Baby Shower Invitations For Twins.

We threw an intimate baby shower for our dear friend who was pregnant with not just one baby, but two! Oh, baby baby! Twins are on the way. For our shower invitations, we immediately went to Etsy in search of the perfect invite that would capture the essence of our event. We purchased these cute invitations from {My Confetti Printables}. We loved that not only the invite was part of the package, but also two card inserts to encourage guests to bring books and diapers to the shower. A thank you card in the same design was included as well for the mother to be to use to thank all of the guests who gave gifts. Sound like a big package? It didn't stop there. There was also printables for envelopes as well. Just wanted to give My Confetti Printables a huge shout out for providing such a beautiful package. Be sure to check out their other designs as well. 

Watermelon Cake Made Out Of Real Fruit.

As parents, we've been trying to make a conscious effort to eliminate sugar in our daughter's diet. With her birthday coming up, she requested a cake, but we decided to make a watermelon cake and decorate it with fruit. This all fruit cake was a big success. Not only was it healthy, it was delicious, and she never missed having a cake slathered with frosting and baked with sugar. We used fruit that was in season at our local grocery store. Sliced up strawberries, cantaloupe cut outs, and blueberries were the perfect accessory to the watermelon base.

Valentine's Day Party.

Here in Hong Kong, Valentine's Day is overshadowed by Chinese New Year and doesn't get much recognition. Valentine's Day typically falls on the same week as Chinese New Year. Most people leave the country for the holiday and shops close down for the week. However, I thought it would be fun to put together a small Valentine's Day themed party for some of the kids who stayed in town. Thankfully, the weather was perfect and we were able to set up the party on our back patio.

To cut back on the food prep, we asked each family to bring a snack to contribute to the playdate. Our friends brought fresh fruit and the cutest strawberry-banana fruit leather that they had made themselves and rolled up into Valentine's Day treats.

I had been struggling with sickness leading up to the day of the party, so I went with purchased foods from our local bakeries. Sugar donuts got a festive holiday bunting topper, while the traditional Hong Kong egg tart was placed in Valentine's Day cupcake wrappers and topped with a coordinating heart topper.

We decided to give the kids a sugar rush with their drinks. By dipping the cups in vanilla frosting and then covering them with sprinkles, it gives the rims a festive touch. We filled each cup with strawberry cotton candy and then filled the cups with Sprite. The cups are typically filled with champagne poured over the cotton candy, but since this was a kid party, we kept it alcohol free.

We had a few crafts lined up for the kids to make during the party. The first activity was a painting project using the erasers on the ends of a pencil and watercolor paints. We had the kids cut out a heart shape, lay the cutout on a new sheet of paper, and then paint dots on the edges of the cutout. Once the kids had gone around the heart shape cutout, we removed the cutout and a pretty heart silhouette was left on the painted sheet of paper.

We had purchased some wooden woven hearts that the kids were able to use their imaginations to craft with, as well as some other paper hearts that they could attach to anything of their choosing. For the girls of the party, we purchased some pink tassels to sting onto a chain to make a necklace for them to wear.

Hello Kitty Party - Activities For Kids.

We set up a small craft center for the children to participate in during the party. We've thrown parties and attended parties where sometimes the organized craft/game stations work, and sometimes the kids who are attending just aren't interested in them. However, this time around, the kids were really involved with every activity we had planned.

I made each child a little party bag that held their materials to make hair bows and also doubled as their party favor bag to take home. Tomorrow I will do a post on what we put into their bag.

As we waited for all the party guests to arrive, I had the children start on coloring pages that we had printed off from the internet. There are plenty of online sources, but you can find some by clicking right here {source}. We also designed our own little packets for the crayons that the kids used to color with it.

My friend, Meg, gave us the cutest Hello Kitty cookie cutters. These have got to be some of the cutest Hello Kitty cookies out there! I love how she sits up. We gave the kids an icing bag full of pink icing, and a couple jars of sprinkles for them to decorate their Hello Kitties with.

Our final activity for the children was to paint their fingernails. I was walking through Toys R Us and came across the cutest Hello Kitty nail polish. It came as a set of three with a large Hello Kitty figurine that we actually used as our cake topper. My daughter was super excited to get to paint her fingernails with her friends at her birthday party!

Hello Kitty Birthday Party - Dessert Table.

The day of our Hello Kitty birthday party, Hong Kong was experiencing a torrential downpour. We were hoping the rain would let up by late afternoon, so we could go with our original plan of setting up outside on our balcony, but the rain kept falling. We moved our party inside, and unfortunately did not have great lighting for our pictures!

We set our dessert table up in front of our wall of windows and hung the backdrop we made. The backdrop was a bit of a trash to treasures project. One day as I was walking through Kowloon City, I rescued a wooded frame that a restaurant was throwing out. I then painted the frame white and attached paper fans that we purchased from Sham Shui Po.

For our dessert table, we purchased a Hello Kitty ferris wheel from Maxim's Cakes. Inside each compartment, we served little Hello Kitty cookies gingerbread cookies that were a grocery store purchase. We served glass bottles of  lemonade with Hello Kitty straws. Strawberry wafer cookies tied with a pink ribbon were an automatic festive addition to the table. To add a little bit of healthy to all that sugar, we customized skewers of fruit, by cutting out each the name of each little attendee.

Hello Kitty Birthday Party.

