Bridal Shower ~ Soft Spring With A Touch Of Vintage!

With my sister getting married this summer I jumped at the opportunity to host a bridal shower for her. I love throwing parties, coming up with themes and feeding my desire to source out thrifted items to use throughout the decor. I definitely upped my weekly quota of thrift store shopping on this one! I think I'm going to take a much needed break from the second hand stores for a while ;)

My sister lives in Prince George and only had a couple of weekends to chose from to come down for the shower. We decided on the Easter long weekend so that she could also get in some required wedding appointments as well. I had already decided to use a soft vintage pastel colour palette for the shower which turned out to happily coincide with Easter as well.

All of the material used was sourced from local thrift stores. The tablecloth on the buffet is a scrap of fabric that happened to fit perfectly and the fabric panels above happen to be our canvas prints that already live on the wall covered in a fitted bed sheet.

I wanted to play up our British heritage so I decided have an afternoon tea party. 

I had purchased the mismatched tea cups and saucers last summer from Craigslist and recently picked up the glass punch bowl set at a thrift store. The milk glass vases came from a local online mum's swap.

I sewed the cloth napkins out of  thrifted old bedsheets.

In keeping with our British heritage, I made the same afternoon tea goodies that we enjoyed at our grandparents house growing up. I had attempted to make a jello mould but it didn't work out so well, only half of it came out of the mould. Possibly because I was in a hurry and didn't let it sit in warm water long enough ;)

The tissue paper flowers seem to be starting to become a trademark around here :)

Using the frames we already had on our water ski shelves, I swapped out the originals for scraps of co-ordinating fabric along with tea cup prints.

Also placed through out the house were small silver frames with ten steps on "How to be a Good Wife" taken from Housekeeping Monthly 1955 edition.

A few of the steps were::

No. 2 ~Prepare Yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

No. 6 ~Some Don'ts: Don't greet him with problems or complaints. Don't complain if he's late for dinner. Count this as minor compared to what he may have gone threw that day.

No. 8 ~Listen To Him: You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.
To read the rest, go to How To Be A Good Wife.

The pastel blue cushions I got at a thrift store for 0.75 cents each and the doilies were $1 each. I used iron on tape to affix the doilies to the cushions. It probably took 15 minutes in total to do 3 cushions. Talk about a quick, cheap and easy project ;) I think they are darling and am considering leaving them as part of our decor for a while.

Using the same thrifted bedsheets I cut scraps about 4" in length and tied them to a few pieces of ribbon to create fabric mobile of sorts to hang above the food table.

And finally a photo of the morning after. Bella was doing her best to distract me from cleaning up :)

Party Time ~ Puppy Dogs & Tonka Trucks

My sister's finance's son, Trai, turned 2 a couple of weeks ago and she asked me if I was able to put together some themed decorations for the birthday party. The catch was that the party would be taking place in Prince George and I wouldn't be attending. So instead, I staged some of the party decor in my spare bedroom and took some photos to send up with the party goodies. That way Jen would have an idea of how to set things up on the day of the party in PG.

Can you guess what the theme for this 2 year old party was? You got it.....Puppy Dogs and Tonka Trucks!! An odd combo but super cute. I went more with the puppy dog theme but added the yellow accent colour to represent the tonka trucks.

I have to admit I have been pretty grumpy this week. Posession day on the bungalow seems to be dragging on at a slug's pace. We just want to get this show on the road already! Good news is we only have 5 more days to wait! And I only have 1 more day of work before I will be on a week long "work-cation".

Party Time ~ A year after 60

Over the weekend my Dad turned 61. Unfortunately turning 61 isn't as big of a deal as turning 60. Last year we threw an outdoor woodsy themed birthday bash for my Dad plus 2 of his co-workers who were also celebrating the big 6-0.

It's occasions like birthdays that force you to take note of how fast a year goes by. It seems like yesterday D and I where at the shop cutting logs into small sections and gluing them together to make the 60 sign.

Even though we didn't have a big get together this year, we did spend the afternoon relaxing and swimming down at the lake. Which really was our best and only option because this weekend the weather was scorching hot!

The kids, D and I pretty much stayed in the water the entire time. The photo of Orrin above reminded me of how much he is growing up. I used to call him my little budda baby!