Where I have been & What I have been up-to

Life has been busy and here is why:

Invitations... Invitations... Invitations

I wish I partied like this family friend of mine that just had me make four invitations for four parties she was throwing between April and May. Now that is a serious party schedule. I had a blast making the different invitations and helping them with themes and ideas for each party. Invitation making has got to be one of my favorite things to do.


Invitation One: This was for a Bridal Tea party at a fancy hotel tea room in Arizona. The invitation was made to somewhat match the hotels menu and it turned out cute with just enough fancy.

Everyones Mad Here

This year for our joint birthday Jayna and I decided to have an Alice in Wonderland themed tea party. It turned out great and everyone had a wonderful time in "Wonderland" celebrating with us.

We sent our invitations out with little skeleton keys attached to them with direction to bring the keys back to the party. I copied the invitation idea from an Alice in Wonderland comic-con party Disney held. It was easy to find a free Alice in Wonderland font online too. The skeleton keys were a little tricky to find at first. I kept thinking I needed antique ones, but they were really expensive and ranged in price a lot from place to place. Then I tried my luck at Lowes and to my surprise they had the perfect little key. The secret is to go ask the "key making man". They were not out in packages, he just had a little box of them behind his desk. If I remember right they were like $3.00 each which was cheap compared to the $10.00 antique ones.

Mans Day Out

On the 7th of this month the husband turned the big 30 and yesterday was his surprise party. I had been planning this day out for him and his two friends and brother for a long time, so it was fun to see it finally come together. I got the idea for this party from a real party featured on hostess with the mostess. I wasn't with the boys for all the events so my pictures are lacking unlike theirs.

Lemonade Anyone?

The Lemonade stand went well last week with the girls. The weather cleared up just long enough for us to get a good hour of selling in. Only two out of thirteen girls showed up, but I am sure it was because a lot of them probably thought it was cancelled due to the weather. When life gives you Lemons you just make Lemonade though right? Or in this case Rosemary Lemonade and Pink Lemonade Cupcakes!

Crab Boil!

While my parents were in-town in July I decided to do a crab boil just for fun. It was a big hit and a blast to do. In-fact since then we have already done it again with some friends of ours.

Bake Sale Baby!

I keep forgetting to share this on the blog. Awhile back the Husband and I decided that we wanted to take a trip to Southern California this summer. We had even more incentive since Disney was doing their day of service campaign, where if you signed up to do a day of service with a registered organization you could get free tickets to one of their theme parks. So I got online and signed up for a day of service that sounded right up my alley. A Bake Sale! It is a bake sale with Bake for Hope, which benefits Susan G Komen for the Cure. Anyone can be apart of it and you can make it as big or little a deal as you would like. We are going to be holding ours for our neighborhood and are just going to set-up in the front yard.

I plan on passing these flyers out door to door a couple days before the bake sale and then baking my little heart out and hoping for the best.

I really want the husband to make this for me for the bake sale (I found it online, but can't remember where, sorry). Out-look not so good though. When I told him what my ideas were he just looked at me and said "I might as-well just buy our Disney Land tickets". Which would probably be true if I did everything I wanted to. I just have big visions. Hopefully I can scale back a bit, but still have the cutest Bake Sale the neighborhood has ever seen. Mark my words though one day I will build that. Jayna would love it, and so would I.

Side Note: You have to know how many projects my husband helps with and does. He makes all my visions and dreams come true. We are always teasing each other and anything I say about him is all in good fun. Just wanted you to get the tone I was saying that in.

I plan on mostly making cupcakes.

Then having fun side things like chocolate dipped pretzels with sprinkles, bags of candied jewels, maybe some cake pops, jars of pre-made cookie mix, etc.

I just hope people come. So come if you would like.

*For information on where and when the bake sale will be, or files for the flyer shown in this post click here.

Beauty Night

For activity day this next week we are doing a big "Beauty Night". I got the inspiration and tag line from this clever lady. These are the invitations I made to mail out to the girls. I usually just drop the little reminders off at their houses, but I am trying to make it a big deal for them. I thought they would be excited to get something in the mail too.

