{Straight From The Studio} Pierson's 1st Bee Day Party

Pierson's 1st "Bee" Day was Bee-yond fun. So you caught me, I planned his party 6 months early.... I am a bit of a overachiever when it comes to being prepared and planned ahead of time!

#1 Priority: Invitation: Had to have a cute way to get the "buzz" out about his party! at www.AndersRuff.Etsy.Com, we can create a completely custom invitation for your party! Many more designs to come - if you are interested in the bee party invite, let us know!

It reads:

Have you heard the buzz?

Pierson is going to bee 1!

Join us at the Anders Hive

for Pierson's Bee-day celebration

Address/date etc

It'll bee the sweetest place to bee!

Buzz the Queen Bee to RSVP

Maureen #

Bee-bee-que and Bee Hive Cake to be served

#2 Priority: Outfit:

I appliqued a bumble bee on top of a black/white gingham jon jon that I made for Pierson. The lining is a soft yellow and white plaid and it has white pique piping. The yellow buttons have little white polka dots going around the circumference.

I also made him a bib (for the cake mess that was about to occur). I used a yellow hand towel and cut a neck and sewed in a t-shirt collar. Then I appliqued the number 1 in black/white gingham to match the rest of his get-up.

I almost forgot Priority #2.5... Cotton's outfit. Yes, my dog had a bumble bee costume on. He looked so pitiful, but I loved it. He was just humping stinging and buzzing kids all over the house, left and right. He looks so sad, but I think he was happy.

#3 Priority: Favor (of course): I decided to use empty honey bear containers for a "sweet" part of the kiddie favors. I filled them to the top with Earth's Best Organic Smiley Cereal for the babies and Tootsie rolls and Butterfingers for the older kids. (black and yellow packaging was key!).

Then, I topped each honey bear off with a party hat that had paper shred for the pom pon, ribbon around the base, slapped the kids name on the hat, and put a little personalized sticker on the front of the honey bear that said "Thanks for Bee-ing so sweet... Pierson's 1st Bee Day - 1.30.2009"

Use our CUSTOM logos to personalize and make all your detailed party favors more special!

For the toy part of the favor, I wrapped up books for the children. The babies each got 2 chunky board books (by Bright Baby), and the older kids got a book by Eric Carle.

I used the most fabulous wrapping paper, houndstooth!!! Black and white. I found that and almost had apanic attack (I am being completely serious) at Hobby Lobby over Christmas. I mean, how perfect?

Each gift had a circle giant tag with the child's name personalized. It says "Thanks for buzzing by to bee here for Pierson's first bee day". Ok, I went a little overboard using "bee" in place of "be". Wrapped with yellow and black raffia.

Baby books (above). Toddler books were larger (below)

Look at the happy bears just waiting to be handled by all the kids that were there!

The centerpieces were the honey bears, too!

Then, of course, I had to send home a sweet confection for the road. I know most people opened it on the car ride home and devoured those sweet little bees!

Like the glass shaped hive (courtesy, Kristin) that we put bumble bee stickers on. Thanks, Kristin!

#4 Priority: Food: We had an array of foods, theme appropriate, of course.

Menu:

Bee-bee-que (with buns if the guests wanted it on a sandwich)

Cole Slaw

Baked Bee-ns (Kristin's famous)

Fruit cups w/ honey yogurt dip

Bumble bee Nectar (Lemonade punch)

Bee-r (J found the most perfect beer, it had a yellow wrap w/ a huge bumble bee on the front of the bottle!)

Bee and Hive Sugar cookies

P.Bee Honey bees (can't even describe - yum)

Bee-bee-que. Not the midwestern type bbq. (When I first moved south, I thought bbq was when you put chicken on the bbq. Totally different down south...in a better, fattier kind of way)

My mom and I were up the night prior until 1 am shredding this dreaded pork butt bbq. I had never made it, ever. We decided to go all out and do it ourselves. Bought 30 pounds of pork ass and roasted that pig right up... all day long. By 2 am it was shredded and ready to go. We split it into 2 crock pots - one was plain (just some vinegar sauce to keep it moist) and the other had the mustard based sauce.

Turned out scrumptious! We had 3 sauces (in honey bear containers, of course). Red sauce from Mac's BBQ in Charlotte, Mustard from Maurice's BBQ, and The Q-Shack vinegar based.

Bee and Hive Sugar Cookies

Priority #.... Well, lets start back at 1: CAKE

I was bound and determined to not have to buy that $40 William's Sonoma cake pan. That would have been too easy. So I did a 3 layer cake, with a dome cake (from Jeffrey's previous birthday where we had sports balls cakes) on the top. It was actually very simple.

Dr. Oeteker Organic cake mix, my favorite. Layered chocolate/vanilla/chocolate/vanilla so when that hive was cut into it looked like a striped bee!

The bumble bees on top were chocolate covered almonds with almond wings and yellow frosting stripes.

Placed the cake on a black/white Houndstooth covered cutting board. Yes, the houndstooth that I almost had a panic attack about at Honny Lobby. (I won't tell you how many rolls of that paper I purchased that year. Hey, its an investment)

I also made a small hive cake for Pierson to crush. J's mom, Vicki, had her birthday the day of the party (Jan 31!) as well, so we I made her a cake of her own!

To my mom, Kathy, for taking my orders.... some call me "host-zilla".

With all the chaos, this was the only family photo we GOT! Oh well! There is always next year.

J's mom was the birthday girl, too.

The guest of honor. Pierson Burke. Otherwise known as Peanut. (He was smiling at Auntie Claire)

May the bees be with you.

