Cookie Placecards

 I've taken to decorating cookies lately. At Christmas I did some fancy trees, girls, etc., and this time it was for a little luncheon/tea that Debbie, Carolyn and I had for Laurie's daughter Jayne who is getting married.
We ate great food, toured Laurie's beautiful refinished apartment in the city and shared stories.
Here, I am just writing about the personalized cookies I crafted for the event.

Some of the cookies were iced with flood consistency royal icing in yellow followed by spokes of blue through the circle. You then drag a toothpick through the colors to marbleize them and then let the icing dry.
Starting out with pale yellow royal icing, I made a couple of styles of round cookies. This icing dries to a hard smooth finish if it starts out the right consistency. I basically copied this cookie from a tutorial I found on a Julia Usher site.

Literally used a rubber stamp from my stash and tapped it onto a paper towel that I had lightly covered with maroon colored gel food coloring. I then diluted some pink and green food coloring and  colored in the design lightly with a brush.

I personalized the cookies and placed bicolored dots of icing around each  after "glueing" a cookie frame to the top of the base cookie.  Then glued the double wide nameplate to the base with more royal icing. Learning all the time here. Next time I'll lessen the glue, and cut out the frame on a silpat so I don't have to move them around or touch them before cooking.

Here is a picture of the two girls flanking Carolyn at the tea. We loved getting to know Maggie and had a wonderful time eating and socializing with the group.

Baby Boy Bubbles

My DIL and I threw a shower a couple weeks ago for our sweet friend and hairdresser. We have known her husbands family for 19 years and actually hers too - just her grandmother. We've known her for about 6 or 7 now. 

I saw the invitations on Amy Atlas Blog last year and had "Pinned" them for just this time.
So we changed the colors and added a couple things, and ordered a set of party decor from Penandpaperflowers. Most of my ideas stemmed from these designs.

I really thought the address labels made the invites look great. I bought 8.5"x11" label paper because my old 500 sheets of sticker paper was all used up. It took me about 15 years, but I used it all up. These  100 labels cost about the same amount that the old 500 sheets. Time has a habit of making things more expensive.

 I found this diaper tricycle idea online.

Turned out pretty good.  (more on this later)

I made dots out of chiffon for the tables.

 My friend and Krista's made these Oreo POPS. We had POPpyseed Strawberry salad.

 We had POP corn,  Jello POPS, Cupcake POPS, SodaPOP, LolliPOPS, anything POP.

 Never thought I'd be making Jello for anyone let alone for a party, but it was so colorful and pretty.

 The entryway to the house had a ladder with a welcoming sign and bubbles streaming from a machine on top of it.

Welcome to the guest of honor.

One of the guests also made a fancy diaper bicycle. What a pair.

 We had about 40 women at the party and they all enjoyed chatting for a few hours. It was a lovely evening for an outdoor party.

The mother-to-be received all sorts of love and gifts for her new little guy. 

He should arrive in October.

Congratulations Krista!

Weddings Ahoy - Steph Ties the Knot

I have not disappeared from the planet, although it may seem like I did. I'm still frustrated and confused about where and how to manage my pictures and yet I need to post many things. I'll start with the most important and then go bad and forth between the present and the past.

So .. Our daughter Stephanie got married June 8th and I want to post a little something about this magical wedding.
Here are just a few pictures from the day.

Steph and Jon

Outside the Oakland Temple following the ceremony.

Our photogenic couple

Stephanie's family present on the happy day

Lads and lasses

 Our backyard pre wind storm

Head table

Amazing flowers 

Patio fireplace mantle 

Kathryn - "maid of honor"

Ring Ceremony

65 Years Together

A few weeks ago the Hubby and I went to Utah for a celebration of my parents anniversary.

 The weekend started in Mantua, Utah with a snowstorm that dumped 8 inches on our sisters/mothers home in about 3 hours. That's a lot of snow.

Dad, Mom, Vicki, John @ Marriott City Creek

 We headed down to SLC where we met my parents and siblings for a nice evening of dinner and Symphony.

Brad, Vicki, Camille

 The TRAX in SLC is an easy transport for us to Little America restaurant

The Happy Couple @ 65 years married

Cousin Janice, Joyce, Sam, Tom, Tracey, John, Vicki, Brad, Camille

@ the Utah Symphony - Sam, Kelly, Tom, Tracey, Brad

Janice, Vicki

SLC Temple & Capital bldg.  from our Marriott hotel room

Parents, children & spouses ready to attend temple session Saturday morning

Joyce and Sam going into temple where they were married 65 years ago. 

They told some stories of that day long ago where they rode from Provo with Joyce's mother and borrowed Sam's sisters car for the evening. After the marriage they went to lunch with many family members and then they drove a bridesmaid back to her home in Ogden, and went out to their favorite activity of the time - dancing, before staying at Hotel Utah? for the night.

Christine and Steve @ after party in Provo at Carabas

 table #1

 table #2

 table #3

back table

Still crazy after all these years.

Now A "Twins" Shower

We have a cute new mother-to-be in our ward or church congregation that is having a couple of boys. She and her husband just moved into our area and don't know many people. They have no family around and are just getting started with jobs and a life together. 

We decided to welcome them with a baby shower and we had it at our home. I cooked the same things that I had for the bridal shower held just 4 days before and I also decorated similarly.
I started by redoing this paper cone wreath and added different blues and banner so that the colors look like baby boy colors.

I've been spying these diaper cakes online the last couple of years, and now I decided to make one up for the new mom and her nursery.

With a cute jungle theme and using monkeys and elephants, I was able to find a fun ribbon that is striped with the same colors as the apparent new nursery.
We had great food and the turnout of women in the Los Gatos Ward was fabulous.