A Moroccan Night Invitation
My husband’s 40th birthday is right around the corner, and I have so many beautiful DIY projects, details, and ideas to share that I’ve discovered in the course of planning the event. But first, the invitation.
I could not find a Moroccan-inspired invitation anywhere (even online), so my research skills found their way to this company in Portland, Oregon, which was able not only to print the type of invitation I wanted (trifold design), but also do the design and art work.
Finding Anders was not an easy task: a surprising few printing companies will do custom designs. So, I sent off my ideas, the text for the card, the handwritten Farsi printing, and the colors I envisioned. Susan worked on my card, and made it spectacular!
The Farsi says, “We would be honored if you could join us for this special event” or something equivalent to that…
We included two insert cards, one for the directions and one for the RSVP. Both had the gold Moroccan domed border.
The RSVP card included the same colored lanterns as the invite.
I’m also loving lately the idea of tying a string or ribbon around my snail mail, which is kept in place with a dot of hot glue under the knot. Not all of the invitations got the extra string, however (I ran out of time toward the end to finish them all!). I hand wrote the delivery and return address with a metallic bronze sharpie.
I’m hoping everyone saw that the attire is white, which is listed on the bottom of the invite (I personally never read invitations carefully!) and that the party I have planned lives up to this special card!
xx
Putting Party Planning in the Corner
Summer weekends seem endless these days….almost. We’ve been bike riding, strolling through summer festivals and art fairs, and savoring all of my favorite summer fruits like cherries, watermelon, and these gorgeous heirloom tomatoes we picked up this weekend.
My husband’s 40th birthday is 3 weeks away and there are so many things to do, I’ve forbidden myself from making lists on the weekends to give us a little breather…Today being Monday, though, I feel as though I’ve written the same lists a dozen times (in my sparkly Hello Kitty party planning binder) with little to no progress made.
To distract ourselves from party planning stress, we’ve been watching back-to-back episodes of Gossip Girl. Yes, I know our tv taste is about 5 years behind the times, but seriously, how many times can Dan and Serena get back together?!
Maybe 7: we rewatched Alias a few months ago, for the second time. There’s also been large quantities of chilled rose looming about lately.
Our tv watching goes in cycles: we binge on copious numbers of hours of a tv series that we’ve become addicted to, before getting disgusted with ourselves at the number of hours we’ve wasted speeding thru episode after episode while zoning out and getting absolutely nothing constructive done. Eventually, though, we make a steadfast pact to skip to the last episode of the series and be done with our addictive behavior forever. We’ve nearly reached our breaking point on Gossip Girl…but not just yet.
For this gorgeous heirloom summer salad, I simply used coarse sea salt, fresh basil, and specialty balsamic vinegar to dress it in order to complement these sweet, juicy tomatoes. The entire salad barely lasted 15 minutes after I shot these photos. Now, back to a few more episodes before bed…
xx
Double the Likelihood of Getting the Undone Done
How’s this for results? In two groups in which women agreed to perform a self-breast exam in the following 30 days, only 53% of the women who said they would do the exam did, while 100% of the women who scheduled the actual time and place to perform the exam did it. Fascinating, huh?
In another study conducted among a group of drug addicts who were asked to write an essay before 5 pm on a certain day, 80% of those who scheduled when and where they were going to write the essay finished the task, while none of those who didn’t set the same intentions finished it.
So, try not only penning the date and time of those pesky, nagging to-dos, but also the projected location of the most likely place to get them done and see how it works.
(On a side note, this picture is of macaroons that I received for Mother’s Day–from Phoenix, Arizona–and homemade glitter balls I was trying out for the gold metallic luminaries for the upcoming party. The glitter balls didn’t end up working for my luminaries, but I still loved the effect. I used gum balls left over from this party, Modge Podge, and, of course, coarse and fine Martha Stewart glitter–don’t forget the fine glitter, it won’t work without it!)
xx
Vegas Inspiration: Fake Flowers and Fruits
Who knew fake flowers and fruits could be so dazzling? These were taken at the buffet at the Wynn in Las Vegas this past week. Clearly, these fakes are not inexpensive.
Because it was a work event, I didn’t get to shoot as many of the gorgeous details as I would have liked.
But I did get a few…
I love how they designed the architecture around the flower and fruit displays. Love the idea of using artichokes as décor!
I’m a huge fan of the tightly packed “ball” or sphere effect (more below).
These seem so easy to duplicate. Don’t you love absorbing all of the carefully thought out and beautifully executed details?
Here are the fake flower balls hanging from the lobby trees in Las Vegas’s Wynn. I was told that each petal was $5….how fun would it be to try these at home?
And use as a centerpiece or hang from an art room?
In various colors. Here’s the full effect:
Adore the green accents in some of the balls.
And patterns of different breeds of flower.
Some marvelous ideas to freshen up the everyday.
xx
Metallic Gold Luminaries
Amidst a trip to Las Vegas, Arizona, and a stint of the flu (posts on the former two to come), projects for my husband’s upcoming 40th birthday party have been in the works. This project in particular seemed to take longer than originally anticipated (le sigh), but I’m pleased how they turned out and am anxious to see the final effect.
In order to get to the party, guests park in a garage and walk on an old-fashioned lamp-lit brick pathway along a canal filled with lily pads to the venue. I wanted a luminary-effect along the pathway for the night of the party, but with a little more pizazz. Plus, sand with candles was going to take too much maintenance for 100 luminaries and a possible safety hazard (the walkway is public and usually busy on Saturday nights).
So, I tried using different mason jars (always a cost effective option!) in various sizes using different techniques for the final effect, including glue and food coloring, glass paint, glitter and colored spray paints (to match the party colors), and finally this metallic gold. After finally deciding on this metallic gold, we worked on what would go inside: greenery and various types of dried plants and cuttings and different iterations of each in gold, silver, purple, and glitter colors, gold/silver glitter balls, 40th birthday flags, colored sand, whether there would be styrofoam or no styrofoam, whether there would be real or electric candles, and how high the greenery/shrub/flag/balls would fly in each.
I’m not one to have the patience to photograph my process like to many other of my favorite bloggers: it breaks my flow and feels too arduous, so here is a picture of the final result.
The inside branch ended up originating from a stack of dried clippings that we found in my mother-in-law’s garage. Luckily, we found lots of other options there too, but this ended up being the best. I chose an electric candle to go inside, sans sand, and ended up spray painting both the jars and the brush the same metallic gold color. If you haven’t tried using the metallic gold and/or silver spray paints, you’re missing out! They go on so smoothly and look gorgeous on almost anything. I can’t wait to see 100 of these shinies lined and lit on the night of the party! XX
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