Alice in Wonderland Baby Shower

*This is a crosspost from the blog i kept during pregnancy. I loved the baby shower my mom and sister threw for us. I chose the theme, but they took care of ALL the details! While it was a baby shower for me, all the decorations were repurposed later in the year for my niece's birthday!

Down the Rabbit Hole

An Alice-in-Wonderland theme party

My mom and sister threw us a beautiful theme shower and everything was spectacular.

I (of course) was Alice for the day. My hair was fabulously curly, but the humidity got to me about halfway through. I still had a fabulously curly ponytail ;)

Follow the signs!

We're going to Wonderland!

Down the rabbit hole (on an adventure into parenthood!)

It's a teaparty!!!

Flowers with faces as the center pieces. See the queen of hearts tarts?
You could take your cup of tea in the assortment of mismatched and unique vintage teacups or drink "Lemonade that makes you smaller" or "Lemonade that makes you taller"

Lots of yummy desserts, almost all homemade by my sister but complemented by boxed goodies too (my mom found the cutest chocolate mushrooms!)
In addition to the array of teacakes and desserts, there was a buffet line of finger sandwiches, crudite, curried carrot soup, and mini quiche

Party favors! I had a beautiful keepsake teacup (the peacock!), a there were blue sixlets with "Take Me" messages and keys.
Activities included making mad hatter hats, "white rabbit" boo boo bunnies, and flamingo croquet!

Invitations said "It's a boy! And we're entirely bonkers about him! (All the best people are) Join Samantha & Robert on their first trip down the rabbit hole-into parenthood!" and thank you cards were gifted along with the list keeping track of gifts :)

Games were played- baby shopping list, how big is belly (39"), etc. These cute pocket watch necklace with rabbit and drink me charms were a prize, but as Alice, i got one to keep either way :)

Plaid Party- Baby's 1st Birthday

Plaid Party

For our son's first birthday, which is in September, we went all out with a Buffalo Plaid/Lumberjack theme. The cake, the cookies, the guests- all plaid! It was adorable!!!

Decor:
I had bolts of plaid fabric that i used for tablecloths, but i also hung plaid pinwheels and plaid bunting from our ceilings, scattered silk leaves that i already had from a craft store, a tiny lantern for effect, and vases of sunflowers.

We purchased these perfect cookies from For The Love of Cookies on Etsy.

Didi worked with me to alter her plaid cookie patterns to include some patterns from another designer on etsy who wasn't available for my timeframe. They were made to order, packaged individually, and mailed to arrive a 1-2 days before the party.
*Note: custom cookies require a lot of notice to order, and they're going to cost you ~$3/cookie with a minimum order of 2 dozen cookies. This was a special day, and i thought it was worth it.

We purchased plaid cups, plates, napkins, and decorations from Wholesale Party Supplies

Our party favors were steel "Mountain Mugs" (purchase wholesale from ebay) filled with individual bottles of maple syrup, tree crayons, hot cider mix, and woodland rings, and one of those pretty cookies (which came wrapped individually). We served chili and corn muffins. I also put out a dish of maple candy, which i love!

I spent painstaking hours making a plaid cake that looked like a tree stump.

•  I made 6 cakes in 3 colors- red velvet, chocolate, and vanilla with red food coloring, and made my own 5 ring template (most checkered cake dividers are for 3-4 rings. For buffalo plaid, you need 5). Normally, i make everything from scratch, but with the project already a little intimidating, I added extra vanilla and a dash of cinnamon to box cake mixes to make them taste homemade. 

• The 12" cake was 4 layers deep, so i essentially had 2 extra cakes, which i layered with pudding in a trifle dish. There were 2 layers of (3 velvet rings with 2 chocolate rings) and 2 layers of (3 red rings with 2 velvet rings).*You could divide 1 box of chocolate between 2 smaller pans, just make sure the pan is the same as the ring it needs to fill.

