Last weekend I had the pleasure of helping my good friend Sarah with her and her boyfriend's housewarming party. It was such a blast! I have known these two for many years and it is so awesome to see how far they have come as a couple. Not to mention starting a new chapter in their life, how fun! So what better reason to celebrate! I was thrilled to be apart of this event and hopefully was able to take a little of the work load off of Sarah's busy plate.
The theme we went with was Red "ombre" (which you might remember from an earlier
post) with gold accents to match exiting fixtures and themes in the house. We also tied this in with paint chips, because really who can move into a new place with out doing a little painting. With the ombre theme it made sneaking a little pink into the color pallet easy with out getting to carried away for the guys' sake haha.
We picked a few yummy finger food items.
Like Tortilla rollers:
These are truly one of my favorites, they bring great color to a plate (which is super important to me) along with great taste and fairly good for you too!
Then the man of the house really loves Artichoke dip so we had to have a little of that around:
Next up we had two great summer items:
Rainbow Fruit Kabobs, served with a lite fruit dip. The dip is great. A nice little bit of sweet to add to the fresh fruit. It is a simple 1 to 1combination of Marshmallow fluff and creme cheese. Be careful, its
THAT good.
Veggie Cups: I love the grab and go easy that I always seem to be talking about, but its really the best! I also add a little ranch to the bottom of the cups for dipping. I have to confess, I usually make my own ranch dressing for these but didn't for this event. Normally I spoon the ranch from my large bowl of it into the cups (usually getting more on me and my surfaces than that cups!) but due to forces outside of my control (don't get me started) my normal "day of event" didn't go quite as planned and I ended up buying some Hidden Valley Ranch from the store. Shame on me. However I did get it in a squeeze bottle. Woah! Whole new world. It was such a breeze filling these cups! I had a total why-didn't-I-think-of-that?! Moment. I hear by swear to always put my home made ranch into a squeeze bottle, especially for filling these pesky cups! There is always a silver lining people.
Next up, Personal 7 layer bean dip cups. Again here I go with the grab and go easy but come on, it's awesome. I always make tortilla chips to go along with these. Which is so simple but serving fresh chips makes a huge difference. I just buy a bag of my favorite corn tortillas and cut each one into 8ths and throw them in the fryer for about 3-5 mins per batch. Having a few fryers at my disposal is always handy and considering we only cook with rice oils I don't feel quite as guilty. The chips are always a hit!
We also made Ombre Cupcakes, I found a great recipe for them on good ol'
Pinterest. I also made the cup cake toppers! I am SO excited about these. I know they are not all that great but for my first try I am pretty pleased with them. I will go into more detail another time, but it feels great to tackle a new project and have it turn out how I want.
Now aside from the food I love doing all the detailed things that just make an event POP. For example the guest book and welcome sign:
Keeping the Ombre/Paint chip theme alive in a whole different part of the home really helped pull the event together as a whole. I also love giving my clients little things they can keep forever, like a guest book! They had some very sweet comments from friends and family. And heck- you only move into your "First Home" once :)
Every space counts so we didn't forget the deck or the beverage area, they had to have their own flare too!
I've been waiting for a chance to order some fun paper straws and I finally found my opportunity! These were just too cute to pass up!
In this shot I love the fresh flowers you can see. I'm not event 100% sure I remembered them there during the event but it really gives the room a nice fresh look and I'm sure the guests picked up on it. Simple touches even like that are awesome. This was Sarah's idea, what a great call. They even pop up on the buffet and welcome tables. Especially when flowers are more affordable and in season during the summer months why not give your table that extra touch.
Like I mentioned above the decor spilled over to the out door deck. These poms looked great swirling in the light summer breeze. I hung them with fishing line to give the allusion that they were floating and it turned out just how I was hoping!
Even inside framing the chandelier they gave
off the perfect vibe. For how affordable and cute they look I'd say they stole the show, decoratively speaking anyways :)
I had such a blast working on this Housewarming! I couldn't have asked for a better hostess to work with, from bouncing ideas off of to magically wrapping yarn around vases haha, Sarah was such a sweetheart to work for! Congrats again to this awesome couple on the huge accomplishment of home ownership, their pride shines through with all the hard work they have already put into the place.
Hope you've enjoyed a look into their event!
*Also, photo credit....Me! This was my first time photographing my own event. It was a great learning experience, I have a long way to go but feel like I am off to a good start :)
Til' next time!
