Guest Post: Bridal Shower Details

I'm delighted to share a guest post from my amazing friend, bridesmaid, and baker extraordinaire who was instrumental in throwing me a beautiful bridal shower complete with pretty invitations, handmade decorations, delicious favors that guests still rave about, and a paper and ribbon bouquet for the rehearsal. Here, she details the steps she took to make everything come together, with photos she snapped along the way. Thank you, Christine!

"Hearts and flowers, ribbon and lace, the look of love upon her face.

A happy heart that's hard to hide, this woman is soon to be a bride!"

(Author Unknown)

In April, I had the honor -- in addition to her sister and closest friends (Maureen, Leslie, Angela, Robyn, and Vivien) -- of organizing and hosting our dear Sharon's bridal shower. 

We certainly felt a lot of pressure to provide a celebration worthy of such an expert party and event planner. After some discussion, the bridesmaids came to the decision that the theme of her shower would be "Sharon's favorite things," which was largely reflected in the food and desserts. We also tried our very best to keep consistent with her wedding color scheme of berries, cream, champagne, and caviar.

I think all our efforts came together quite nicely. It was a great day to celebrate our friend! :)

Invitation

Given Sharon's love of peonies, we picked the "Perfect Peonies" invitation from Wedding Paper Divas. After lots of back and forth, we finally decided on 'peaches and cream' (lighter pink) over 'pink azalea' (a pinkish-purple) for the print color. There were some tough decisions to make! :) Sneaky little Sharon even tried to find out what we were doing by offering to "help" us. Of course we didn't let her! :P

Decorations

We divided the responsibilities with regards to invitations, food, desserts, and games. I was in charge of decorations. I knew I wanted to include some personal and homemade touches that are so characteristic of the thoughtful cards and gifts that Sharon often gives us.

After searching the internet, I came across 2 websites. One provided instructions on how to make a crepe paper pomander. It isn't comprised of peonies, but it's pretty, floral, and I knew I'd be able to make it fit the color scheme. It would make a great centerpiece. Plus, the supply list was pretty minimal.

I had no idea how many flowers I'd need to cover the ball, so I started out by making 100. Turns out I needed closer to 200! After I glued all the flowers on, I could still see white styrofoam peeking through. So I either rolled some smaller flowers or just tucked some pieces of crepe paper (basically I got lazy, OK? hahaha) in the crevices. At the shower, we placed it atop a trumpet vase.

I came across another website that showed how to make tissue paper peonies. Instead of using floral wire, I used pink thread since I wanted it to blend in. These were so pretty and yet very easy to make. We suspended these with thread on a piece of modern sculpture that was in the party space.

Favors

I was most stressed out about what to do about the favors. I bought a cake pop book a while back, but had never actually tried making them. So of course I left things until the last minute and decided to make them for the first time, right before her shower. Yay! Hahaha.

First, I followed Bakerella's instructions on how to make cake balls. I used Duncan Hines Red Velvet cake mix and cream cheese frosting. The shower was on Saturday, so I baked the cake on Thursday night and refrigerated it, taking into consideration the fact that the cake would need to cool down before I handled it. On Friday, I crumbled the cake by hand according to the instructions. After rolling the cake into ovoid balls, I pushed them through a small flower cookie cutter to shape the base of the cupcake. Then I rounded the top to resemble the top of a cupcake.

Unfortunately, the dipping of cake into candy melts is extremely messy, so I couldn't take many step-by-step pictures, but Bakerella has some good ones here. You dunk the base of the cupcake into the candy first and then push the stick about 3/4-inch into the cake. I used thicker sticks that are intended for cookies, not lollipops. One word of advice is that you should dip the stick in a bit of the candy melt before sticking it into the cake. Once the stick is in place, hold it for a few seconds in the position you want because the candy melt dries and hardens pretty quickly! For garnish, I thought it would be perfect to use red Skittles on top since they have an S (for Sharon), in addition to some sprinkles.

The morning of, I still had to create some labels for the favors. I'm sure there is some easier way to do this, but I ended up creating them on PowerPoint and printing them out on some cream-colored paper that I had. I literally only had one sheet so I had to make sure I got it right. After cutting out the labels, I tied them on using a bit of black ribbon.

To display them, I bought a basket and placed 2 styrofoam sheets (one sheet didn't seem sturdy enough to hold the sticks in the upright position) that I had punctured with the ends of the cake pop sticks. After placing all the cake pops in position, I then covered the styrofoam with pink tissue paper that I shredded in my paper shredder. We had some extra that we placed in a rectangular vase with some tissue paper.

Rehearsal Bouquet

I took all the wrapping paper and ribbons home with me. I created a couple more flowers using some of the tissue paper and the paper tissue peonies that we had used as decorations. I made a base for the bouquet for Sharon to hold using all the ribbons and a technique (barrel stitch) for making bracelets that I learned in elementary school. Sharon truly looked lovely in her flowing dress as she walked down the aisle with her dad and her now-husband at the rehearsal and then at her wedding! I feel lucky that I was able to partake in their special day. <3

Guest Post: BluePrintCleanse

I'm happy to present the first guest post on Red Poppy | Pink Peony! If you have ever considered doing one of today's popular juice cleanses, I hope the diary below is helpful in providing a glimpse into an individual experience. I have personally tried BluePrintCleanse and Cooler Cleanse in the past and can recommend both, although I don't think cleanses are necessary. This is my friend's first juice cleanse, and she is currently on BPC Day 1 of 3. If you have any questions for either of us, please ask in the comments, or let us know of your own experiences.