• i made the bark by crinkling up waxed paper, laying it flat, and spreading melted chocolate over it. When it was hard, i cut a line down the middle, so the bottom edges would fit the plate and the top edges would be rough. I gave it some contrast by brushing on powdered sugar, and pressed it onto the sides of an iced cake (i made chocolate frosting and dyed it black).
• i used a fork dipped in chocolate to make rings on the top of the "treestump" cake. I made a practice cake before i made the real deal (and used my extra cake batter for cupcakes!), and i liked a lighter chocolate icing on top than i ultimately used. i drew a "crack" in the top and added a foam hatchet (i may be talented, but gum paste and fondant are not my thing, thank you very much)

I made the smaller practice cake for our son's *actual* birthday. His party was 2 days later. He had a lot of fun digging in.
I had tried to make his practice cake with just red velvet and chocolate, and 4 rings instead of 5, and it was checkered, but not plaid.

We had a maple leaf notepad where guests could decorate a tree with well wishes for our little man.

*We had supplies for s'mores and had originally planned for the party to be outdoors with a firepit, but the day came cold, windy, and rainy and we moved it inside. I've seen lumberjack parties where s'mores kits and hot cocoa mix were the party favors, or pre-made s'mores were one of the party treats.

Color Party

Indian culture has a lot of beautiful traditions, and one of my favorites is part their Spring celebration- Holi- where they throw colored powdered at each other. American culture has recently appropriated this VERY successfully with "Color Runs", but some of us...ummm... don't like to run...

Our color party lasted 2 days with a group of my friends during the day, and a group of my husband's friends the following night. I purchased a couple packs of holi color powder/rangoli powder:

While we did put the bags out, i also filled close to 100 shot glasses with powder and displayed them on a plastic 3 tier server for easy throwing. Invitations were tie dye, and guests were advised to wear white or clothes they didn't mind ruining. I actually thought the powders looked better on brightly colored clothing than the white!

 It was summer so we had bocce ball, badminton, and water guns filled with water color available. We also had a clothesline of canvases where you could "paint" with the water guns. *Note, if you provide water guns, grown men will war with water guns.

one friend came in a hazmat suit!

I was about 5 months pregnant and wore a (cheap, throw away) chiffon dress for the party. I had to convince people to include me in the activities, but eventually, i was colorful too!

The Roaring 20's

Theme parties are a bit of a hobby of mine, and i thought i'd expand the blog to include them. The Roaring 20s party has always been one of my favorites. It was winter time so we didn't have a huge turnout, but it was gorgeous and fun nonetheless.

Prohibition Party

Decor:
This was a prohibition party so we tried to really get the feel of the era. We hosted the party in the basement, decorated in black and gold, and provided feather boas and faux pearls for guests. Liquor was served in crystal decanters, and- as it was December- we had a tiny tree decorated with snippets of alcohol. The invitation was a simple card slipped inside of candy cigarette boxes presented to each invitee.

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Drink:
We chose classic prohibition era cocktails and put up cards above the drink table. On the table were crystal decanters of liquor and glass carafes of mixers for "Bees Knees", "French 75", "Lynchberg Lemonade" and "Dark & Stormy". I downloaded a "Gatsby" font for our signs and invitations.

 Food:
We kept food simple and ordered a tray of sushi from a local restaurant. It was actually super appropriate since asian food came onto the scene in the US and was super trendy in the 1920s. We also served a selection of simple hors d'oeuvres- savory puffed pastries and stuffed mushrooms. I picked up small "fancy" metal serving platters at the dollar tree to add to the ambience.

Activities:
In keeping with the theme, tables had packs of playing cards, and the cheeky *somewhat* lude game "Cards Against Humanity". I also turned my tablet into a photo booth using an app. i used gold curtains to hide our basement shelving. We also had stick on mustaches for comic fun.

*A lot of guests felt that coming dressed in theme was stressful, but i thought it was so much fun to have everyone in character and the photos were great!

A Very Harry X-Mas

Harry Potter Theme Party

Universal is hosting a special Hogwarts Christmas Dinner this year which (we obviously can't attend put) prompted DH to ask for a Harry Potter Party.

*I found a lot of my templates using google, but did not keep track of where and altered most of them. Suffice to say, any unlinked template was on the freewebs.

