All posts tagged: Celebrate.

hey sugar.

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I found another hobby: sugar cookie decorating! Omagah, so fun! And such a good mom skill to have for future celebrations (PS I’m preggo). Yelp NOLA and Fait Main Foods hosted a cookie decorating workshop and I am obsessed. I also looooved that they had the option to ship supplies to out-of-area folks because I got to join in the fun and gain a new skill. Fait Main Foods is based in Mandeville, LA. They specialize in couture sugar cookie designs (seriously beautiful stuff!) and their cookies are legit tasty, soft, and addicting. For this special event their kits included ice cream, donut, and candy shaped cookies, and it came with four icing colors and two sprinkle mixes. In the workshop we first practiced drawing lines with the icing and getting comfortable with the icing flow. We learned all the cookie decorating secrets including how to stack colors, add designs, and tricks for what to do if you mess up your design. The only secrets we didn’t learn are their perfect cookie and icing recipes …

cactus fiesta.

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Just because we’re on SIP doesn’t mean we can’t have a fiesta at home! Let’s make a cactus piñata! Materials: corrugated cardboard, box cutter, scissors, masking tape, crepe paper streamers, glue stick Cut two of the same shape for the front and back of your piñata. Cut 1.5-2in wide strips of cardboard for the perimeter; make sure the corrugation allows you to bend your strips along the length (corrugation should run parallel to the bottom). Decide where you want to place the piñata opening and start wrapping one of the shapes with the cardboard strips at the base of the opening. Use masking tape to attach strips to shapes. I prefer attaching the strips to the outside border of the shapes (versus in line with the shape perimeter); this makes it easier to bend the strips to conform to the shape. End with a flap that is not attached with tape. You may leave a slight overlap. Attach the second shape to the opposite side. For this step, you could add all the tape to …

tennis party.

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Hubby’s birthday was last week and since he’s a low key kind of guy, I am now an expert in low key birthdays. I love planning and decorating even if it’ll just be the two of us celebrating. This year I went with a tennis theme. Hubby turned 34, so I told him the theme was “34-love” – a play on the weird tennis scoring that I still do not understand. (Who came up with it?!) Decor included green paper garlands, fans, ornaments, and heart balloons, plus a low key sign… 🙂 I got small lime green plates to represent tennis balls and reddish-orange plates to represent clay courts. For food I made tennis pasta! Take a closer look – the pasta is tennis racquet shaped. And I called in some help from Trader Joe’s – pumpkin and butternut squash pasta sauce and meatballs for the win. I added lots of basil, too. So creamy. I also made celery soup because Novak Djokovic drinks celery juice and Hubby is into it. But the stars of …

galaxy cupcakes.

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My friend (Laura!) and I made cupcakes and they turned out not bad! 🙂 Which was good because we were sharing these at the Galaxy Grandma shower we threw. We made a batch of chocolate and a batch of vanilla. To make the cupcakes galaxy themed we made purply-blue buttercream and topped them off with a sprinkle assortment. We painted our makeshift piping bags with food gel, filled with buttercream, and piped on. It was our first time using food gels, but we followed tips from Sweet and Savory Meals which made it super easy and less stressful. The gels were relatively simple to use, just a bit messy. It helped to cover our work area with parchment before opening any of the food gels. Our test cupcake above. 🙂 We got sprinkles from Fancy Sprinkles. OMG they are so fancy. I’m obsessed and excited to make more sparkly treats after the way these cupcakes turned out! After our taste test, we decided on adding less buttercream for the ‘real’ cupcakes. We ended up smoothing …

the confetti project. 

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When in New York, do a confetti photoshoot! One of the things I really enjoyed in New York was the pop-up culture. There was ‘something going on’ every day, but only for a short time! One of those things: the Confetti Project photo sessions at Artists & Fleas in SoHo. Jelena Aleksich, visionary and photographer behind the Confetti Project, creates colorful, safe, inspirational spaces for people to celebrate and be. Before each photography session she asks about what you are celebrating in your life, and then you do you amidst the confetti – all ten pounds of it! Plus, you get a personal confetti tosser. You are free to express any emotion as you toss or sprinkle confetti, dance or jump in confetti rain, make confetti angels… My friend of 29 years and I took this trip together, and as we were planning our vacation I hadn’t really thought about the why, but the what. What should we eat? What should we see? But the why is always much more interesting. This trip was really about being …

rainbow.

