Marriage is what brings us together today

We are so excited to have received professional photos of my daughter's wedding May 23rd. 

Thank you Lana Dunn at Beautifully Dunn Photography. She was excellent! 

I was the florist as well as the event planner and mom. So I was a proud and tired momma. 

 The happy couple!

 Our family is growing

 Da momma and da dotta

(I have to mention my skirt is recycled from a second-hand wool coat.)

 Handsome couple at historic tree

 The bride grew up exposed to a variety of flowers and selected this white and green color scheme: garden roses, ranunculus, lisianthus, veronica, astilbe, silver brunia berries, maidenhair fern, and monkey tail fern shoots

The groom's boutonniere consisted of a ranunculus, scabiosa bud, 

monkey tail and seeded eucalyptus.

 

 The lovely Copper Creek Event Center in Springville was the setting for the reception.

 The stately fireplace opposite the bride and groom in the rotunda.

 

The guest book table

 

We used curly willow to fill in some of the height of the soaring ceiling.

Urn arrangements flanking the fireplace included hydrangea, green trick dianthus, 

carnations, tulips, Queen Anne's lace, snapdragons, stock, curly willow and hanging amaranthus.

 

Da pappa built these pillars so that the curly willow could be transported separately. 

(Figuring out how to transport floral decorations without damaging them is always tricky.)

My dad and I added the dendrobium orchids, hydrangea, spirea, stock, 

larkspur, and hanging amaranthus on site.

The groom's mother did a lovely job making the cake. 

The bride's father built the cake stand. 

The bride's mother added the flowers.

The small bouquet is for tossing.

 

Cake and an ice cream sundae bar gave us energy for dancing.

 The bride wanted to have a daddy-daughter dance, but she didn't have time to create it. 

Thanks to her selfless sister who saved the day by creating adorable choreography, 

cutting and blending the songs, plus tutoring the dancers.

Sadly, I had a technology-challenged moment when I tried to record it. 

Half-way through the dance, I realized the timer was still at 0:00 and only recorded the ending. 

I hope to add the full video soon.

It was a great day!

Calling All Superheros!

Sixteen is one of those birthdays you emphasize. My self-proclaimed "geeky" daughter wanted to have a party and decided on a Superhero theme with capes optional. I found an invitation I liked online, but didn't think I had the time, talent, or tools to re-create it. A few clicks later, I amazed myself by creating this invitation in PowerPoint:

Our decorations and game prizes came from the local Dollar Tree store.

Our games included Superhero charades, Super-Villian vs. Superhero Sock Stealing, a Punch Board and a crepe paper maze in the basement.

 The ideas for the food table were also found online.

 

 

The birthday girl didn't want fondant, so we dressed up the yellow butter-cream frosting with blue gummy stars I separated out of a multicolor bulk bin.

Super Sixteen was a smashing success!

Wedding Luncheon Flowers

I love a chance to play with flowers! I had that opportunity this week and snapped a few photos. Of course, my pictures never capture the magic of fresh flowers. The bride loves fluffy flowers, the colors mint green, peach, and coral, and described the theme as 'shabby chic'. I incorporated mercury glass for the vintage theme. Here's a little 'Show & Tell', enjoy!

Bride's Bouquet: ranunculus, 'Juliet' garden roses, 'Sahara' roses, 'Chablis' roses, dahlia, hypericum berries, dusty miller, and lamb's ear.

The venue was exquisite: the Bonneville Room at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City. 

Head table for the bride, groom, and parents.

Buffet Arrangement: tuberose, stock, 'Chablis' roses, china mums, tulips, hanging amaranthus, 'Snow on the Mountain' euphorbia.

Centerpieces: Carnations were once overused and fell out of fashion, but I couldn't ignore their 'fluffy' nature and lovely color, so I mixed them in here. For a little punch of coral color I added wax flower.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for ...

Another year, another little girlie birthday party. This time the birthday girl selected ice cream as the theme. So I started my search for ideas. Once again, Pinterest and BirthdayPartyIdeas.com came to my rescue. I found some ideas I adored, but didn't have the time or mental capacity to fulfill (like a cardboard ice cream truck or an ice cream parlor booth complete with striped awning.) We moved up the party to squeeze it in between a holiday and my going out of town. So I scaled back my grand plans to accommodate our schedule.

