2011 April |

The Royal Wedding Breakfast

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Amy

Did you watch it? Did you LOVE her dress {sigh}…what a fun morning, even if you had to get up super early to see it happen live.

We had the best time at our “Royal Wedding Breakfast”, it was fun to watch it and share our memories of Diana’s wedding, and compare our thoughts and observation on today.

And, styling the event was so much fun…

Our Wedding Breakfast Table

Mimosas & bloody mary's...a nice way to enjoy a wedding.

Vintage glass plates fit the theme perfectly.

A brittish wedding and breakfast...Scones of course...

Quiches, and fruit served in the glass teacups that match the vintage plates.

"The Ring" inspired our royal blue color scheme

A "Royal" Decoration for the Front Door

Its almost a little sad that its over…though it will be nice to sleep a little later tomorrow. I am off to catch the re-runs and see what I missed this morning! Have a great weekend.

(Don’t forget to enter our Stationery giveaway!)

Linking up to the Royal Wedding Link party at Decor to Adore

And

Posted in Entertaining, Events, General & About Us, Weddings & Events | Tagged blue, breakfast, brunch, champagne, event, Events, Royal Wedding | Leave a comment

Coming Events–A Wedding and A Baby Shower

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Amy

Tomorrow is the big day, how can you not want to watch the Royal Wedding? We are so excited we are throwing a “watching” breakfast here at Magnolia Lane.

the Party Invitation

I loved these side-by-side engagement photos I found of the two Royal couples…so many of us remembering watching the wedding of Charles & Diana, its going to be fun to relive it in a small way tomorrow.

We will post about the breakfast after the fact…but here is the adorable door decoration Terry made. Isn’t it GREAT??? Now everyone will know not only which house to come to, but that we are celebrating the big event!

A "Royal" Decoration for the Front Door

And, when the Royal couple is honeymooning and the crowds have gone, we are getting ready for a HUGE event here at Magnolia Lane. Our sweet friend is having a baby, so of course we are throwing her a party. I just finished the invitation via my design business, and I think its just perfect for her.

A very special baby shower invitation

Are you doing anything special for the wedding?

AND, don’t forget to enter our Giveaway for a set of personalized stationery, perfect for Mother’s Day or Graduations, or just for you. Click HERE to enter.

Decor to Adore is having a link party with Royal Wedding Events, so we are linking up!

Posted in Entertaining, Events, giveaways, Weddings & Events | Tagged baby shower invitation, coming up, Door decoration, Royal Wedding | 3 Comments

Personalized Stationery Giveaway!

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Amy

Just in time for Mother’s Day we are hosting a personalized stationery giveaway here at Magnolia lane from my design business, www.gracepaperie.com.

Personalized Stationery with a Name & (Optional) quote at the bottom

The giveaway is for 15 custom designed cards and envelopes in the color or text of your choosing. I can also add a quote at the bottom of the card if the winner would like. Perfect for a Mother’s Day gift (or gift to yourself!) or a teacher gift.

Options range from sophisticated adult designs to casual

Children's Designs are also Available

Rules to Enter:

1) Leave a comment below telling us your favorite color for the (ink) on the stationery or favorite quote to put on the bottom.

AND

2) Become a follower or email subscriber of 11magnolialane!

That’s all! Winner will be announced by random number selection on May 1st.

Posted in giveaways | Tagged giveaway, mother's day, notecards, personlized, stationery | 4 Comments

Pink Cupcake Birthday Party

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Terry

I am so excited to post our first Event-tastic Party. This party is extra special to me because it was created for my nieces 3rd birthday by my incredibly talented sister, Tracy. My sister is one of the most creative people I know. She has created her own line of note cards & invitations, illustrated a kids music book and is an amazing Mom. She also put together this adorable DIY Pink Cupcake Party!!!

Happy Birthday to you!!

Hello,
I am Terry’s sister, and I follow your blog. I wanted to contribute a guest posting about my daughter’s third birthday party. She wanted a pink cupcake party, so I did my best to tie it together. Here is my entry:

———————————–

My daughter’s third birthday was approaching, and boy did she know it. She would talk about the day constantly and tell me all about the pink cupcakes she would have. “Everybody else has brown, but I’m going to have pink!” she’d proudly exclaim. Not wanting to disappoint, I did my best to make a theme out of her idea. I love to plan parties and one of my favorite side gigs is to design the invitations. I designed the invitation in Illustrator and print them on my home printer on heavy stock paper, trimmed them and off they went. I thought they turned out really cute, and did their job of setting the mood of the party: girly and sweet.

