esplanade and beacon hill day

Thank you to ATsang for taking the photos and letting me post-process them :) For one last hurrah before a rommie's nuptials we decided to take a classical stroll around Bean Town and document our fun. On a beautiful June summer Saturday, we were blessed with intermittent overcast and sunshine great for photos. Thank you roomies for being such wonderful subjects, willing to do anything!

 And by anything, I mean I said "let's fly" and they did so.

And then someone said, "we should be like ducks" a classic tribute to Make Way For Ducklings.

One lovely thing about Beacon hill are the wonderful doorways and garages we can use as backgrounds. A tribute to red bricks and day dreaming.

What's a shoot without jumping pictures? Think it looks easy? It is. [Years of practice documented]

Thank you to the lovely houses that allowed us to get some classic, chic Bean Town photos.

Here's to one last hurrah to summer! hellooo fall!

sneak peak! esplanade and beacon hill day

more to come!
happy long weekend!

a bridal shower and a rain storm! part 3

Every shower is not complete without flowers! Luckily for me flowers in our lovely shades of yellow and orange were available! And since blue flowers are harder to find, our paper ball decor help to add the hints of blue.

Remember I mentioned earlier I made a run to a wonderful grocery store called Russo's? Well they have these amazing cakes that the bride adores! So what better than a cake buffet! We bought chocolate mouse, lemon raspberry mouse, and carrot!

Now of course we needed an activity that guests could pre-occupy themselves throughout the shower. So prior to the shower we asked that guests bring pictures of themselves. At the shower each guest, whenever there was downtime, went to create their page for the scrapbook.

I think that's the end of the posts :) congratulations to the new mr. and mrs.!

a bridal shower and a rain storm! part 2

Last we left off, I showed you some of the food labels, named in alliteration. I had cheaply acquired wonderful apothecary jars for a sweet buffet of some sort, so in-line with the orange and yellow theme, we had a jello buffet!

From christina lee photography

Luckily, at my local supermarket I found fun jello flavors like Pineapple and Peach. If I had more time, I would've made some lychee and Mango ones. That will be for another post :)

Now what's a bridal shower without gifts for the attendees! To go along with out theme, I printed labels for the gift bags that said "thanks for attending" and labels with a website for guests to upload their pictures for the bride to be. Also to make things easier for the bride when she sits down to thank the guests, i had each guest address an envelope for their thank you cards to be mailed to them.

From christina lee photography

From christina lee photography

From christina lee photography

We found a great sale at Bath and Body Works of mini-hand sanitizers in the lovely lemon scent and another great spring sale at Crate & Barrel of orange flower candles to go with the spring and fun theme!

Stay tuned for part 3 :)

a bridal shower and a rain storm! part 1

Weather in Boston is a strange matter. You can wake up to beautiful morning sunshine rays and before you brush your teeth it can be raining cats and dogs. On the very lovely J's bridal shower, the weather was just that. Nice cool breezy morning with nice morning sun as I ran around getting groceries and day of materials like flowers and cake (we had a mini-cake buffet). Then by the time I got home and ready to prep... I was sweating bullets as well as my lovely ladies who just flew in from California for the bridal shower. In the words of one lovely A, "I suppose this is real summer!" Yes indeed... real summer not the weak NorCali summer 65 cloudy breezy day.

For the shower we booked a lovely venue that had a beautiful dining/living/kitchen set up as well as an outdoor patio area (just in case it rained).  And good thing we had a just in case plan! I went to set up around noon and got all the decorations ready inside. By the time the shower started at 2pm, it was pouring cats and dogs and thunder-storming. So much so, across the street our friend's apartment was severely flooded.

Well, what's a bridal shower without the details! Our theme for this lovely July summer party was yellow, orange, and, blue summer fun! Hence the paper ball arrangement to set the tone as guests arrived. These lovely creatures at 20 circles a piece took about 30 min per ball, not a quick exercise, but most definitely rewarding when you get to the finished product!

For the food labels, I wanted to incorporate little elements of the bride-to-be, so we created food alliterations with adjectives to describe the bride-to-be. Since bunting is in style, we created blue, yellow, orange bunting designs for the cards with the bride's initials.

There's so much more.... stayed tuned for the rest! :)

what's a disaster to some is beauty to others

A visited from Cali and witnessed first-hand the crazy weather of Boston. After a large thunderstorm burst, with lots of flooding.... A took these pictures and exclaimed how beautiful it was.

Never thought anyone would find our shabby outside of a house to be cute....but after a large storm A thought it was....

j's faux shower

A few months ago, a good friend of ours visited from DC and decided to throw J a faux-bridal shower because she won't be able to make it to the real shower and wedding. Planning this faux-shower was accomplished remotely with W from DC and M and I from Boston. We had the aid of Google Docs for logistical detail spread-sheeting and Google Wave for sharing inspiration boards and getting everyone's comments in before making decisions! Online share sites are the way to go with event planning among multiple people. 

Now on to the faux-shower! Our theme was Fondue and

and Yellow and Orange DOTS. Since this was a surprise shower, we weren't able to tell J to cancel her dinner plans, so we tried to make our party light and dessert like... but as you can tell, we planned a full meal. J two dinners that night that's fo-sure!

The first couple of times I made letter signs, I ran out of letters or had the letters flip upside down whenever someone walked by and exposed the white backside. This time, I learned and printed double sided! Twice the amount of letters making them 3D and okay to be seen on all sides!

The dot banner was a new creation, and after making them, I realized printing double the circles to hide the ribbon would make it look even better. I have a huge spool of fishing wire that I wasn't able to to locate for this event, but I suppose that would be a good solution too.

Now J was at a dinner that was roughly about 2 hours long... in that time we decorated the place, prep-ed all the food and W baked this Chinese Cake in like 45 min! yup! You got that right! Chinatown Chinese Cake in 45 min! And Tasted fabulous!

M also made her famous mango pudding! Every party has to have multiple desserts!

And finally, to end the night, a party favor and activity....

Fabric? Fleece? Yup! Tie-Blankets... One for each of us! :)

And that concludes are wonderful faux-shower! Thanks to W and M for joining me in putting this faux-shower together! I had fun, that's fo-sure! =P