Beach Party Ideas: let the sun shine in!

Ahhh…It’s summer time…a great time to host beach parties, pool parties or just fun-in-the-sun parties. Here are some ideas to make your next beach party special (and you don’t even need to live near a beach or ocean to host a summer-fun get together)…

Invitations

Invite guests to your beach party with some fun beach party invitations or pool party invitations (these can be found at Urbanitystudios.com). When searching for your invitations, be sure to keep in mind some fun beach invitation wording. Here are some ideas (this wording can easily be modified for a beach themed birthday party or baby shower as well):

Option 1
"Splash into summer with us
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
3 o’clock in the afternoon

Please bring your suits, sandals and shades and we’ll provide the sun, snacks and sun block"

Option 2
"Surf on over for some summer fun
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
3 o’clock in the afternoon

Sun, snacks and smiles provided"

Decoration Ideas

Throwing a beach party means casual and easy summer entertaining. You definitely don’t need to worry about a formal table setting and can obtain a party atmosphere by doing a couple of things: Create a colorful and welcoming buffet table, have fun with the food and plan several activities for guests to do as they please.

For decorating the buffet table, use items such as

• Lanterns, Beach Balls, Sea Shells, and Sailboats to decorate your table.


• Instead of using a table cloth use a beach towel.

Food Ideas

Instead of ice for your drinks, freeze fresh fruit. Strawberries, blueberries and peaches are beautiful and flavorful in a glass of lemonade. You can also freeze lemon and lime slices. Top off the drinks with drink umbrellas.

Create fruit kebabs with bananas, apples, strawberries and kiwi. To keep the apples or bananas from turning brown, sprinkle lemon juice on the fruit.

For the main portion of the meal, serve up the traditional fare of hamburgers and hot dogs or get a little different with the meat and grill chicken and veggie kebabs.

For the sweets, serve frozen treats like Popsicles or ice cream sandwiches. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you could always make the shark cake from parenting.com.

Activity Ideas
If you have a pool, then you can set up some fun activities. Pool volleyball is great fun as well as handstand contests, Marco Polo or other pool games. If you don’t have a pool then you could have the following available for kids and adults alike:

• Set up a slip n slide in the yard


• Put up a volleyball or a bad mitten net


• Set up a karaoke station


• Put out sidewalk chalk or create a hopscotch area on the sidewalk or in your driveway

When the evening starts to set in, have a fire in your outdoor fire pit, light tikki torches and (if you have a pool) place some floating candles in the water.

For your music selection, play whatever makes you and your guests happy or turn up the Beach Boys greatest hits. You could also rent a projector and play beach themed movies such as Jaws, Finding Nemo or Karate Kid.

Favor Ideas
Send your guests home with a favor to thank them for sharing the day. You can give them a beach towel, flip flops or a cool visor…all things that they can use during and after the party.

So, get planning. Be sure to let us know how your beach themed party turns out. Happy summer!

Have your cake and eat it too!

There is something so fun about birthday parties. The idea of getting together with friends, laughing, playing and just celebrating another year is great. Whether your turning 5 or 50, birthdays are a great excuse to celebrate...and of course, eat cake.

In my family, we traditionally make a chocolate cake with grandma's chocolate frosting, but after perusing the Internet for a short amount of time, birthday cakes come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. Here are just a few examples that I found (these are all from pinkcakebox.com):









These cakes are just amazing and would truly be the show piece of any birthday bash. They would be a perfect way to pull together a theme as well.

If you are looking to create something yourself, a quick search at your library could be a great start. My local library (subject: cakes) revealed a plethora of books of ideas and how to's...so, for your next birthday celebration, consider having fun with your cake and eating it too (or just hire a company like pinkcakebox.com to do the work for you)!

Easy Garden Party Favors

This time of year always makes me so happy. Flowers are blooming, trees have leafed out and it is time to start entertaining outside. If you are planning to host an outdoor garden party here is a great favor idea and it adds splashes of color to your outdoor garden party decorations...

Purchase some small containers at your local home store and plant each pot with annuals. Place each pot at each table setting or just scatter them around a buffet table. The splash of color adds a beautiful element and when guests take home their potted favors, they can remember the great time they had at your outdoor garden party.

Enjoy!

Look at how creative our customers are!

We just love the creativity of our customers. It is fun to see how some of our customers have made urbanitystudios.com designs truly their own. In some cases, they just change one or two colors, and in others, they gave the design a totally different look and feel from the original design. See below what our customers have come up with! (I did have to cover up customer's information, so be willing to look past the not-so-attractive rectangles...)


Customer Inspired Color Examples

This customer changed the lollipop invitation to reflect the colors of the party for her 16 year old daughter's birthday. She changed the original colors of magenta, yellow and white to more subdued colors.


Original Color Scheme

Another customer wanted the lollipop invite to feel more adult like. She changed the colors to green, purple and white.

