Paris & London Bridal Shower

My wonderful Mother, and her friend Joanne did this beautiful bridal shower, for my future sister-in-law, Jerika.  They will be going to Paris and London on their Honeymoon, so that was their theme.  

Joanne's back yard, is like walking into a movie set.  All the details and touches that have gone into her yard are incredible.  She and her husband, have put years of hard work into it, and you can see the results have payed off nicely. 

This charming old gate leads down a path to my childhood play house.  It was the best playhouse ever built.  Kim and Joanne built it for their two darling girls, and now their grandkids get to come and enjoy it every time they are in town. 

Each dress represents one city: Paris & London.

All the elegant banners were hand made by Joanne.  She even cut every single one out by hand.  Absolute perfection.

These fun vintage lights were hung in the tree the night before.  You will see further down, that they light up and bring a fun ambiance to the back yard at night.

Flowers were picked up at Costco.  Simple cute arrangements. 

More detailed shots of the play house.  Stay tuned, because we will have two photo shoots coming up with this darling house decorated for the Holidays.  

As promised, the lights are all lit up, stunning isnt it?

When I showed up, we had to battle some crazy wind and random rain showers.  You can tell in some of the shots by how the signs are hanging.  The hearts up above, all came undone and they had to quickly put them back up before the party.  Each heart in the banner,  was cut out from vintage maps of Paris and London , darling isn't it?

This is their outdoor dining area? Doesn't it look like something from out of Father of The Bride, the movie?

Industrial lights strung along the banners.  Each sign is different with darling details about the shower.

The wind was blowing very hard when I took the picture of this banner.  I'm heart broken because most of the pics turned out blurry.  But I was able to get two detailed shots.  Joanne cut all these out by hand. 

We hard our favorite Spa Water: Strawberry-Pineapple.

Cakes were done by: Annie Pugmire .  She did an amazing job  decorating and designing the cakes, the details are to die for.  Cute little flowers make up the petals on the pink cake.  A white chocolate Paris Eiffel Towers is atop the middle cake, with cute little white flowers and coconut on the front.  The shimmer cake was adorned with Eiffel Towers around the body of it.

Delicious sandwiches, salads, and fruit were served and, made by my Mom and her friends.

This is my cute new sister-in-law.  Can't wait for her to be a part of our family.  Four more weeks!

Of course, anytime we do something with the family, we have to have some Lyla pics.  She met a new friend, who was so gentle and sweet with her.  She loves Joannes dogs, as you can see below.

Here are some of the party guests, enjoying some good conversation and food.  If you are looking for a gorgeous place to have a reception, party, or get together.  Contact me on my blog, Joanne rents her yard out during the Summer and is happy to help you have a lovely space for your event. 

Blogland Tour

I have been invited to participate in the Blogland Tour

 By the most inspiring and talented blogger I personally know, Jacqueline at Purple Chocolat Home.

Thank you Jackie, for inviting me to do this!  I may be a little late to the game at getting this finished, but better late than never, right?

Some of you may have seen a couple of these post going around about the Blogland Tour.  Each blogger needs to answer a couple of questions, and then nominate 2 to 3 other bloggers to participate.  It's a great way to introduce new people to other blogs, and get more inspiration.  Which is why, I decided to return the favor and do it myself. Plus, I feel very honored that Jackie picked me! 

Question 1. What Am I working on?

Currently I am working on a Fall and Christmas tablescape for the blog.  I'm really excited to see how it turns out.  My Mother, and her friend JoAnne are helping me design and put the entire thing together.  I firmly believe in team work, and bouncing ideas off of others, so what better team to work with then the ones who taught me everything!  

In life, I'm crazy busy at work, designing peoples homes and working on some upcoming events for the Holidays.  I've officially entered my favorite stage in life: The Holiday Season.  Where I will have little to no sleep, barely get a bite in to eat, and enjoy every moment of capturings the festivities.  

(Design work in the process, someday I'll post finished pictures!)

Question 2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?

I love to look at other peoples blogs, catalogs, and travels and get inspiration from everywhere.  Sometimes I get excited about a trend and build off of of that.  But a lot of times, I'll see something that inspires me and just start creating something.  I typically have no idea how its going to end up, but once its done I love it! I'm not the typical girl who plans her blog post very often.  As you can probably tell by my sporadic blogging.  When I come up with an idea, and have time to develop it, I do.  If I can't, then I don't. For example, the Fall blog post that I'm going to do, I thought up two years ago, and just never had the time to execute it until now.   