Image: BluePrintCleanse

Pre-BPC

Pardon in advance, my rambling. I suspect there will be a lot of angst or abnormal emotions/descriptions flying around this interweb, so apologies in advance for that also. I personally love juices and the concept of anything "fresh" (from having taken wheatgrass shots at the Westerly organic market while living in NYC), so I'm excited to do this. Plus, mid-March is the perfect timing for a post-hibernation detox. The first thing that everyone at my office asks me is, "But why? And why do you need to lose weight?" I tell them, it's more for detox, especially since I've been drinking sodas and eating "butter" popcorn at least 3 days out of the work week, for the past 4 months. Not good, and I definitely have noticed it in the changing texture of my skin (i.e. cellulite -- and don't even try to tell me, "What cellulite!").

Friday AM -- BPC Day 1

Where the eff is my delivery? I blocked off 3 hours that morning so I could welcome my numbered goodies and be off to work. But apparently there was a delivery delay and the bottles didn't arrive until 11 AM. Secretly, I was feeling a slight level of excitement and anxiety in having to deal with my 3-day "monster" so I immediately justified that it was OK to start on Saturday. :-)

During Friday, I tried to be good about eating vegetables, and minimizing my heavy carb and fried food intakes (these 2 frienemies being the bane of my existence).

Friday food diary:

• Korean breakfast (my usual): Bean rice, geem roasted seaweed/laver, and dwenjang jjigae, an umami-potent, piping hot and stinky tofu-based casserole. Yes, I brush my teeth after eating this and before stepping foot outside of my home. This breakfast in itself is actually relatively healthy compared to the typical American breakfast of eggs, bacon/sausage, and toast or bagel. It's also sodium-laden in comparison, so I imagine the next 3 mornings will be fairly challenging in this regard.
• Lunch: My NYC colleague was in town and asked me to go to the Korean "salad bar by the pound" -- aka bacteria bar -- deli across the street. So we went and I got a full lunch, made up of greens + feta, 2 sushi pieces, Brussels sprouts, Chinese fried pork cutlet (OK, shoot me), broccoli doused with Chinese Szechuan-y sauce. Hey, it's real food and not McD's, right?
• Snacks: I have a box of Kind nut/fruit bars in my office, so I had 2. If you buy them by the box at Whole Foods, they give you a 10% discount, and it's convenient to keep them around behind my desk.
• Evening: OK, I gave in here. Around 5 PM, the head of my department basically went berserk (he has an anger management problem) and threw a bunch of papers at me. Apparently he does this to others, so it's obviously not directed solely at me but again, he has an anger management problem. I think some of this got to me and I needed to "de-stress" by doing 2 important this: 1) shopping, and 2) having something yum yum in my tum. I was on a time crunch to make it to the Leesburg Outlet (which is the sister outlet to Woodbury), and it's 60 minutes away from downtown, so I decided to pick up something en route. Saw a new "green-looking" food shop on the way and decided to pick up a turkey & melted Swiss sandwich + frozen yogurt with pecans and strawberry for some sweet ooomph. In all facetiousness, I credit my friend SK {Sharon here: That's me!} for instilling this life value since the mid-2000s: "I like to finish off my meals with something sweet." Well, I CAN'T SEEM TO LOSE THAT RELIGION. The turkey was coldcut turkey (i.e. not fresh meat) and I felt guilty eating the Swiss before the cleanse, also because my NYC colleague was saying I should not be consuming any cheese beforehand.
• Throughout the day, I would estimate having had 4-5 cups of tea (combination of my Asian/green tea, lemon zinger tea from the office, and no pure water which I will admit is a shoddy habit). Also had a cup of chai tea latte (can you see me doing a Mexican jumping bean from the sugar overload?).

Saturday -- The Real BPC Day 1

It's 2:30 PM and I'm currently going through juice #3. The juices themselves don't taste bad. My biggest challenges thus far are: a) having to constantly drink a lot of liquid (if you recall my Friday liquid intake, it's not much) -- the drinking feels forced and not natural, precisely due to my daily habit of not drinking much; and b) there's always the lingering aromas of fantastically-seasoned and well-executed Korean food in my house. In the morning, the Korean breakfast dependably greets me at the kitchen table. Same thing with the evening time, should I decide not to eat out. This morning, I snuck a peek at a Korean casserole pot (conceptually-speaking, I don't think it's far from the Moroccan Tagine idea). Wonderfully-prepared mackerel fish, braised alongside Korean turnip/radish, was literally calling my name. I admit I almost went for it, but slapped myself back in line.

It's also a weird feeling, as a few years ago, when this type of food wasn't as "in my face" so it was never an issue -- in other words, I actually don't get hungry or think about food if I'm not usually surrounded by it.

3.5 more juices to finish -- this is a true job! I'm already looking forward to the reward of juice #6, the cashew/vanilla bean/cinnamon/coconut juice.

To be continued...