I thought a lot about what the goodie bags would be comprised of. A cupcake recipe with all of the ingredients nicely packaged? Cupcake shaped stickers and novelty items from Oriental Trading? Cookies shaped like cupcakes? Then one morning, at brunch at my neighbor’s house, I noticed all of the kids wearing various aprons that the hostess had compiled from places that offer craft time for children, like Lowe’s and Home Depot. They donned these cute, kid-sized aprons and went around taking everybody’s order for pizza. Bingo! I would get some small aprons for the goodie bags so they could pretend to be cupcake chefs. I looked for said aprons online, but they were rather expensive, plus I wanted them personalized in some way. My mother and sister both enjoy sewing, and both said they would be happy to make the aprons for me so I started looking for apron patterns. I found this one, the PERFECT one, online from Michael Miller Fabrics, its called: Classic_Apron (click for .pdf pattern) and emailed it over to my mother. I loved everything about the one in the blog that I found, and even found the cupcake material. But I wanted these to be good for boys and girls so I went to Joann Fabric online (www.joann.com ) and ordered this fabric and this fabric instead.

And we bought the gold D rings for the ties at Joann as well:

Home made aprons

I went to Staples and purchased a packet of small spiral-bound notepads and then designed a personalized cover for the notepads which I print, trimmed and glued on with a standard glue stick.

I then went to Michael’s and purchased adhesive felt cupcakes (couldn’t find an exact match online, but something similar to This). I used two adhesives per pencil. I would have liked to have pink pencils or themed pencils instead of standard yellow ones, but ran out of time.

I purchased transparent baggies to package it all in and the goodie bags were complete.

Goodie Bags

Personalize note pads

For the party itself, I designed a pink striped banner (just print, trim and hot glue onto a sturdy ribbon) and bought the pink plates/napkins and pink plastic bowls and platters from the local dollar store. The cupcakes were made from a box mix (and for the record, people said they were delicious) and I bought pink polka-dot cupcake cups from Michael’s. I used pink food coloring added to plain white frosting and the flowers were done using edible sparkly tube frosting, topped off with a small blue flower candy in the middle.

Simply Pink table decor

Overall, a successful party, a fairly simple theme and a visually appealing set-up.

Thank you Tracy! What a great party and thank you for sharing all your tips and sources.

If you would like to submit your DIY event to our “Event-tastic” series, please email us at 11magnolialane@gmail.com.

Posted in Children's Activities, DIY, Events, Projects & Printables | Tagged apron, children's party, cupcake, DIY event, event-tastic, goodie bag, party, Pink, submit event | 1 Comment

Submit your Event!

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Amy

While we consider 11 Magnolia Lane to be a “lifestyle” blog–meaning we try not to fall exclusively into any one niche of decorating, cooking, events etc.– with two of the three main contributors being in the event industry its only natural we deal a lot with parties.

So, Terry and I have been talking and we have decided that while there is no shortage of party & event blogs that feature perfectly staged party displays done by professionals, here at Magnolia Lane, we want to see how you real people throw a party. So, show us what you have!!! Please submit, via email to 11magnolialane@gmail.com, any party you are proud of and we’d love to feature it (and your blog) via our new on-going series called “Event-tastic”!

Here are the “guidelines” to be featured:

1) Any type of party or event is welcome–from a special dinner for your significant other, to a classroom event to a grand celebration. {FYI, we LOVE baby and wedding showers around here}. However, please submit a post that includes “DIY” directions on how you put together your event, or email us the information on it if you don’t have a blog. We want to learn from each other, and organizing the party is often as important as the details, so share it ALL!

2) The event must be put together mainly by you. Of course help from friends (friends in the event business are fine) and purchasing from a variety of resources is great. But events run by a professional party planner, with completely outsourced catering and professional photography events don’t qualify as DIY events. We want to see how the “every” woman does it! Event professionals are more then welcome to submit events, as we would love to share your tricks and expertise, please just focus on the “how” not just the end result.

3) Please give as much detail on the event as you can, we will also happily link to a follow-up post on your blog. For a good example, please see this post on my Dinner Party. The goal is to show the event, and tell how you pulled it off, so to speak.

4) Please be a follower or email subscriber of our Blog as we want to encourage our Magnolia Lane “community”.

Questions? Simply email us…we won’t rule anything out so feel free to send us a note. We can’t wait to see what you do!

Posted in Cooking/Recipes, Events | Tagged d, diy, entertaining, Events, party, submit event | 1 Comment

Home & Garden Tour

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Amy

Yesterday was a fabulous girls day. Terry & I and our friend Lydia, went on the Garden & Home Tour here in our area. As Terry was the smart girl who remembered her good camera, she will have to follow-up with the good pictures. But here is just a taste of what I caught with my phone. The homes were stunning, and the gardens gorgeous.

This is just the garage/guest house, wait until you see the rest.

This is the kitchen garden. It would make Martha Stewart jealous!

Someday I plan to design my pool around a gorgeous flowering tree, too. Stunning!

So, I think I will just move in here this summer...

Did you want to see these close up? Here they are. Those Garden Club Gals know what they are doing don't they?

