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 :)
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 :)