I have recently discovered that designing a party in Hong Kong is like learning a new language because it is a completely different experience from event design back in South Carolina! From running around Hong Kong looking for vanilla icing and then looking for powdered icing sugar to trying to keep the giant number balloon from flying up into the sky and away from me while I transported it from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon Peninsula, this party was definitely a learning experience for me and my staff. This week we will share on the blog our Hello Kitty party and the activities that we had the party guests participate in.

Tips For Making Your Own Crown Out Of Lace.

There are so many tutorials floating around on the internet so I thought this was going to be a pretty simple project. I was wrong. This isn't particularly a tutorial, as much as it is just tips for making your lace crown making process a little easier. It took us a couple tries {and a couple failed crowns in the garbage bin} to get the whole process right. So without further ado, here are our tips that worked for us:

 

• The colors of the princess party, we were making the crowns for, were purple and white. We discovered that the color of the lace you use doesn't really matter. We purchased lavender colored lace but once you add fabric stiffener to the lace, it changes the shade and you will want to paint over it again with the proper color.
• It's important to apply a thin coat of fabric stiffener. On our first attempt we doused the lace in the Modge Podge and ended up having wax paper stuck to the lace, which we couldn't remove once it had dried completely. Applying a thin coat of fabric stiffener also allows the detail of the lace to not get lost.
• We stacked two layers of the same lace, but we prefer the look of two different laces together. The pattern difference with the two laces provides a depth to the crown that we didn't achieve using one lace pattern.
• Take your time. In general, I struggle with patience, but it really does pay off when making a crown out of lace.We applied a couple coats of fabric stiffener and waited until the first coat was completely dry before we added the next coat.

 

The Birthday Princess.

This little princess found a special friend for her in the woods! Here she is, trying to turn her frog into Prince Charming. We purchased her party dress from Target. From the ruffles of the dessert table to the ruffles on her dress, we knew it would be the perfect princess dress for the guest of honor.

A Princess Party.

This pretty princess party was set up in the private garden of a special fairy godmother. All the little girls who attended the party got to eat cupcakes and get their nails painted.

We used an old door and two saw horse frames as the main table for the little girls who attended the party. We set it up using paper plates, cups, and napkins. To elevate the disposable dishes, we dressed them up with paper doilies.

Little white boxes that we made using our Silhouette Cameo, held bottles of nail polish that each girl could take home with her after the party. We purchased the silver wands off of Amazon. They add the perfect touch to each place setting. We added the purple bow to each wand.

We made the purple table runner using the same fabric that we used from our ruffled tablecloth on the dessert table. We sewed a roll of white lace to each side of the runner. White and purple vases were purchased from Target's dollar section and filled with fresh flowers.

The princess cake was a specific request from the birthday girl. As soon as she saw a photo of a doll cake, she knew she wanted one at her birthday party too.We already had the perfect cake pan to bake the skirt in our storage. Our Opulent Treasure cake stand was the perfect platform for this princess cake to stand on. We used a pale lavender butter-cream icing to ice the cake and the cupcakes.

Princess Party - The Dessert Table.

This week we designed this all girl princess soiree. Ruffles. Lace. The color purple. Nail polish. This party was held in the garden of the birthday girl's real life godmother. Her fairy godmother. Can it get more perfect for a princess themed party?!?!

We custom made the ruffle tablecloth using flat sheets that we purchased from Walmart. For some reason sewing this tablecloth seemed like such a daunting task to me. I asked other friends who also sew and upholster for their advice. I asked my mom, who taught me how to sew, for advice. I watched videos on YouTube. I searched Pinterest. And then I realized, I just needed to buckle down and start sewing. And like most things, we found that once we started the project, it wasn't quite as daunting as we had anticipated. As I pinned layers of ruffles to the side of the table, I had flashbacks of being back in my fashion design class at university making a tailored jacket.

On a shopping trip with one of my assistants and our daughters, we purchased the dress form from Hobby Lobby. I spray painted it white to go with the colors of our princess party. On another shopping trip, I purchased white tulle with glitter from Hancock Fabrics to make the tutu for the form. The other princess themed accessories were also purchased from Hobby Lobby and spray painted white.

There was nothing that suited the princess theme better than our Opulent Treasure's cupcake holder. We pulled it out of our warehouse along with our matching cake stand. Cupcake holders were made out of paper doilies and iced with pale lavender butter-cream.

A Princess Party Nail Salon.

Little girls love having their nails painted. Big girls, for that matter, do too! We set up a little nail salon at the princess birthday party to pamper the girls. Each little girl enjoyed picking out the polish and the design that she wanted on her nails.

Minutes before the party started, we painted the "Once Upon A Time" sign on canvas. The birthday girl had a hand in painting the background. It was important to the birthday girl to feel like she was contributing to her party. Having her paint the background was an easy way to include her.

The Red Balloon Party - The Birthday Girl.

The Red Balloon Party - Details.

We kept the decorations simple for The Red Balloon Party that we styled. We made a string of tassels out of tissue paper that we hung above the kid table. White spray paint was our best friend for this event. We purchased black letters at Hobby Lobby to spell out the birthday girl's name and then spray painted them white to coordinate with our color scheme.

We served our guests a drink made out of fresh strawberries, a simple sugar syrup, and ginger ale. Belinda, from The Party Garden supplied us with paper straws and wooden forks, that we covered with scrapbook paper.

Party crafts for the kids included making a balloon face and also creating a stained glass balloon out of red construction paper, clear contact paper, and tissue paper. Having a Silhouette Cameo came in handy, and made cutting out faces and balloon shapes quick work.

Even though we had a couple organized activities for the kids to do, they had the most fun running around with their own balloon playing catch. We heard a lot of popping balloons throughout the party from different children!