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the homes (ok maybe we took one or two…but don’t tell!) so we have tons more to share. It was a wonderful day, especially enjoying a relaxing girls lunch in the midst of all the hard work of home touring.

I hope everyone enjoys a very blessed Easter holiday.

Posted in Events, Home Tours, Real Spaces | Tagged Decorating, Gardens, Home Tour, pool | Leave a comment

Outside Entertaining Rack

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Amy

This baker’s rack has been sitting in my garage covered with junk for many years. I have even tried to give it away, but there weren’t any takers (no surprise). It came to us from a “discount” store, we had purchased it for some extra kitchen storage in a rental home we lived in very briefly. After that, it became a collect-all in my garage and was just a dirty, dusty mess.

The dirty, ugly "before" shot

But, since I have discovered spray paint, nothing is safe. And, as I have a special baby shower coming up here in about a month with a green and black theme, I thought this would be the perfect shelf to hold the gifts (or something!?). And, well in the meantime, it sure looks cute holding drinks and plants on my deck.

So, for all my neighbors who were wondering what the heck I was doing spray painting this last weekend, here is the finished product. It’s cute, isn’t it?

the prettier, cuter "after"

Linking up to~

Centasational Girl’s Paint Projects Party

Posted in Before and After, Entertaining, Home Inspiration, Real Spaces | Tagged bakers rack, Before and After, diy, drinks, entertaining, green, outdoor, shelf, spray paint | 19 Comments

Builder Kitchen Island Re-do

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Amy

Kitchen Island

While I never loved my builder cabinets, I especially hated the fake looking wood on my very standard kitchen island. So, a few years back I took a paint brush to my island thinking I might eventually redo all the cabinets. Well, life happened {and my third child} and my kitchen island literally sat half-done for years. It drove me crazy, but somehow I never got around to finishing it off.

Here in the "in-between" with 3 sides painted.

Yes, I was too chicken to paint the front cabinet doors, so for several years (I still can’t believe it as I type it) it sat like this, with the front still in the natural color. {Can I tell you how happy I was when I saw that Thrifty Decor Chick did the same thing? Validation!}.

But, with our impending move, I finally motivated to finish the project. And you know, it was so easy I don’t know why I put it off for so long?

The finished result is so much nicer. While our grand plan was to have a larger granite piece put on the top so we could seat all 3 children at the island, we will leave that up to the new owners of this home. All I did –other then sanding, priming and painting all 4 sides (this time) a creamy white– was that I added basic corbels from Home Depot under the counter and thick baseboard trim around the bottom. Very simple updates, but it looks so much more custom now.

The "After", So much better...

Linking up to~

Posted in Before and After, DIY, Home Inspiration, Real Spaces | Tagged Decorating, easy updates, kitchen, kitchen island, painting cabinets | 3 Comments

Raspberry Martini Recipe

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Amy

Here it is! As promised, and served at my recent Dinner Party. These drinks are yummy, but first I must tell you:

Here is what you will need:

A martini shaker

Ice (preferably crushed)

Raspberry Vodka

Razz-ma-tazz or other raspberry liquor

Sour Mix (not “sweet & sour” mix)

Squeeze of fresh lemon

Ice cold Martini glasses (I recommend storing them in your freezer)

My bartender husband uses a ratio of 1:1:1 which makes for a very strong drink. I make them with extra sour mix and sometimes add some lemonade or other juice to “lighten” them. But you basically fill your shaker about halfway up with crushed ice, then add equal amounts (use a measuring cup or other pouring device like a shot glass) of the vodka, raspberry liquor and the sour mix. Shake well. (Bartender husband advice: shake really well– till your hand is too cold to shake any longer!). Then, using the strainer that comes with your martini shaker, strain the drink into a cold martini glass. ENJOY!

He garnished this with lemon, but fresh raspberries would be very nice too.

We make them for the Holidays too.

And, if you think these look delicious, wait till you see what I just had the other day at the hairdresser (yes my hairdresser is very cool). A very yummy Carrot Cake Martini…recipe on that one coming soon!

Posted in Cooking/Recipes, Entertaining, Events | Tagged dinner party, drink, entertaining, holiday drink, martini, raspberry vodka | 1 Comment

Easter Bunny Tag Printable

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Amy

Printable Easter Bunny Tags

I know I promised Raspberry Martini Recipe–and its coming! I meant to post it for you Saturday so in case anyone wanted to “shake” some up that night, but our lives have been thrown into total chaos as we had to have our kitchen floor tile completely pulled out and replaced in the last 3 days. Needless to say, I am a little behind from having no access to my kitchen, not to mention totally surrounded by an inch of tile dust! But, my new tile is gorgeous so its well worth it even if I only get to enjoy it until my house sells…

So, since its coming up on Easter Week and for everyone getting ready to send in treats to school or having a celebration, here is a cute little tag you can use. Just print off and cut out (either with scissors or a 3″ round punch) and attach to goodie bags or little Easter baskets.