I also used the same monkey clip-art from the invitations and paper punch to create the food and drink labels.

For games, we played "Guess the Baby Food" and "Measure Mommy's Tummy". For the "Measure Mommy's Tummy", I put a little spin on the game to go with the monkey theme. I went and bought two Barrel of Monkeys and the guests has to guess how many monkeys would make up the circumference of her belly. We showed them the length of the first 12 monkeys just for an estimate. She ended up only being 14 monkeys around! And for the baby food game, as expected, we had some unwilling participants who couldn't bring themselves to eat the baby food. I made this sheet for guests to use to write down the ingredients.

And last but not least, I went to a local soap shop, Milagros, to get Milk and Honey soaps for the guests, "From Janet's Shower To Yours". I used the same ribbon to tie little clear bags and I made tags with the paper punch.

Despite a rough morning, we pulled it all together and it was a really nice shower. Janet got most everything she needed to complete her nursery as well. Check back soon for some of the recipes and how-to's on the details!

Dye Free Decorating

My friend Amy sent me this great link to Parents Magazine dye-free decorating for eggs, just in time for Easter this Sunday.  Here are some really cute and easy ways to decorate your eggs (even plastic ones) this Easter with items found around your house, or at your local craft store.

Use Magic Markers:

  Glue on Gems:

Use Colored Tape:

Or Tie with Ribbon:

All photos from Parents Magazine

Go here for these and more of their egg-cellent decorating ideas for Easter!

Sip & See Shower

As you know from this post and this post, last night I hosted a Sip and See Shower for my friend Kim. We had it at the beautiful Columbia Restaurant at the St. Petersburg Pier, and the evening views of the water and downtown were breathtaking. When I arrived, I had a little issue with the valets parking my car, but the sight of dolphins in the bay calmed my nerves and made me appreciate the beautiful afternoon.

The restaurant had a few small tables set up for us to sit at, as well as room to mingle. While we could have simply used the white linens provided, I decided to go with the fabric I ordered and cut at home. One of the other hosts took my turquoise vases and had floral arrangements done by a local florist. Using bright spring colors, the flowers of tulips, gerbera daisies, and lilies really popped above the blue suzani fabric.

Here is the mom-to-be Kim (in pink) and some friends:

We had a menu of heavy appetizers - chicken croquetas, crab cakes, and The Columbia's famous Cuban sandwiches and red sangria. My Aunt Karen, another host, ordered the cutest cookies as favors:

Each bag had two Onesie cookies in them, one in pink that read "Its a girl", and one in green that read "its a boy", since Kim is having twins and one of each! They turned out so cute, and were the perfect dessert for our guests to take home. They were delicious too... I ate mine as a reward for my hard work later in the evening!

Hostesses Barbie & Karen (second from left, middle) and guests

Since the shower did not include the opening of gifts or games, we did a little activity of decorating onesies for the babies! I made one before the shower to give guests an example. I had a set of directions and a suggestion list of funny phrases to help guests who may be creatively challenged.

We all had a great time just mingling, eating, and decorating, and I think it was a successful and stress-free shower for all! Check back later today for the How-To on onesie decorating too!