This customer, who was hosting a bridal shower event, changed the Bridal Shower Cherry Blossom invitation from the original colors of sage green and mustard yellow to sage green and chocolate brown.

Original Color Scheme





A new mom of twins changed the Photo Birth Announcement Whale design to incorporate announcing twins (not a singleton) as well as the color. She also added in a sweet quote at the top "Four tiny hands, four tiny feet, two adorable babies we would like you to meet."

Original Color Scheme

The wedding invitations is where it gets really fun because each wedding day is so unique. A bride, who is having a fall wedding, changed our Black and White Invitation Monogram to a rust orange and chocolate brown. Absolutely beautiful.

Original Color Scheme





I could go on and on...but it does give you a taste of some of the beautiful combinations our customers come up with. Until next time...Let the celebration begin!

When to send Save the Date Cards

I have been asked by several brides when and if they need to send save the dates. Here are a couple of things to consider when and even if you should send them out.

Is your wedding a destination wedding?

Does your wedding fall on a popular holiday weekend (i.e. Memorial Day)?

Are many of your guests from out of town?

If you answered yes to any of the following questions, then you should send out save the dates. They need not be fancy or expensive, but they should include the following:

• Full names of who is getting married
• The date and location

Some other things to consider on your save the date card includes:

• Places to stay (or dates by which guests need to book to get a wedding discount if this has been arranged)
• Fun facts about the area, especially if it is a destination wedding (i.e. if you are getting married in Jackson Hole, what are the average temperatures for the time of year your wedding will take place, nearby attractions or fun activities)
• Your wedding website (if applicable)
• Nearest airport and/or driving directions

Your save the dates should be sent out about least six months in advance so guests have adequate time to prepare for travel arrangements, etc. If you don't have that much time, get them out as soon as possible.

The Wedding Guest List...a strategy to help you keep guest numbers under control.

For those of you who are currently planning your wedding, these next several posts are dedicated to you. For the next month, each post will be focused on helpful wedding advice that I have found useful for myself as well as my many clients and friends. This week, I am focusing on the Wedding Guest List...one of the most difficult aspects of planning a wedding. So read on and hopefully it isn't too late for you to implement this helpful strategy.

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For my wedding, the wedding guest list was one of the hardest tasks to tackle. Selecting colors for the day, the venue, even picking out my dress was less stressful than deciding who makes the cut and who gets the ax. Okay, so that may sound a little dramatic, but when you have in-laws and your parents telling you that “Aunt Elsie MUST be invited” or “You can’t exactly leave out Cousin Sam’s 10 children” you start to feel the pressure.

So, when I thought I was going to slightly lose it when selecting my wedding guest list, my then fiancé (now husband) and I devised a strategy that really helped. I have shared this advice with several of my clients and friends and it has helped them to alleviate some stress when coming up with the guest list.

Now, if you don’t have a budget, then no need to keep reading, but if you can really only afford a certain number, then sit down with your parents and your in-laws and explain the following strategy. In order to stay within budget for your wedding, you all will need to work together, especially when it comes to the wedding guest list. Explain that in order to do this, you and your fiancé, your parents and your in-laws can only have a certain number of people that they can invite. Make it fair…so for instance if you want/can afford about 150 people at your wedding, then split it in thirds. Your folks and in-laws get to invite 50 people each and you and your fiancé get to invite 50 together. By setting this parameter, this does a couple of things…it makes the list selective; a wedding guest list that consists of those that mean the most to you (and the parents). It also makes it much easier to find a venue. If you know that you are only inviting a certain number, then you can immediately rule out certain locations, especially if they can’t accommodate that large of a crowd. Lastly, it sets limits on expectations that 150 is it…no more.

Now, and trust me this will happen, when your parents or in-laws or even your list grows beyond your allotment, then here’s what you do. You ask everyone to prioritize their list. The people that mean the most to you are on top and those that are past the cutoff (in this instance those below 50) are ranked by importance. These folks then become the prioritized “B” list.

Now, there will be people on your “A” list that will decline, so you can then pull from your “B” list, but you MUST keep this in mind: send out your “A” list invites early (about 3 months early) and give them an “RSVP by” date that is about 2 months from the day of your wedding. That gives you plenty of time to send out invites to your “B” list. This will also prevent the “B” list members from knowing they are second tier on your wedding guest list.

As a side note, if you are going to send out save the date cards, then this strategy still works, but you only want to send save the dates out to your “A” list.

If this strategy won’t work for your wedding guest list, then devise one that will work for you. There would be nothing worse than allowing your guest list to grow beyond your budget and as a result, create even more stress after your day of celebration is said and done.

Princess Party: A Day of Make Believe

Princess themed parties don't ever seem to get old and I can understand why. Being a princess comes with many perks...a beautiful castle, great outfits, a pink pony and a handsome prince. It also comes with such wonderful make believe: wishes granted, fun adventures, rainbows and magical moments.


