Buckets of Fall!

First, thank you to all of you who have given me such great feedback on the blog!  I am overjoyed.  So, to keep the momentum going, I thought I'd post tonight.

The weather here has turned refreshingly cool and Autumn is definitely in the air!  It has me thinking Halloween - in fact my house is already decorated for Fall/Halloween.  If you follow this blog long enough you'll know I put things up early and take them down right away.  I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a nut!

This year I'm planning a kid-friendly Halloween party for family and friends.  I am SO excited!  There is so much cute stuff out there!

I decided to have a color and pattern theme for this party.  Since it's geared towards elementary aged kids and younger ones, I didn't want it to be a spooky party.  So, I'm going with black and orange polka dots and stripes - what's cuter than polka dots!  Much to my surprise all the talented designers out there are on the same page with me - as is my other favorite store, mecca of all cute things, Hobby Lobby. 

I wanted to share one fun thing I'll have at the party - these adorable Halloween pinwheels from of a store course on Etsy, Crossroads Cottage.  How cute are these?  Shana is so fabulous to work with.  She has literally 100's of combinations you can choose from to match your party theme.  I can't wait to get them to see how cute they are in person. 

Another project I am working on for the party was inspired by the Halloween party from Anders Ruff- one of my favorite party designers.  Look how cute this sweets table is!

Besides being adorable (and fitting with my stripe and polka dot theme) What makes this party great, is that it is all included in a package and you print what you need.  Check it out here!

I love the branch in the pot in the background of the table.  Luckily it was REALLY windy here this week and the trees lost a lot of branches - much to my benefit.  You can imagine how thrilled my husband was when I brought home a bunch of big branches!  He was even more thrilled when I spray painted them tonight in the backyard!  This is the messy part of party planning!  I wonder if the professionals like Anders Ruff make just as big of a mess when they made their black branch :)  But that's why I love my husband, because he puts up with me and all my nuttiness!

This weekend I hope to post something from Ethan's party which is next weekend.  He turns 3 next week.  Since May when it was his cousin Chloe's party he has been saying to me "My party next?"  He's probably been asking for 4 months because he's had to endure three girly girl parties - Grace's party and my nieces' two girly parties.  He is SO excited - as am I.  He wanted a Lightning McQueen theme (from Disney's Cars movie).  Have a great night!

My bucket runneth over!

Beyond my children, the person that has inspired me the most is my Grandma Gladys.  I can only begin to describe her as most kind, unselfish, sweetest and giving woman.  I only hope to be half the woman she is.

So, it is really an honor that my first "party post" is dedicated to her.  Grandma Gladys turns 90 this October!  It should come as no surprise that she does not want a party in her honor despite such a great milestone.  Instead, my sisters, mom, aunt, cousins and I are taking her for a girls' getaway to Door County. 

The party planner in me couldn't resist making this girls' getaway a party to celebrate her.  I thought it would be fun for us to wear shirts celebrating Grandma Gladys.  That lead me to think that we would probably be toasting her on an occasion or two, so of course we needed wine glasses!  And, what girls' getaway doesn't involve shopping - especially when it's to Door County!

And while I may have lots of ideas, I am very poor at executing them - that's when I turn to the professionals!  I did think of a theme for the weekend - "Gladys' Gals" and thought it would be fun to incorporate cherries given that we are going to Door County.  I also wanted to go with a color scheme.  My Grandma's favorite color combo is black and white.  I added a punch of pink to keep it fun - but those ideas exhausted my creativity!  So for this event I looked to Etsy.  If you've never been on Etsy - you don't know what you are missing.  Etsy is the mecca for all things of homemade goodness - from apparel to jewelry to party planning necessities.  Needless to say, I LOVE Etsy!

Using Alchemy on Etsy, I found the great gals at The Nesting Project.  They were so great to work with and came up with such a great design! 

(Notice the cute tag line, "established 1920" - how cute!)

I was able to find custom wine glasses from Razzle's Dazzle Designs.  Amanda did a fabulous job - customizing both sides of the glasses and personalized each glass.  So cute!
 

I also found cute fabric flowers for us to wear in our hair keeping with the pink theme from Dolce Vita Mia.  She works a lot with Kim from the TomKat Studio (a fabulous party blog).

After finding the perfect designers I found the adorable bags from the Target dollar aisle that can also double for our shopping extravaganza.  Here is my tip on the Target dollar aisle - even if you don't need something or are not looking for something, you need to stop in the dollar aisle - you never know what you can find!  And luckily this summer, I found this fun bags.  Houndstooth is fun trend again this Fall.

 This past weekend, my cousins were able to visit and we presented my Grandma with her shirt and wine glass to surprise her for the trip.  Unfortunately, the husbands let it slip a time or two in front of her so she wasn't as surprised as we had hoped. But she was definitely surprised by the fun shirts, glasses and bags.  It is going to be a great, fun weekend.  Stay tuned for an update on Gladys' Gals' Girls Getaway in October!