Emmie's Baby Shower

Last Sunday, Catherine, Leigh and I hosted a baby shower for Emmie Park. Emmie is married to James' fraternity brother and former roommate, Alex. In October, Alex & Emmie will have a sweet baby girl and become a family of three.  Little Eliza Blair will be the first baby in our close group of friends and something tells me she is going to be spoiled rotten. I mean how can you resist sweet baby girl outfits and accessories?

Adorable little outfits

My favorite of the bunch. Love the baby chevron print

Can you guess how many clothes pins?

Baby Park Punch

Measure the bump game

From left to right me, Leigh, Emmie and Catherine

Congrats Alex & Emmie! Can't wait for Eliza Blair to make her entrance into the world!

Jashley's Couples Shower

Last weekend we hosted a couples shower for our good friends Jason Perry & Ashley Miller (Jashley).  Jason is one of James' fraternity brothers, and he and Ashley have become wonderful "couples friends" of ours over the last few years.  We are so excited for their wedding this October! Together with Jason & Ashley's friends, Laura & Kyle, we hosted a fun back yard bbq to celebrate their upcoming big day. 

We could not have asked for better weather for an outdoor event in the middle of August. We had planned on renting 2 large fans to keep the back deck comfortable for our guests, but we only ended up renting one, thanks to the weather.  To keep things simple and easy, we had the party catered by Fox Brothers barbecue.  We dipped into my never-ending supply of burlap to make a few small touches, including a burlap matted frame of the invitation and burlap wrapped mason jars for the drinks. 

Laura has a mason jar beverage dispenser, which worked perfectly with our theme.  We ended up making a punch and named it "Perry Punch".

Remember this post about my monogrammed beverage buckets? Well, when I ordered our acrylic monogram stickers, I went ahead and ordered an extra one, knowing that we would likely host a shower for Jason & Ashley.  We had Jason & Ashley's beverage bucket on display at the shower and it took Ashley a second to realize it was their monogram. I guess our monograms are only one letter apart from being identical...

The spread

Drink Table

Mini Strawberry Shortcake Deserts

...and brownie bites

And finally a picture of the hosts with the bride and groom-to be. 

Team Americuh

I hope everyone had as much fun celebrating Independence Day as we did!  Both James and I had a few days off work with no big plans. It was so nice to relax and get projects done on the house. Wow, I just realized what a old lady grown up comment that was.  Aside from checking things off our to-do list, we also hosted a cookout at our house on the third and went to another cookout and fireworks display on the fourth.  Here are a few pictures from the festivities:

Centerpiece

Stars & Stripes Sangria

Cute Fruit Kabobs that my friend Mary Frances made

Me, James and Buford-- happy little family (except Buford looks terrified-- usually when James picks him up it's to put him in his crate, which he isn't a huge fan of)

Patriotic Pup

Monogrammed Beverage Buckets

Awhile ago we purchased these white buckets from Lowe's to hold ice and drinks when we have company over.  

I decided that I wanted to add a monogram to the buckets... just because that's what I do.  Basically, my motto is, when in doubt, add a monogram.  I'm not kidding, James is worried that if I buy a monogramming machine, he will come home to every single pair of his socks and boxers monogrammed.  I feel like that is a little excessive, but you never know...

I ended up finding a website that offers 3 large custom acrylic monograms for $24. The great thing about the website is that you don't have to order 3 of the same monogram-- so you could purchase one for yourself and the other two you could give away as gifts.  The process of transferring the monograms to the buckets was pretty simple.  The acrylic stickers come with instructions and you just have to be careful to center the sticker and transfer the it to the bucket slowly to avoid bubbles.  

So just to recap, the buckets are from Lowe's and cost $10 each, the monogrammed stickers were $8 a piece, and the project literally took 5 minutes to complete.  I think that's pretty good for a customized look that we will be able to use for all kinds of entertaining.

Sixteen

On Monday night, I hosted sixteen of my sorority sisters for a supper club at our house. I think sixteen definitely takes the cake for the highest number of people we have ever hosted at our house, which might I add, isn't very big! It went really well, and we had a lot of fun. The weather cooperated, so we were able to open out all of the french doors onto our back deck and spill out to the deck. The theme for the night was Italian, and everyone signed up to bring a different dish or bottle of wine. We had quite the feast! Between everyone we had baked ziti, lasagna, salad, bread, bruschetta, caprese salad bites, pasta salad, cinnamon biscotti, tiramisu, Italian wedding cake and many bottles of wine.

I am able to see some of the girls that came over every week, but it had been a year or more since I had a chance to catch up with the others. It was so much fun hearing where everyone is in life now and reminiscing on good ol' college days at 317 South Milledge Ave.