{Straight From The Studio} Pierson's 1st Bee Day Party

{Straight From The Studio} Jeffrey's 4th Birthday - A "Mommy and Me Arts and Crafts Party"

This is probably going to be the longest post that anyone has ever posted because I am obsessed with parties and so there are loads of details to document here, if you want the full effect. I am behind... so this is from June 09.

I just have to share this party because its such a fun theme. Girls and boys love it and there are so many creative ways to tie in logos/favor tags, etc! www.andersruff.etsy.com can customize anything you want to help tie your party together as we show in our example here!

It all started with the deal I found on crayons last fall. I don't ever remember being able to get a box of crayons for $0.33? Walmart apparently has! I decided at that deal that Jeffrey's next party (mind you, it was 9 months before his party that I bought these crayons) was going to be an arts and crafts party. I mean, why not? I love art, he does too (or he pretends to!). Plus, what an amazing favor this will be - I could already envision it - a paint can full of art supplies for each child with their name personalized on it. Perfect. That $0.33 box of crayons was just the start to the favor. Over the next 7 months, I found watercolors ($1.99-CRAYOLA, too!), stickers ($0.50), glue sticks ($0.50) to stuff in the most adorable cans (Thanks, Kristin - she found these for me at Target for $0.70 each)!

Can you already tell how I plan parties? I work backwards. I find the perfect favor and work backwards. Plan backwards. It has panned out for me this far, so I'll stick with my method.

Anyhow, lets share this event the right way - invitation first. My parents are interior designers and with my love of paper came a love of paint chip charts. I loved fanning out all the beautiful colors and imagining painting a room each of the colors in the chart. That was it - This "Mommy and Me Arts and Crafts party" just HAD to have a paint chip chart invitation.

On our ETSY site, we have a paint chip invitation. If you are interested in multiple pages that you can link together with a brad like the on I did, we can do that, too!

Here it was:

So that was the beginning impression - the invitation.

Then we have the decorations. Most you will see throughout this post in other photos, but a few of note are the "Happy Birthday" sign and the artist easel as you walk in the door.

The "Happy Birthday" sign was made of, you guessed it, paint chips. I hung them from a string of raffia with little wooden clothes pins.

The "Yellow" station was the food - pizza, fruit cups and veggie tray.

Next we have the party.

I invited like 20 kids and just KNEW throwing 20 four year olds into a mix of 3 crafts wasn't going to be easy. So, I organized the kids into groups. When they arrived, they received a nametag that had the order in which they would conquer each of 3 tables with crafts. Orange table, Red table and Green table.

I found really fun clear paint cans and filled them with the coordinating color candy and had balloons strung to them as well to designate the table color.

Orange Table: (Outside under a tent) - Decorating T-Shirts with fun foam stamps, puff paint, brushes, sponges, etc.

Green Table: (Inside) Decorate a party hat - We had foam visors and foam stickers (letters, dinosaurs, geometric shapes, etc) for the kids to personalize their visors. We had every color visor you could imagine. (Age appropriate, remember... if they were older I would have had them sew and bead their own hats hah!)

Red Table: This was where J thought I was crossing the line. Bead a bracelet for mommy. Ok, I was desperate for something that Jeffrey LIKED to do, and that helped build their fine motor skills, too! (and something that wasn't messy since this would be in my dining room, for crying out loud) So yes, a little girly, but the moms liked their bracelets (I think).

Now for the sweetest part.... no pun intended. The Goodies!

I baked the sugar cookies (my mom's best recipe ever!) in the shape of artist palettes and paint brushes. I am pretty proud of the fact that I even MADE the cookie cutters. I was fed up with looking for a palette and brush so I made them out of bending tin from a lasagna pan! Worked like a charm!

Then I made the cake (Dr. Otekers organic cake mix... Earth Fare - its the BEST cake mix ever! A few simple ingredients, no hydrogenated oils/HFCS/etc) and plopped a real paint brush on top.

The Favors are always fun. I gave each kid one of the previously mentioned creations along w/ a cello bag full of the fun palette cookies. All wrapped in clear cello and tied w/ raffia, of course!

Personalized LOGOS for the paint cans - we can do those! Just ask!

...and you can see how happy the birthday boy was! (on his Jeep he got from Grandma and Grandpa)

{Straight From The Studio} Jeffrey's 4th Birthday - A "Mommy and Me Arts and Crafts Party"

WATCH OUT MARTHA.... THERE'S A NEW GIRL IN TOWN!

So I’m dedicating this entry to the infamous Martha Stewart….. My favorite Wedding Planner Icon

We recently had a request for bridal shower invitations. Maureen designed an elegant chandelier silhouette which I absolutely love! (Here are a few colors) and FYI – wouldn’t this be a great dinner party invitation??

I, on the other hand took a different approach.
When we get a request, I typically go to the internet and do a little research first. I try to find inspiration from sources other than existing invitations. So… who better to research bridal ANYTHING, than Martha Stewart Wedding Magazine!

Here’s my interpretation of a couple of her OH –SO-PERFECT-THAT-YOU-DON’T-WANT-TO-EAT-THEM cakes.

After desiging my non-editable cakes, I saw a photo with a “JUST MARRIED” banner and champagne table, and decided to make an interpretation of that.













Then, I thought… well – we will need a thank you design (a lot of clients have been purchasing matching thank you cards…





and we will need a logo (again – we are getting tons of requests for these)….








And why not have a bridal shower banner to go along with the card to complete the set???




(Of course, I wouldn’t have thought to make a package out of this…. That was Maureen’s doing… My savvy business partner is always finding a way to improve our talents – She’s so money, she doesn’t even know it!)

In any event, I had fun brainstorming and designing these bridal collections, and I hope I made Martha proud.

Like our style, but don’t see any examples – send us requests…. We love it!

WATCH OUT MARTHA.... THERE'S A NEW GIRL IN TOWN!