We are going to do their makeup, take their pictures, do facial masks, and have treats. I have tons of makeup from my 7 years of being a make-up artist for Macy's and Nordstom, so it is fitting this will be at my house. This party idea and invitations would be fun for any girls birthday party though. So next week I will be working on turning the basement into a day spa for nine 10 and 11 year old girls.

Good grief!

Cootie-Catchers

For Activity Days (the girls church group I am over) next week we are going to make secret message valentines cards. One will be an invisible message only revealed by spraying love potion on it, and the other will be a message only revealed by wearing special glasses that we will be making. Card ideas courtesy of Mrs. Martha. I thought it was something that 10 and 11 year olds would like to do, and different than just making regular old cards.

So I wanted to make something just as fun as the cards we will be making to invite them to the activity.

So I made cootie catchers with the activity info and valentine images on it.

Then I made a little tag to attach to it too.

I never thought at 28 I would be making cootie catchers let alone printing them off on my computer. The other thing that was scary was that my husband remembered how to fold them and I didn't.

The Invitations Are Out

The invitations are finally out for my Christmas party. Here are the completed invitations as they were mailed. I made these pretty address labels that wrapped around the envelope to add a little custom touch to the invites. I was very pleased with how they turned out. I will post pictures of the party after I have it. Just send me an email if you would like the psd files of this invitation or have questions about how to make your own.

Christmas Party Invitations

Here is a quick sample of the Christmas invitations I will be sending out for my party. Those of you who will be receiving one please dismiss this post and act surprised when you get it in the mail. If any one wants the file for this invitation I would be more than happy to email it to you along with the links to the fonts I have used. I am excited for Christmas despite the fact that I still do not have a single Christmas decoration out in my house. We are getting a late start in my opinion. Tomorrow I will put up the tree and get to work on spreading Christmas throughout the house.

Mums the Word

I finally get to share pictures with you of the flower themed baby shower I worked on. This is a great example of how you can have the Bird and the Berry help you as much or as little as you want with events you are hosting.

For this event I did the invitations, guest favors, food signs, some decor, and all the desserts. Paige also had me put together little headband and flower hair clip kits so that guests instead of playing games could make the baby to be hair accessories. I loved this idea! At the end of the shower the honored guest had twenty little handmade headbands and bows for her baby made by her closest friends. How sweet. I helped consult Paige on which color paper goods and table clothes to purchase along with going over some setup ideas. Paige is actually a good family friend so she did come to help bake all the desserts the night before the party. Then she picked out which serving dishes of mine she wanted to use for the event and took with her everything she would need for her party she was hosting the next afternoon. Paige did all the setup and other food for the event and then just brought me back my things when she was done with them. It sounded like the mother to be enjoyed her shower and everyone was happy with how the event turned out.

If you have any questions about this event just send me an email.

Funeral- Memory Cards / Life History

Sorry for the lack of interesting posts these last couple of days. We had a death in the family over the weekend and the funeral services were Tuesday. So the only projects I have to post about today are the memory cards I made for the funeral and the life history I printed up. I am so use to doing baby shower invites or birthday party themes which are so fun, bright and happy. It seemed like no matter what I did to these cards they still seemed gloomy and drab, but here they are. If you would like to read more about the funeral and circumstances head-on-over to Hutchings Home for the whole scoop. I will be posting a part II of the story soon.

Mum Baby Shower

I have been planning this cute floral themed baby shower for someone the last couple weeks. She first asked me to make some invitations for her based off of some that she had found on etsy. This is what I came up with for her. I love the paper and envelopes we picked out too. We are doing a cream textured paper for the invitations themselves with rounded corners, and then are doing a brown paper bag like textured envelope that we printed the same mum flower onto. They make the design look really organic.

I came up with these really cute tissue paper flower pins that she will be giving to all the guests to wear during the shower as-well. They are based off of the Martha tissue paper pom-poms. I thought they turned out fabulous, and was very proud of myself for coming up with the idea. I will do another post later on everything I have done for this shower and will list exactly how much it cost to do everything. That way everyone can see just how affordable it is to have the Bird and the Berry (me) help you with your next event.