I definitely wanted to create invitations with a seven scoop ice cream cone representing the birthday girl's age. We decided to hold it after school, but finish before dinner. As soon as we delivered the invitations, the school notified us of a field trip that would return after regular dismissal time. So we kept the date, but pushed the time back and added pizza to the party plans.

I found a couple of fun garland ideas and ended up making this one using real cones, yarn balls, and pom poms for cherries.

I forgot to take a photo of the front door decor. I bought an accordion folded paper ball, cut it in half, and used it as the ice cream scoop on top of a cardboard triangle for a cone. Here is a cropped picture of one we hung in the house.

Practically every children's birthday party I've ever thrown included a variation of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey." This time was no exception. We made a poster titled, "Plop the Cherry on Top." You know the routine.

Another game we played, was a balancing relay. We bought two brightly colored polka-dotted balls at Walmart and made "cones" out of poster board.

Our last game was not your typical party game, but I liked it because it was different. We divided the kids into two teams, gave each a squeeze bottle of frosting and the same number of  ice cream cones and told them to see who could build the tallest ice cream cone castle the fastest.

There were a bunch of creative cakes related to ice cream, but I really wanted to make the cake resemble the invitations. So we used several colors of frosting to make cupcakes look like ice cream scoops. I really liked the finished product, but I liked the ease it came together even better.

We pulled out the parfait glasses and let the guests make their own ice cream sundae with choice of syrups and toppings.

For a favor bag, I used my old standby of brown paper lunch bags, glued on a scrapbook paper cone and scoops and hand wrote with Sharpie, "Thank you for being so sweet!" We included some marshmallows we found at Walmart shaped liked mini ice cream cones. We also filled sugar cones with Skittles, then topped them with a ball of cotton candy and tied them up in cellophane bags.

Nothing over the top, but the girlies had fun. Whew!

Ooh, La, La...Fancy Nancy Birthday Party

I consider myself fairly low maintenance. I'm not a fan of lace, jewelry, or fluff and am not ashamed to call myself a plain Jane. As evidence of how much I love our youngest daughter, I hosted a pink and purple party even though I abhor (that's fancy for I can't stand) the color combination. If you have daughters, you may be familiar with Fancy Nancy books. We enjoy them because the main character has red hair, likes to dress up, accessorize, and decorate, and teaches the meanings of fancy words. We decided to use this as the theme of our party. Thanks to inspiration from my best friend Pinterest, BirthdayPartyIdeas.com, and FancyNancyWorld.com, the birthday girl thought it was spectacular!

This is what I came up with for the invitation:

 

 

                                               

     DELLA Turns Six!

 Oooh-la-la darling, let’s celebrate with a birthday soirée.

(That’s fancy for a party.)

Wednesday, May Thirtieth

Two o’clock until four o’clock in the afternoon

Address

Rèspondez s’il vous plaît

(That’s fancy for email or call my mom Jane)

Email or phone

Please wear your most exquisite attire!

The front door invited guests with two ideas I found on Pinterest: a ruffly six made from cupcake liners and a welcome sign in French.

 

Since the guests were asked to dress in their most exquisite attire, and they received a feather boa and tiara, we created a photo area by stringing ribbons across the fireplace. We also displayed our own collection of FN books as well as others we checked out of the library.

 

We made bracelets out of candy and cereal strung on curling ribbon. (This isn't my photo - I couldn't find any purple licorice, but we used this idea.) We added beads made out of fruit flavored tootsie rolls.

If you are familiar with the books, you know we had to serve parfaits! We lucked out to have a set of parfait glasses given to us awhile back. The kids enjoyed building their own. I tried to speed up the serving by pre-freezing scoops of ice cream on a baking sheet. I recommend it. (On another food related note, I made marshmallow pops. No photo, but the girls gobbled them up!)

The birthday girl wanted to use feathers to decorate the cake, but I resisted. (I shouldn't have shown her the over-the-top parties and cakes I found online.) Our cake was pretty simple. 

For a craft, I wanted to have the girls decorate a picture frame. Buying frames wasn't really in the budget, so I created some myself out of craft foam I had on hand. (Who really keeps their kids' projects forever, so why waste the money?)

It may not be the fanciest party on the web, but for this plain Jane mom, it was fancy enough.