Harrisonburg Women's Service League

The Harrisonburg Women's Service League annual holiday auction is this Thursday and Partytopia will be offering up a concept package to the highest bidder! HWSL, formerly the Harrisonburg Junior Woman's Club, has been an active community service organization in our community since 1951! It was a blast to work with a bunch of talented women this year to plan the auction - it promises to be a really fun event. And of course I  look forward to working with the concept package winner to plan an amazing party!

Halloween Report

Wow - an entire month got away from me. The Halloween party happened and it was lovely. I took pictures, and they are still sitting on my camera. I think there's a time warp between Halloween and Thanksgiving where time travels twice as fast. I barely put away the Halloween decorations before turning my attention to turkey and pumpkins. We're hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, and hubby has agreed to do the cooking. I'll be making one dessert, and I'll be sure to take pictures of the table settings and dish about the Turkey Day dishes in a separate post. But to get back to the task at hand...  I promised you a Halloween inspiration board, and here it is. Photo credits are listed by number in the caption box below.

Photo credits: 1. Country Living; 2. www.ontimesupplies.com; 3. Perpetual Stew; 4. Fit Sugar; 5. Amy Atlas; 6. Decor Village; 7. Cutest Food; 8. titdilapa

As you can see, vintage Halloween is more about whimsy than the gore that often predominates the Halloween genre. I particularly like the vintage route because it's so kid friendly - sure, there's a place for spiders and witches, but adorable owl cupcakes and pumpkins masquerading as monkeys are equally welcome!

Halloween

Halloween is my second favorite holiday of the year (Christmas easily beats it because presents trump candy, every time). This is my first year as a Halloween parent, and I'm excited to have an excuse to go trick or treating again. I've decided to throw a little Halloween potluck to nourish our bellies after perusing houses for free sweets and treats, and I designed an invitation for the occasion:

There's something about vintage Halloween, in particular, that I find really appealing. (Note to kids out there: smoking a corncob pipe is not cool.) I hope to bring vintage flair to the potluck as well - I'm thinking about making some cupcakes with vintage-inspired toppers, maybe going the poison label apothecary jar-candy route. I'll draw up an inspiration board and post it on here to give you a little sampling of what I may have up my sleeve. Even though it's going to be pretty low-key, even low-key benefits from forethought and coordination! Check back in early November for party pics!

On a different note - I am having huge success with the t-shirt pom poms these days. The hardest part for me is cutting up perfectly donate-able t-shirts for the cause. But I know the finished product, a pom pom garland for my stairs, will liven up my Christmas decorations and be used for many years to come.

T-shirt Pom Pom Update

So I tried making a t-shirt pom pom a few weeks ago. I won't call it a disaster. Rather, I see it as a teaching moment and a craft opportunity. Yes, the original pom pom unraveled into tons of tiny t-shirt strips that were impossible to corral. Lesson? Size does matter, and these bad boys just aren't meant to  be little. But there I was, with the shreds of a formerly well-worn shirt piled in my lap.  Solution? Make a rag rug for the sun room! I work on it a little bit every couple of days. At this rate, I should be finished by the time I'm 50. At least that gives me plenty of time to wear out or stain some new shirts!

In other party news, I've decided to host a Halloween potluck. It will be a low-key affair, but I did design a cute invitation. I'll post it on here and talk more about the party prep soon.

I've also been thinking more about things that I need to do before I launch this as a bonafide business. One thing I need is designated office space, which I plan to carve out of my hall closet. I'll post some before and after pictures so that you can be apart of the dramatic transformation. I'm sure you're like me and can't resist a good before and after!

Until then, party hearty friends.

Christmas Planning... in August?

Did this summer go by super fast, or was it just me? Seriously - it seems like I was just in Virginia Beach yesterday, and now I'm thinking of October as next month (which it's not really, but it kinda is... I mean, if I want to plan something on the first Saturday in October, that's really only about 5 weeks away - eeek!). Since the mornings are getting cooler and school is back in session, that means that I'm turning my attention to Christmas. My most fave-or-ite day of the year!

Our holiday decorations are a bit of a hodge-podge though.  They are mostly things I've picked up at after-Christmas sales, stuff from the Dollar Tree from when I was an impoverished grad student, and gifts. (Anyone else out there have a Santana ornament hanging on your tree?!?) I don't mind the randomness of my collection on the whole, but I think this is the year to cull things out a little and to put more thought into making a cohesive look.

