Simple Interiors, Sweet Designs: August 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Hot Pink and Zebra Stripe Dessert Buffet- Part One

My daughter turned 9 just a few days ago and for her birthday she wanted a zebra stripe and hot pink party. She also wanted her room re-done, which in a few weeks I hope I will be able to post about that! It's coming together very nicely. But for now, here is her party. We went for a pretty much all dessert party where I would not have to serve a meal, and the perfect time to do that would be 3:00, so that's what we did! All of her friends were invited to swim after we snacked, but it ended up started to rain. I still think it went well though! Here are some pictures of her party:

The fudge I made turned out to be a hit. It was White Chocolate Cookies-n-Cream Fudge, here is the link for anyone interested: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/white-chocolate-cookies-n-cream-fudge-10000001923360/

Instead of doing favors or goodie bags for this party I decided to lay out some treat bags for anyone to grab some leftover goodies and take them home, where I didn't have so much junk laying around staring at me for the next week. It was a win-win situation.

Here is a close up of the cake I made for her, the cake was one layer White Wedding and the other layer Paula Deen's Strawberry Cake and of course had White Butter Cream Icing. All of that was covered in Fondant accents. It turned out sooo cute! I think it is my favorite one yet!

I also had a drink table set up with some pink lemonade to match our theme:

The kids LOVED IT! My son ended up going so crazy with it, he knocked it over all over the floor! Gotta love those chaotic party moments with kids!

I am so bad about taking pictures during the party, I always get so busy talking and making sure everyone is happy. My mother-in-law got a few shots of the actual party, I'm hoping to share those soon!

Steph

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

My New Dining Room

I am so in love with my dining room re-do. We don't exactly use this room everyday but when we do have get-togethers, they usually take place in here. So, I've always wanted it to be nice. We when we first moved in it was painted Macadamia by Sherwin Williams and was very plain looking. Here are some before pics:

The curtains that I had up before were one of the things that bothered me about this room. They were always too long for the window and definitely needed some work!

They overflowed into the floor for about 2 or 3 feet. I guess I just never cared enough to fix them, I don't know? LOL. But here are the new ones that I got from www.curtainworks.com. LOVE them! They are 95" Sailcloth Cotton Canvas with Grommet Top in Tan. And the best part: each panel was only $19.99!

I think they just make the whole room.

We also added the shadow boxes underneath the chair rail and painted all of it white. Here's before I painted it white:

My husband had someone install them for us, he gets so tired of my little projects! Haha.

And here they are after I painted them:

To accent the all white bottom half of the walls I wanted a color for the top that was neutral yet warm. I had found the perfect color in my SW color swatch book and showed it to my husband. That is when he told me that he actually had that color left over from a job and it was just sitting there at his office. So, I painted the top SW Portabello, love that color!

We also added a strip of base cap about 3" below the crown molding at the ceiling. I just then painted white in between the crown and the base cap.

Here's the other wall near the window.

One day soon, I hope to build a console table to fit this wall from www.ana-white.com and put some lamps on it and some cute decor. I think that would look so good.

But until then, here it is!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

A Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 3rd Birthday Party

So, my baby (well, one of them) turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. He has grown up so fast! It seems like just the other day we were bringing him home from the hospital. This year he wanted a mickey mouse clubhouse birthday party, and it was actually the first year that he was REALLY into the whole party thing. The last two years he probably just wondered why all these people came over and gave him presents. But this year was different. The very best part for me was to see the look of amazement in his eyes during this whole process, (which started about 3 months before his actual birthday and he talked about it nonstop until now.) We had planned a day of going to the movies and seeing cars 2 and to eat lunch together, just us, his Gigi and him. Here's some pictures from that day:

We ate at Olive Garden (yum!) but he ended up only wanting french fries, which Olive Garden does not have. So, Daddy made a special trip over to Arby's to get the boy some french fries. I think we could've just ate at McDonalds and he would've been happy!

Next, to the movies...

I swear he ate popcorn the whole time! He did really good about sitting still and only had to get up twice to potty. The movie was really cute too.

That following Monday night ( his actual birthday) we invited the grandparents over and had cake and ice cream. His party was very low-key and didn't require a lot of planning on my part. I did make a few handmade decorations but nothing fancy. I made two mickey heads out of spray painted Styrofoam balls and stuck them into a bucket from the playroom with sticks and dollar store crinkle paper. (I got that idea from Pinterest also.)

I also made a banner to hang across the china cabinet, it was definitely not perfect but it did the job.

And, the main event, the cake! He has been talking about having a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake for quite some time now so that is exactly what he got! It took me about 3-4 hours to do but it was so worth it. It was yellow cake with chocolate butter cream icing and chocolate chip dough filling. It was VERY good!

Here's the table all set up before his party:

He got a lot of toys and some really cute clothes. We ended up getting him the big versions of Buzz Lightyear and Woody dolls. And the look on his face when he opened them up was absolutely priceless!