If you are wanting to create a princess party for your little girl, here is some inspiration to get you started:

Of course, pink and purple seems to be a consistent color pallet when it comes to princess related items, so your decor could revolve around those two colors. Balloons, table cloths, even favors could fall within the pink/purple realm. But, before you get to decorating, guests must be properly invited.


Use invitation wording such as, "Hear ye, hear ye! By royal decree you have been invited to Princess Maddison's 5th birthday party..." Close the invitation by encouraging guests to come in princess dress. Below are two darling invitation options by http://www.urbanitystudios.com/ for your little girl's party.

or

Once the guests arrive, their first order of business in the royal court could be to make their very own tiaras. Oriental trading sells kits that come complete with tiaras, jewels as well as wands and ribbon to complete the ensemble. After the guests have created their accessories for the party, its time to get busy. One game could be to "pin the jewel on the crown," as seen below.

This game is simple and with some poster board or butcher paper, you can easily create your crown and jewels. Learn more at CountryLiving.com.

Another very fun game could be magical thrones (just like musical chairs) or duck, duck, princess (variation on duck, duck goose).

After cake and ice cream, have the guests settle down to a classic princess movie like Cinderella.

When it is time for everyone to head home, send them on their way with a favor. The favor could be as simple as a crown cookie with their name on it in frosting

or an assortment of candy jewelery including a ring pop, a candy necklace and candy bracelet.

Hosting a princess party yourself? I would love to hear your ideas. Until next time, happy make believing.

January 20th...A day to celebrate

Regardless of your political leaning or your view on President Obama, today is a day to celebrate. We live in a country where we are given the opportunity to vote (whether you are male, female, religious, non-religious, of a certain race, etc) and democratically elect our next leader. When you sit down during dinner tonight, toast the United States of America and if you voted in this election, toast yourself. You participated in an election of historic proportions.

Create a Valentine's Day Treasure Hunt

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching...I know, I know. It is still a month away, but I promise you, that month is going to fly by. So, here's an idea that will get your creative juices flowing.

Create a treasure hunt activity for either your significant other or your kids. If you don't have either, then create on for your friends (it is boring to think about Valentine's as just a day for couples).

Here's the general gist: create clues that lead to other clues and eventually direct the person (or people) to the ultimate destination. Whether it's a coffee shop, a fun restaurant or even your home.

The hunt could begin with you sending a text to your loved one saying something like "Ready to play? Check your mail box..." Now, you can either have an email waiting for them with the next clue, or literally place something in their mailbox. This is easier when you live with the person...but you get the idea.

The next clue could lead them to a library where you've hidden a clue inside a book. For example, the clue could read "What is the first day of spring? Find out more in 'Spring Gardening' at your nearest library." The clue could be stuffed on page 21 (the official first day of Spring) leading them to your next place.

Send them to the grocery store where you've placed a clue next to an food item. For instance, you could say "When you think of Italy, what main dish comes to mind? See if you know at Smith's Food King. Be aware, you'll have to dig around" You could then hide the clue under a couple of bags of pasta.

And so on. While your person is out and about on the treasure hunt, you could be on your way over to the final destination or even preparing and decorating for a great meal at home.

To make this idea even better, please share your clue ideas if you were to play this game (or should I say, when you put together your treasure hunt?). I would love to hear your thoughts. For now...Happy Valentine's Day planning!

Afternoon vs. evening...what time does it change?

Because I am in the business of invitations, this sort of thing matters to me, especially when I am spelling out the time on an invitation (i.e. "five o'clock in the evening" instead of 5 p.m.). The problem is, I get so many questions about when it is appropriate to use "in the evening" vs. "in the afternoon". Does evening begin at 5 pm or 6 pm?

Here is the official wikipedia definition of evening:

"Evening is the period in which the daylight is decreasing, between the late afternoon, around the time when dinner is taken. Though the term is subjective, evening is typically understood to begin before sunset, during the close of the standard business day (about 6 pm) – and extend until dusk, the beginning of night. Evening thus spans the period of twilight, but begins before it and depending on definition may extend past its end."

However, depending upon the time of year or where you work "during the close of business day and extend[ing] until dusk" could mean from 5-5:15 during the winter (and your job ends at 5 pm instead of 6 pm)...a very short evening indeed.

To make matters worse, the definition of afternoon is as follows:

"Afternoon is the time of day from 12:00 noon to -depending upon context- evening, sunset, or 18:00 [6 pm]."

Clearly, looking to definitions isn't very helpful. The best part, both definitions end with "[the specific time] is very subjective." Ugh.

Here's what I subscribe to and recommend. If your party starts at 5 pm or later, it is okay to write "five o'clock in the evening". If you party starts at 8 pm or later, you may want to say "eight o'clock in the night". If your party is before 5 pm, stick with "in the afternoon". Now, if you want to avoid it all and be less formal, just say "5:00 pm" or "8:00 pm."

Oh, one more thing. If you are spelling out the time, you need to also spell out the date and the year to be consistent. Any questions? Clear as mud...