Flower Party

This year for Chloe's birthday party, I went a little simple. Not by choice but mainly because I've been a bit under the weather (or like my husband likes to say the weather's been on top of me) so I originally had a huge over the top party planned, but I think this one still turned out really cute.

The colors I chose were yellow, pink and white. I did a combination of fabric and paper flowers for decorations. I only spent about two days on the party too so it really wasn't time consuming at all. I also kept changing my mind and tried to simplify what I wanted to do. Everyone seemed to like the party and Chloe had a blast and in the end that's all that mattered.

For the invitations I made fabric flowers in yellow, white and pink and wrote the party info on leaves.
Sorry this is such a horrible picture these did turned out really cute though.

For decorations I made flower pom poms. I know I use these at a lot of my parties, but this time I tried to make them look more like flowers. You can grab the tutorial for them on {this earlier post}. The only thing I did different was for the centers I used a napkin that was smaller than the tissue paper so they looked more like stamens. I put these up over the dessert table. I also strung them up with paper lanterns I had from Chloe's party last year.

 

For the dessert table I decided to do a small 6 inch cake along with cupcakes. I know this is just my obsessive compulsion but I wanted the food to match the color scheme too.

 I made a white cake filled with lemon curd, strawberry cream cheese and fresh strawberries and I frosted the cake with white chocolate whipped cream. I added a pink fondant flower mainly because my husband made a comment to me the night before how my flowers were really simple for the party favors. I wasn't sure how I wanted to decorate the cake and I did the desserts the morning of, so I just threw it together last minute. To get the tutorial for the ruffle look go to {this link} and you can watch {this video} for the fondant flower. Since I did the flower the morning of the party, I shaped the petals in an empty egg carton and covered them and let them set up in the fridge so they could harden.

I made cupcakes just in case some of the kids didn't like lemon curd so I just filled theirs with fresh strawberries instead. I made five sets of fabric and paper flowers in the three different colors for the cupcake toppers. Also, I was planning on adding leaves and I think it would've looked a little bit better, but I was simplifying.

For the backdrop of the food table, I made wall flowers out of napkins using the same technique as the pom poms but you can check out {this tutorial} from Made. I combined the wall flowers with a few paper pinwheels (get the tutorial from my {robot party} link) and a couple of fabric flowers.

For the food, I kept it really simple and served brunch this time. My father in law made cinnamon rolls and I made a few quiches. My family came into town for Chloe's party and they helped prep yogurt berry parfaits  (topped with corn flakes which is the Japanese way) and fruit kebabs for me.

I had my mom cut out different melons and pineapple in different flower shapes and attached grapes to look like leaves. For the containers for the fruit, I recycled a few large soup cans and wrapped them in fabric and attached a flower onto them.

I served lemonade for drinks. I bought some really cute pint size canning jars from Walmart and printed out some labels. I also bought pink striped paper straws from Little Yume on Etsy to go with the drinks. My husband was really against me getting the jars and straws since they cost a little extra, but they were a huge hit, and after the party he admitted that it was a good idea (plus I can reuse the jars as gifts or to actually can with later). The grandparents were nostalgic over the paper straws and everyone loved the cute jars.

I did take pictures of the rest of the party decor and party favors but I think they got erased because I can't find them anymore. Oh well. For the rest of the decorations I just hung balloons upside down along with the left over paper lanterns. For party favors, I made lemon ricotta cookies (my family's favorite) and added a small pink fondant flower.

You can check out these different link for different flowers I used for the party.
Organza Flowers by Little Birdie Secret
Lace Flower by See It Again Saturday
T Shirt Flower by A Bit Of Sunshine
Star Flower by The Letter 4
Peony by Ruffles and Stuff
Fabric Flower by Simply Vintagegirl

This was a fun party and it was great to spend time with family to celebrate Chloe turning two.

Cherry Blossom Party

For Chloe's first birthday, I did a cherry blossom viewing party. I had been obsessed with a cherry blossom theme ever since I found out I was having a girl. Plus, I was able to make this party pretty affordable since I could borrow a lot of the elements I wanted. I don't think anyone's going to throw a cherry blossom party anytime soon, or if you just want to know how I did some of the things, here's some of the tutorials I used and things that I did for her party.

I wanted more traditional Japanese food, but went with what I figured everyone would eat. I served pork tonkatsu, teriyaki chicken, rice balls, croquettes, and a cucumber salad. I even bought Japanese sodas for everyone to enjoy.

For the decorations, I borrowed a lot of it. My friend lent me her wedding kimono and the curtain, my mom let me use the emperor and empress dolls, and my brother let me borrow his samurai helmet and I also put up the picture that he drew of Chloe on the front door to greet guests with.

What I didn't borrow I made or embellished with cherry blossoms that I punched out using a cherry blossom flower punch. I bought pink and white paper lanterns then I used this tutorial from Martha Stewart for the tissue flowers on the lanterns. This might by a bit extreme, but my husband bought me cherry blossom scented oil for Christmas so I even had our apartment scented like cherry blossoms.

I decided I wanted to have cranes as part of the decor too, so I used them for the food. I folded small paper cranes for the ends of the toothpicks for the food. (I was going to make curtains of all of the cranes, but ran out of time) I also had regular sized cranes to hold the labels.

As part of the display, I wanted cherry blossom branches so I got some branches from a guy pruning his trees and they even had small buds on them which made them perfect! I glued (using tacky glue) on paper cherry blossoms that I punched out. I creased the flowers in the center so they were more 3D; I then used a gold glitter glue stick to dot "stamens" in the centers.

I made labels for all of the food and drinks and wrote everything in Japanese with the English translations underneath. To do that I just used Google translator :) For the water bottles I took off the labels and wrapped them with ribbon and glued personalized labels on instead.

I even tied the chopsticks and forks with pink ribbon. As the cable guy pointed out while I was wrapping them, "it might be a little overboard". hehe

For the thank you's I put together some Japanese candy (because if you ever get Japanese food they always give you candy with your check) and labelled them as well.

I made the cakes for the party and made fondant cherry blossom flowers. I found this video on how to do it. I did do mine differently, but I used hers to get the general idea. This was my first time using fondant and I think they turned out pretty decently. I tinted the fondant pink and used pink shimmer for the inside of the flowers and white shimmer for the edges. Personally, I like the rough edges of the flowers, I think they look a little more realistic than if they were perfect, but that's just me. :)

I looked up the kanji for Chloe's name and I traced it in fondant.

This cake was chocolate cherry cake filled with a lemon custard and frosted with chocolate truffle frosting.
(side note: if you haven't had lemon and chocolate you HAVE to TRY IT!)

This cake was chocolate cake filled with caramel and strawberry buttercream and covered in chocolate ganash.
(the topper was also borrowed from my friend)

People still dress up in kimonos for cherry blossom viewing parties in Japan and since we bought kimonos for everyone when we were in Japan, plus my family has quite a few extra ones, I thought it would be fun to have as many people dress up as possible. It was so much fun. Everyone really had fun dressing up too. Here's the cute birthday girl in her kimono.

I hope this helps if you want to throw you're own party. :)