DH saw marauders map invitations and asked me to make them. I put platform tickets inside

I printed them on this paper and provided templates at the bottom. I put a platform 9 3/4 ticket inside before folding it in thirds and sealing with wax.

Tip: Dip the stamp in olive oil and blot on a paper towel. Let the glue sit for ~20 seconds before stamping. I found my best stamps were when i let the stamp sit til the glue hardened and then removed the metal from the rubbery seal Alternatively you can do the wax thing.

Harry Potter merchandise costs a pretty penny, so I've opted for the DIY on a lot of things. I've made chocolate frogs in the past, but for our party i found the fold your own box pictures. 

(I'm going to be attaching jpg files here and full disclosure- they were free on the interwebs and i don't remember where i got them from.)

This is a photo of my chocolate frogs from last year's halloween party. These are with homemade chocolate, but this year i'll just be melting down soy-free chips and maybe filling with peanutbutter

Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans are always a crowd pleaser, but I wanted the movie box for effect. You can buy them online for ~$10/box before shipping, but i just printed out a template and coated it in packing tape and bought the less cool boxes to fill it with for $5:

pay attention to where the bottom folds. i folded mine wrong the first time and had to refold it

I bought a 24ct of 5oz bottles and modpodged labels on for premade cocktails:

In this photo, the felix felicis and butterbeer are only half filled because i need to buy cream soda and won't be adding lemonade until closer to the party date. The ones that are liquor and soda are being made ahead of time, the one with juice needs to be fresher :)

Recipes are for 8 bottles (40oz total) since we did 3 different cocktails in our 24 bottle pack.

• Butterbeer: 26oz Butterscotch schnapps, 7oz Rumchata (cinnamon almond cream liquer), 7oz Tuaca(vanilla liquer), 2 drops yellow food color *I originally posted this recipe with cream soda, but it made the rumchata curdle. I opted to just eliminate the cream soda because I'm very happy with the liquer recipe I have, but you can substitute something non-cream based if you'd like to use cream soda.
• Polyjuice Potion: 20oz St. Germaine (elderflower liquer), 6oz Absolut Wild Tea, 6oz Orient Apple, 8oz Club Soda, 2 drops green food color 1 drop brown food color
• Felix Felicis: We did a lynchberg lemonade: 16oz Honey Whiskey, 8oz Triple Sec, 16oz lemonade. 1/8 tsp gold disco dust (disco dust is food grade glitter made for cupcakes and makes a very beautiful glittering snowglobe effect in drinks)

Pumpkin Juice: apple juice, pumpkin pie puree, and apricot juice. We just bought the orange naked juice and added pumpkin

We had Wizarding World themed snacks and decorations:

Pumpkin Pasties, Chocolate Frogs, Golden Ferrero Rocher Snitches, Sorting Hat Caramels, Licorice Wands, Cauldron Cake Brownies, Ron Weasley's Reubens, and we also served chicken wings (I originally was going to do all drumsticks so it had the turkey leg motif, but then I decided boneless wings were both yummy and easy and I put them in a big copper chafing dish). We did "exploding chocolate" with Chuao's mini firecracker chocolates (they have cayenne and poprocks.) You can see the drink table in the background with the pumpkin beverage dispenser (of pumpkin juice) and the assorted "potion" bottles

I actually leave the floating candles up year round. I watched the tutorial on Epbot and added extra "wax" drippies, but found it easier to just tie fishing line around the base of the flame and back up to the tip of the flame(so it hangs straight) than to drill or poke holes. Ours flicker and look very realistic. Super pleased with them. We replaced the curtain in the doorway with a "brick" curtain for entering platform 9 3/4

Our mini tree, topped with its very own Hedwig topper

Ornaments were mostly cheap ebay finds: time turners, wand charms, deathly hallows charms, golden snitches, tiny potion bottles, etc.

Look for updates! we'll be having a HP mini tree, floating candles, ferrero rocher snitches, sorting hat caramels, exploding chocolate, treacle fudge and more!

Link to original map template