A Giant Celebration

photo by Angie Silvy

This week San Francisco is abuzz celebrating the Giants World Series victory.  On Halloween, fans will fill the streets for a ticker tape parade honoring their 2012 World Champions.  I'm sure one of our clients, Ashton, will stake out a front row seat for the festivities.  Earlier this year Ashton (a huge Giant's fan) had the most amazing Bar Mitzvah celebration at AT&T park planned by Laurie Arons Special Events.  It was a once in a lifetime experience for the lucky attendees.  The night began with cocktails in the dugout and locker room.  The kids were able to swing a bat in the actual batting cages that their favorite players use during games.  The celebration continued with dinner, activities and dancing in the club level of the park.  It was a night people are still talking about and few will forget the celebration.

We were fortunate enough to work with Laurie Arons on many details for the celebration.  I love a theme party and the best part was that the clients were game to include as many ideas as we could come up with.  The first on our list was the save the date.  We wanted to do something that would be fun and also get people excited for the event.  We decided to do an old fashioned event poster with a photo of Ashton on it.  The poster did not divulge the exact location of the celebration, but gave the theme of the party and got people guessing as to where the location might be.  In this day of email and evites, the arrival of a tube in the mail is extremely exciting for the invitees!

save the date by ps paper

Because the save the dates were such a hit, it set the bar high for the invitation.  One of the luckiest things was that Ashton's initials are AF, so I was able to modify the SF Giants logo.  The AF logo was used throughout the celebration and worked well with the theme.  The invitation was printed on a real baseball.  The baseball invited people to the party at AT&T park.  We had an separate card on top of the box inviting guests to the Bar Mitzvah service.  The baseball theme was continued in the RSVP and information card.  After receiving the invitation, people could not wait to see what was in store for them at the ball park and I'm sure no one was disappointed. 

Invitation by ps paper

One of my favorite details at the party was the escorts used for the adult dinner seating.  Each of the tables were named for a beloved Giants player and the the guests were given baseball trading cards for the player that corresponded with their table.

Photo by Angie Silvy

Escort cards/display by ps paper

Of course this celebration would not be complete without a dessert table, in fact we did two different tables.  One was filled with baseball themed desserts, the centerpiece was a cake replica of the World Championship Trophy, created by Katrina Roselle.  Who knew the Giants would be getting another trophy this year?  The other, filled with candy, was a big hit with the kids.

dessert tables styled by Jill Sassa

These were only a few of the things that Laurie Arons Special Events had in store for guests.  Here is a link to Laurie's blog post of this event.  It's safe to say the guests had as much fun as we did working on this event!

New Venture...Dessert Tables!

 

I'm happy to finally share with you a new part of our business...styling dessert tables.  We are working with Paula LeDuc Fine Catering to create custom dessert tables for special events.  Paula LeDuc is providing all of the delicious desserts and we are working with her to personalize the desserts and  presentations.  If you have been lucky enough to taste Paula LeDuc's food you know that everything she makes tastes as amazing as it looks.  This table is from Tyler Florence's birthday celebration.  The party was planned by Laurie Arons Special Events and was at Tyler's newest restaurant, El Paseo, in Mill Valley, California.  It marked the debut of the restaurant {the restaurant was a still a construction zone that day},  El Paseo provided a preview of their menu and Paula LeDuc created the sweets.

The desserts & table mirrored the rustic feeling of the newly refurbished restaurant.  Laurie worked with Paula LeDuc to have desserts that were hearty enough to stand up to the delicious chophouse food they served.  She also picked desserts that are some of Tyler's Favorites {mini pecan pies a nod to his southern roots & banana trifle}.   One of the first things to go was my favorite "Paula's 'smores"  {far left photo}, they are homemade graham cookies with chocolate ganache and meringue on top ... yummy!

Also on the menu, the cutest little apple turnovers, spiced cupcakes, cookies and ccmade carmel corn.  The desserts were in the main dining room which converted into the dance floor after dinner with DJ Dojah spining the tunes.  The mini desserts were the perfect size to eat in between dancing and socializing.

I am so lucky to have found a business that combines two of my favorite things - food (desserts to boot} and paper!  Hopefully there will be many more to share soon...

p.s.

at left is Sammy Hagar, co-owner of El Paseo, I'm lighting the candles on Tyler's birthday cake.  Sammy sang happy birthday to Tyler!

Photography by Meg Smith

Kathryn + Ryan's Day of Wedding Details

Kathryn Storke, the founder of the wedding blog, Snippet and Ink, is one of my favorite brides that I have worked with.  Since she is immersed in all things wedding, I thought that she was going to want to oversee all the details of the  day.   It turned out she was the quite the opposite.  She had the perfect amount of input of as to what the day would look like and a few specific items of she wanted to include.  She allowed her Wedding Planner, Jenna Lam, of Laurie Arons Special Events, and her vendors to carry out her vision.  One of my favorite things that Kathryn has on her Snippet and Ink are inspiration boards. She showed us several items that ultimately ended up on her own inspiration board.  This really gave me an idea of what she was looking for and got the creative ball going.

In Ryan's hands is the little wedding program.  I blind letterpress printed the wreath logo on the front cover, the inside had the important details of the service and it was sewn together with red thread to give it a hint of color.

The escort buttons were something that Kathryn had seen years ago in a Martha Stewart Magazine,  I too, remember seeing them and thinking it such a fun idea. We were lucky to have calligrapher, Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, who lives in San Francisco work with us on the project.  In keeping with the vintage feel of the venue, I used antique style postcard spinners to display the buttons.  Each card also provided a table number for each guest.  It was so fun to see even the bride and groom wearing their buttons and the guests enjoyed having a keepsake with their names in beautiful white calligraphy by Maybelle.

Below are the menus that continued the wreath theme from the invitations.  Instead of printing the logo, I had a custom rubber stamp made with the wreath and I used a glue stamp pad and then sprinkled glitter onto the image.  It was really the perfect little sparkle to add to the table. The beautiful table settings had a festive holiday feeling without having too much color. Maybelle added the guests name atop the menu to act as a place card.

The photo booth added to the vintage feeling of the evening.  I made a curtain as a surprise for the bride + groom to work with the decor of the room.  The "guest book" was a photo album that we customized with  photo corners so that the guests could mount their photo into the book and write a little note beneath their photo.   I loved seeing that book full of photos & notes leaving with Kathryn + Ryan at the end of the evening - what a great way to capture the fun.

Of course the dessert  table was probably my favorite thing to plan.   We styled the table and added the personalized touches to the amazing desserts from Perfect Endings.  It was so much fun that we have added dessert styling to our list of services we offer to customers (more on that to come)! 

photography : Elizabeth Messina, event planner: Jenna Lam for Laurie Arons Boutique Events, ,  calligraphy: Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, venue: Presidio Social Club,  floral design: Kathleen Deery Designs, Desserts: Perfect Endings