Oh (Dragon) Baby!

We had a baby shower for my sister this past weekend, which was the reason for my visit. This is the Year of the Dragon, and she's been playfully referring to the little one as Dragon Baby, so that became the theme for the party.

We started with invitations designed by Chloe Marty. I had spotted her cute dragon invitation on Pinterest, and she worked with me to change the original dragon into a more Asian-looking one. Naturally, we sent out the invitations using a Year of the Dragon stamp!

I drew a lot of inspiration from the Lunar New Year party at And Baby Makes Four. Although I didn't get a picture of it, I ordered the same paper tassel garland seen on that blog, and it turned out just perfectly. We also had a few red lanterns scattered here and there.

I loved the arrangement of branches and lucky envelopes seen on The Party Dress. My sister's mother-in-law found a beautiful red vase and outfitted it with dried mountain laurel limbs. Guests were encouraged to write a little note to Dragon Baby and to leave it in a lucky envelope.

We replicated centerpieces originally seen on Pier One's website (they're no longer there, but you can view them at Asianmommy.com). They were really easy: mini takeout boxes, silk flowers, chopsticks, and dragon picks.

The water bottle labels were made using the Silhouette cutter ("chinese_dragon_C01001_20508" in case you're interested), and that same dragon motif is used for some of the signs. Off to the right, you'll catch a glimpse of the mimosa bar, which was inspired by Simple Modern Weddings.

For favors, we put custom fortune cookies inside miniature bamboo steamers and tied them up with red ribbons. We also dipped some of the fortune cookies in chocolate and served them on Asian spoons.

The rest of the menu was mostly Asian-inspired.

No party is complete without a themed dessert, right? I fell in love with the dragon cupcakes seen in the book Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie (yes, from the same geniuses who created the sheep pound cakes), and I was so fortunate to find Amanda at Esquire Confections, who executed them perfectly!

I'm excited for the Dragon Baby!

A Little Loopsy

I came across some really cute Lalaloopsy cakes and was inspired to make one for my daughter's party. Many of them include really cute fondant buttons, but since none of us like fondant, I opted instead to make button cookies to decorate the cake. My older daughter helped! Since I don't have circle cutters, we just used different sizes of bottle caps--not as pretty, but they served just fine. I used the same cookie recipe that JaeBellz did, and the food dye was Wilton Icing Colors in rose, teal, and violet. This particular recipe holds its shape really well. Since the cookies didn't spread, we decided it was much easier to roll out the dough onto parchment paper, cut out the circles, and then pick up the scraps around them. The parchment paper then went directly onto a baking sheet to go into the oven. This saved having to transfer the cookies individually and risk messing them up. The cookies that weren't used for the cake were given out as part of the favor bags.

I had a lot of fun with the cake topper. Lalaloopsy packages have cute handles on the top, and of course I saved them because they looked too good to discard. I got a 4" round pressboard box and hot glued the handle to the top.

It doesn't matter if it's messy because no one will see that. (And in case you're curious, I was able to later dismantle it, peel off the hot glue, and save the handle intact). The box was covered with frosting, and then I added a couple of her mini dolls. Ta da!

My daughter had requested an ombre pink and white cake, and this one was made with 1 box of white cake mix and 1 box of strawberry cake mix. The bottom layer is strawberry, the top layer is white, and the middle layer was created by mixing the 2 together. If you're using a kitchen scale to make sure everything is even, it's about 600g of batter in each layer.

We also made a few mini cakes for the dolls out of Golden Oreos and decorated them with Candy Buttons. They sat on mini cupcake stands I had made for a previous party.

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A Little Loopsy

I'm back with some more Lalaloopsy. This next one is really easy. You can twist 5/8" screw eyes right into Lalaloopsy pencil toppers and convert them into little charms. I just used my fingers to do this and did not require any tools.

We used these charms to make bracelets and necklaces at my daughter's birthday party.

The other craft they did was to glue felt pieces and buttons onto barrettes.

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