Question 3. Why do I write what I do?

I think a picture says a thousands words. So I prefer to show mostly pictures and write as little as possible. 

Question 4. How does my writing process work?

I don't love to write, but if you know me in person, I LOVE to talk.  By the time I'm getting these post out, (like now for example its 2:00 a.m) I don't have a lot of time to write and think about what I'm saying, so for the most part I write only what I need to write.  I do however, always try to put a little bit of me into each post.  I aim to be a perfectionist in life, but its rather exhausting.  So I give up, and just be me! 

Now for my Nominations:

My first nomination goes to: Andrea @ It's The Life.  Andrea is like a sister to me.  I was her baby doll when I was born, she would dress me up and let me tag along with her, and ever since then I have looked up to her.  She has inspired me in more ways than one, and showed me that you can blog even with a full time job.  She is the one who introduced me to the blogging world, encouraged me to blog, and helped me on numerous occasions pull off my post. Her blog is full of incredible DIY, recipes, parties, tutorials and more. She is an amazing Mother, talented cook, brilliant quilter, and designer. 

My second nomination goes to: My darling sister BreAnne @ Our Days In Neverland.  She was the entire reason I started my blog.  She created it, developed it, and taught me how to blog.  She has always been a talented actress and incredible singer.  She decided to give up her booming career, and become a stay at home Mom.  Leaving the crazy fast paced life, for a different kind of crazy paced life. She has the most darling family, and she is finding hidden talents she never thought she had like: cooking, designing, writing, and sewing.  I recently encouraged her to start a blog of her own, so that we could collaborate on post.  Check out all her darling ideas on how to entertain a energetic 2 year old!

My third nomination goes to: Averi @ Just One Of Those Days.  Averi and I met through a mutual friend when I was in design school and quickly hit it off.  Shes one of those incredible friends that you meet in life, and just love to be around.  Not only is she gorgeous and talented, but shes is also an incredible writer.  I love reading her true to life post, written with her witty humor.  Recently she has picked up photography, and has been posting the most beautiful pictures.  She has a creative eye in everything she does from: throwing incredible parties, to designing her home, fashion sense, sassy sense of humor, and on top of it all, she's a talented business woman.  

Shadow Puppets

Remember on the blog post: "Oh The Places You Will Go Little One, " I had these darling shadow puppets from Anthropologie.  They have two sets,  the bedtime stories which is what I used, and you can find HERE. and the Circus ones which you can find HERE. Anyone who knows me, knows that's my favorite store, and inspires me all the time on new ideas.  The entire collaboration of post, came from these little shadow puppets, while I was trying to find towels for my guest bathroom, I happened upon these and had to figure out a way to use them.  Its always the little things, the inspire the big results.

                 
As you saw before, I used them as silhouettes on my glasses in the main blog post, but I also thought they would be so fun to use at a children's sleep over dress up party as the napkin holders.Then at night, after all the kids are tucked away in bed,  have them each use there character and tell different stories before bed.  I tied a ribbon around the napkin and slid the shadow puppet inside then placed them on top of the plates.  Loved how it turned out!

I pulled these out on the last night Lyla and BreAnne were in town.  We were going to read her this amazing Rapunzel book that we found at Barns and Noble, and tell her the story using shadow puppets. First i tried to photograph them having my Mother hold them while I shot the photo.  Lyla saw what we were doing and was determined to tell the story herself.  There goes my dream plan! We had fun and she was really good at helping us hold the images while we attempted to tell the story before her bath time. In the end we just played with all the different shadow puppets. 

Bre was a sport, she had been packing all night and helped us play for a minute.

 Close up shot on the shadow puppets.

 Here is some details of the characters you get.

After bath time was over Lyla was all snuggled up on the floor in her Aurora pajamas. We read her the story of Rapunzel, with all the characters, and we might have thrown in a dragon scene or two.  She laughed joyfully and absolutely fell in love with the book coming to life with just a flashlight and the images. I sent the shadow puppets home with BreAnne, since Lyla enjoyed them so much. Watch for an upcoming review on the Rapunzel book and Shadow puppet tutorial on my sister's blog soon.

Just click HERE to link to her blog, and you can find out all the details and more!