Honeymoon Bridal Shower - Vintage Travel Theme

One of my dearest friends is getting married in June and I had the honor of throwing her a Honeymoon Shower in my backyard. First things first, the invitation "boarding passes" went out, setting the mood for the party. The invitations instructed guests to "Claim Megan's Baggage" for her honeymoon in St. Lucia and gave a list of gift ideas along with Megan's sizes. 

My vision for the party was soft colors and lace with travel and vintage touches. I searched through several thrift stores for old books and luggage. 

For the flower vases I used salsa and pasta sauce jars that I accumulated over a couple of months. The tea lights were placed in baby food jars and tied with twine.

Megan requested that we didn't play any traditional bridal shower games so I came up with a couple of other things for guests to do at the party, including "Help Megan Pack For The Honeymoon" and a stack of cards for guests to write Megan a note to read on the flight to St. Lucia. She is a very nervous flyer and was excited to have something to look forward to on the plane. 

The meal plan was for heavy appetizers. I decorated the table with vintage books and luggage (from Michael's) and used doilies to create the "Come Fly With Me" banner.

Drink stations are always one of my favorite parts of planning events. I purchased this little bathroom toiletry cart, which resembles an airplane beverage cart, from Target on clearance for $14.00. I set up the Mimosa jar on top of an amazing vintage World Atlas that I found at a thrift store and then added the mini bottles of wine and bottles of water.

The dessert table came together with just 4 glass containers holding cheesecake, cookies, brownies and chocolate-covered strawberries with a simple yard of lace fabric for the backdrop. 

 

I wanted to give Megan a special place to open her gifts. The gazebo in the yard was perfect! Mason jars filled with baby's breath and a chandelier framed the space. I fell in love with the "And They Lived Happily Ever After" pillow purchased at Marshall's.

The guests brought home mason jars with a mini bottle of lotion and trail mix. 

Another fun party that was a joy to put together! If you have any questions, just let me know either in the comments or email me at growingupgardner@yahoo.com.



-Amanda

Using free photo editing sites - and pictures!

Now that Picnik is no longer available for use, I've been playing around on a couple of other photo editing sites, specifically iPiccy and Picmonkey. Both are great and easy for fixing up pictures or turning plain photos into much more interesting images. I used Picmonkey to jazz up a few pictures I took of the kids this week.

Before:

After:

Little miss is really into posing herself. She runs around to different spots, poses and yells, "how about this?" while I snap away.

My silly little boy. It's so hard to get him to look at the camera these days. This is the one shot I got of him looking towards me. 

 I like adding "boost" at 10% then adding the "tranquil" effect over. That's exactly what I did with this photo.

This one is cross-processed with the color green. Her eyes really pop!

iPiccy was useful when I was editing the pictures I took of Kim's baby boy, Andrew. The "bloom" effect smoothed out his blotchy new born skin to perfection.

Before:

After:

Those lips are irresistible! 

 

My niece, Celina, asked me to take pictures of her before Prom last Saturday. I softened many of the photos using Bloom, faded to about 30%. Then used the focal soften feature to blur out the background.

Between the two, I'm leaning more towards Picmonkey, but it really depends on the type of photo I'm editing. For example, for dramatic filters, I go with Picmonkey. If I just want to fix the exposure and maybe add a little something extra, I use iPiccy.  I've also heard good things about Fotoflexer and Piclr but I haven't had a chance to use them much. And then there's Adobe Lightroom sitting in an unopened box on my desk.


-Amanda