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I made a rainbow arch! It was so fun to put together and so sad to take apart. 😂 On my last pop-up day at Mischief I threw a free crafty party and thought some colorful decor at the entrance would attract passersby. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) I already had all the colors in my honeycomb and fan stash from previous events. I didn’t realize I owned so many until I made the arch. 😎 To assemble, I sorted my decor in rainbow order and attached the largest pieces first, starting from the center of the arch and working my way to the sides of the arch, filling in with the smaller honeycombs. All of the pieces are attached with zip ties. Here I am from across the way. And then I “made” people take photos in front of it! This needs to be a permanent installation somewhere…maybe in my future craft studio? 🙌🏼  

lucky bamboo.

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My Mommy turned 70 this week so we had a little celebration over the weekend. I was assigned party favor duty. Since I’m always looking for a way to incorporate soy candles into celebrations because I have a candle lady (#thatmakerlifetho), and the party was at a Chinese restaurant and the decor would be red (for luck!), I decided on lucky bamboo scented soy candle favors! My friend Joy even made custom labels for the occasion. To package them up for my Mommy’s guests I found some tiny bags from Michaels, made mini tassels, and included a few matches. I used embroidery floss for the tassels. You can make at least five mini tassels with one skein of floss. Then, I punched a hole in each bag and attached the tassels “luggage tag style.” Since I wanted to include matches not in matchbook form, I cut the striker from the box into small squares and used double sided tape to adhere them to the inside of the candle lids. The Diamond brand match boxes can …

donut worry.

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Next up in work parties: a baby shower donut bar celebration! We picked up plain and sugar donuts, plus donut holes. No need to make fancy glazes; we shopped the ice cream topping section for ideas. Caramels and hot fudge work well; also, crushed nuts, shredded coconut, chocolate chips, crumbled cookies, and sprinkles. We also served cold brew coffee and iced masala chai with a few milk varietals to wash down the sweets. The coworkers got to creating their one-of-a-kind donuts! Of course we needed appropriate signage and decor as well. We put up a “Donut worry, Sam” sign for the dad-to-be, plus creepy baby photos; and scattered large paper sprinkles on the table. And we can’t forget the cute baby gear presents! Enter butt paste and nasal aspirator! My work party crew and I are getting really good at this social event planning thing. Looking forward to planning our next celebration!

you are magical.

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When your niece requests unicorn themed crafts for her 10th birthday, magic happens. On the craft menu: unicorn headbands and unicorn poop slime in unicorn jars! Unicorn headbands. These are darling. We spent the week before putting together felt cones for the horns, and had her guests glue on all the flowers they wanted for super special birthday party headwear. Unicorn poop slime in unicorn jars. Slime is apparently all the rage with the kids these days – glitter slime, glow-in-the-dark slime, clear slime, colorful slime, so many kinds of slime! Each guest got to make their own slime with a simple glue, liquid starch, and food coloring recipe. We made golden unicorn jars beforehand so everyone could take home their slime creation in style. We had so many more ideas for unicorn crafts (rainbow tassel unicorn tails, origami unicorn bookmarks!), but two crafty stations was plenty to keep the party going. Unicorn party much? Share you magical party ideas below!

dinner al fresco: live oak park.

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Being a craft lady has the extra perk of having all these tables and chairs to use for things like pop-up dinner parties in the park! I’ve been wanting to throw a pop-up dinner party (aka fancy picnic) for a while now. I don’t have a backyard so a park is the next best thing! For my first of, hopefully, many dinners al fresco to come, I set up at Live Oak Park in Berkeley. I particularly enjoy this park because there’s a lot of grassy areas, a lot of parking, and it is also the park where Hubs and I got married. The most difficult part of the whole event was finding a flat patch of land that wasn’t too muddy. Once we found a decent location we set up two tables, place settings for 12, and all the yummies. The Menu I wanted to serve foods that were not only packed with fresh ingredients and flavors, but that also sat well (outside) and could be made the night before (with little day-of prep). I …