Fear Factor Activity

Here is what is on the schedule for today. Tonight I am in-charge of the 10 and 11 year old church girls activity. Since it is Halloween time I have planned a Fear Factor activity for them. I took them these flyers on Monday night inviting them to come to the activity and their response to the idea was pretty good. To be honest I was worried they were too young to even know what Fear Factor was, but thank goodness they seemed familiar with the show. So tonight I have conjured up some gross events for them to compete in. I am just hopping and praying that more than two girls show up, because if we are short players that means me and the other leader will have to do some of these gross games. Cross your fingers for me. There will be mystery shake drinking, baby food taste testing, and dog bone relays to name a couple of the things I have planned. I really hope the girls have fun. I am trying really hard to get them excited about Activity Days. To tie the activity into something spiritual I am going to give a mini lesson at the beginning about the difference between fear and faith, and how we can take our fears to God and be comforted by our faith in him.

*Side Note- Little Jayna Berry has been scared to go in the laundry room ever since I made these invitations because she could see the "bugs" on my desk in there. They are just little bugs I bought at the dollar store and hot glue gunned onto the invitations. She would run in there and then back up while she pointed at the desk and said "bug, bug, bug" It was too funny.

Dr. Seuss Baby Shower

Months ago I decided to throw this gal from over in Holladay (were I used to live) a baby shower. She is so nice and kind, but is very shy and has no family in-state and is having her first baby. I just could not let her have her first baby without having some sort of shower or celebration. When I first talked to her about her shower I gave her a list with a couple of different themes on it and told her to pick one. Secretly though I was hoping she would not pick the Dr. Seuss theme and sure enough she did. For some reason I just thought it would be so much harder to do a trademark theme. I really lucked out though and it only took me a couple of days to get really excited about the theme and run with it.

I made these really cute invitations, and I wish I could take credit for the little rhyme, but I can't. My friend Holly came up with that all on her own at crunch time late one night. She is a child development teacher and maybe a little more versed in the world of Seuss then I am. I loved the ribbon I found too, it was the perfect look and just dainty enough for the little invitations. For the envelopes I made and printed out circle address labels onto sticker paper and cut the labels out and placed them in the center of the envelope. I thought it added a nice touch and made the invitations more special. All the fonts I used for the party where either in a typewriter style or a Seuss font I found online.

My luck with the Dr.Seuss theme really came when a friend in Colorado who knew I was on the hunt for anything and everything Seuss spotted a whole dollar section at her local Target full of nothing but Dr. Seuss items and gave me a call. The next day I went to my Target and sure enough mine too had a Seuss dollar section. I was so excited and must have looked like a freak stocking up on the stuff. I bought a couple of everything. . .pencils, pins, hats, stickers, you name it. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I bought it. I also found these amazingly cute plastic cups and bowls at Michael's in the discount section for 28 cents each, or something crazy like that. They were the perfect color and really whimsical so I knew they were a must for the theme and party.

Swedish fish...blue feather boas...felt dots and bow ties...poster-board painted fish...red gerber daisies...gold fish in bowls...and 24 cat in the hat cupcakes later...I had a party. TaDa!

It was a real hit and everyone really enjoyed themselves. We played two games in which we used are Seuss pencils of course. One a guess what book game, the other a name that Seuss character game. The prize? Gold fish in little bowls with blue feather trim. I also set up a table for people to write advise for the mother to be.

The best part of all this Seuss madness is that I am going to be putting together a Dr. Seuss themed playroom upstairs for little miss Jayna Berry for Christmas. Her grandma wanted to know what she was "allowed" to get her (she is the only grandchild), and I said "no more toys we have way to many!". So I told grandma she could buy furniture for the playroom so that we could organize the toys she already has, and so that grandma could have a chance at possibly being allowed to buy her toys for her birthday. Grandma agreed. So look for the Berries playroom coming soon...

 If you would like the files for the invitations, address labels or games click here.

Have the Bird and the Berry plan your next event

If you live in Utah and need help with your next event or special occasion hire the Bird and the Berry. No event or budget is to small for me to work with. I can help you with anything you need.

* Custom cupcakes and desserts

* Handmade invitations

* Decoration rentals from parties I have already featured on

the Bird and the Berry.

* Help coming up with that perfect theme or event idea

* Help making all your ideas and visions come to life at your event

Hire me to do as much or as little as you need done for that next party. Just email me at hutchingsjill@gmail.com for pricing and details. I would love to plan and party with you!