My sister is getting married! She’s asked me to be the matron-of-honor! Wait a second, that means I have to throw a bridal shower for her…I’ve never thrown any kind of party for anyone, ever.
Luckily, she had a venue in mind for her shower, and a theme…vegetables. VEGETABLES? Ok, breathe. I can do this. 
We decided upon cupcakes from a local bakery, The Cake Lady. The plan I came up with was to do 5 kinds of cupcakes, each decorated with one of five vegetables on top. After that, I moved on to food! 
I am lucky enough to have a co-worker and friend who is a trained chef, and he agreed to cater the event and bake cookies for shower favors. Much to his chagrin, I found a lovely set of miniature vegetable-shaped cookie cutters. He very graciously baked and iced 90 miniature eggplant cookies and 90 miniature carrot cookies and packaged them too!
Knowing I still needed help carrying off this vegetable-themed shower, I turned to another friend, an artist who does amazing things with sculpey and air brush guns. He hand sculpted, baked, and painted 90 life-like vegetable magnets for guests to take with their cookies.
Food and shower favors complete, I had to finally settle on how to decorate the party room, and stay within the vegetable theme. I went through many ideas, none of which I liked, or were feasible. My sister lives in Cleveland, and is a frequent shopper at the West Side Farmers’ Market. That fact gave me the inspiration I needed! We’d go with a farmers’ market theme! My sister and I went to a local craft store and found some inexpensive baskets that looked like those you find at your local market. I was then going to fill each basket with fresh veggies bought from her favorite market, and include a hand-written recipe for a favorite dish of hers, ratatouille. Voila! We have centerpieces.
After the centerpieces came together, the rest was very easy to piece. I painted terra cotta pots and used seed packets to look like garden markers to decorate our cake table. We also found ceramic berry crates that we filled with candy for guests to enjoy.
This was my first experience throwing a shower, and there were times I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. After many late nights racking my brain for ideas and inspiration the big day came and was a success! Everything came together beautifully, my sister was happy, and the guests enjoyed themselves.
I must admit, I really enjoyed my experience planning and putting together this party…I’m already looking forward to planning my twin boy and girl’s 5th birthday party in June- this time the theme is much easier, Pirates and Mermaids!
-Jen
Seriously, those veggie "cookies" are too adorable. I am having trouble seeing some of the other images but I am definitely intrigued and hope you will repost.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this week on BeColorful.
p