The only problem is that I'm torn in a couple of different directions. First up - I think I would love a tartan extravaganza! Is tartan in or out these days? I know it's a classic, but it definitely seems to trend more in particular years. Regardless of its hip quotient, I think tartan always conjures up images of sitting around the fire in a cozy Vermont farmhouse, watching snowflakes fall while I sip hot chocolate and my loyal yellow lab keeps my feet warm. Or maybe I've been reading too many L.L. Bean catalogs. Still, you gotta admit that the images below convey a certain something that is quintessentially Christmas. 

(click on photo to link back to its original source site)

(click on photo to link back to its original source site)

On the other hand, I've been really digging a simple DIY look to Christmas decorations lately. Things like this seen on My Delicious Ambiguity:

(from Country Living)

(from L'Atelier)

But now that I look at these photos together, I see that maybe my either-or thinking has been too binary. Is it possible to weave tartan and DIY together with a little holiday magic? We'll see... but way before we get to the final product, I think I'll start working on this:

(from Craftaholics Anonymous)

Craftaholics Anonymous uses theirs as door decorations, but I'm thinking holiday garland on my stairs. If these turn out well, I can imagine tons of cute party uses for them - bunches on the backs of chairs, a bouquet of t-shirt pompoms, garlands, a wreath! Wowsers! I guess I won't be taking that bag of donations to Goodwill just yet! I'll keep you posted on how these turn out.

Story of a Christening

I had grand plans for an elegant outdoor reception for E's christening. Actually, let's step back here a second. Originally, I planned to bring a cake to the church and serve it during coffee hour. That's it. Then my mom made an off-hand comment about whether or not I was planning to send invitations. Ooooh - what a good idea! I can have a party!

That realization came while I was in Connecticut at a wedding. I was chilling on the bed in my room at the fun Heritage Hotel (ahh... lounging at the pool and enjoying the spa - that was the life for two days!) while E snoozed and the hubby drank with old college buddies. I did a quick search, and stumbled on this cute invitation at Tiny Prints:

Obviously, that's not a picture of E - just imagine the world's cutest baby and you get the idea. The pink on the invitation, while stereotypical, set the color scheme for the aforementioned garden reception - pink and yellow.

I mailed out about 30 invitations and set up a Facebook event - you know, standard protocol for partying in the digital age. (A side note here - I really wasn't sure who to invite to something intimate like a christening. I decided to only invite friends that showed a significant interest in E's life thus far - people who came to her shower, or who dropped in to visit in the weeks following her birth. Some people who normally make the invitation cut got left out in that calculation, but I figured giving the nature of the event that they wouldn't care.)  I expected only family members and a very few close friends to RSVP. As the replies started to roll in, though, I  was surprised to get a guest list of about 45 people! Uh, I guess this party just got a little bit bigger than cake.

The next few weeks included figuring out the decorations (I went an all-paper route: paper chains and paper flowers and paper lanterns), planning the food, renting tables and chairs, cleaning up the yard, making favors, securing speakers so we could have music, cleaning my house, peeling stickers off of newly-purchased plates, stalking Target waiting for more tablecloths to arrive... oh yeah, and ordering a cake.

10 days out, the weather forecast said 0% chance of rain.
8 days out - 30%
5 days out - 50%
3 days out - 70%

I may not have my days and percentages right there, but I do know that it went from 0 to 70% pretty darn quick. Crap. This is supposed to be an elegant GARDEN RECEPTION. I spent hours making PAPER DECORATIONS. Sigh.

And here's the moral of this post - sometimes when planning a party, you gotta be flexible. I decided on Friday to nix the garden reception idea and just have something inside. I have two rooms in my house for entertaining - a large living room and a large dining room. All the furniture got moved and we were able to fit two 70" round tables there with enough room to walk around to get to food, and we stuck one 70" round on the porch (It was kinda too big and had to hang off the porch railing, but it worked in a pinch). The paper chains that were supposed to drape from trees got taped to the living room ceiling. The paper lanterns got clustered on the dining room chandelier. And as you can see on the board I made with actual pictures from the event below... the weather was nice enough to play cornhole in the yard (bottom right picture). Turns out it was a beautiful day, weather-wise, until about 6pm, but it was a beautiful day, event-wise, all day long. Many blessings to Emmeline!

Click on board to enlarge images