Vintage Toy Party

Activating sight is as simple as choosing a theme. Choose a theme that can engage your guests and can be conveyed throughout the entire party. With your theme you should choose three main colors like how I discussed in my HELLO KITTY Baby Shower post, that you can stick to in order to keep the theme consistent. When you choose three colors it is easier to find matching decorations as opposed to grabbing any old thing in the party stores. When you try to work in several colors that do not go with your theme, it creates chaos and is a distraction to your guests' eyes.

Amy Atlas does a great job of choosing three colors with the Vintage Toy Party she was asked to be apart of. Her dessert table successfully displays the three main colors: red, blue, and yellow.

Let's check it out!

See how easy it is to stick to a theme when you choose main colors? Above you see cute props Amy Atlas was able to incorporate on the dessert table with blue cupcake toppers, and red,yellow, and blue abc blocks to name a few.

My absolute favorite color coordination was through the harlequin pattern used throughout the party.

Just like in my post that discusses dressing up your food, Amy Atlas uses her main colors to dress up her food!

When you're deciding on theme colors think 1, 2, 3....3 colors and you will be safe! If you would like to read more about how Amy Atlas put together this amazing dessert table, check it out at Amy Atlas blog.

Cake of the Day!

I thought it only right that I feature a cake showcasing Seattle since I am here right now! This Seattle Skyline cake comes from Jacqui's Cakes! Jacqui's Cakes was voted "Best of Weddings" on The Knot. If you need a custom wedding cake or specialty cake, consider Jacqui's Cakes :-)

LESSON #1- PART 2: Activating SIGHT

The sense of sight is considered one of the most complex of the five senses. If sight is one of the most complex and important senses, why not make your parties worth seeing?

Sight is the physical sense by which light stimuli received by the eye are interpreted by the brain and constructed into a representation of the position, shape, brightness, and usually color of objects in space according to Webster's dictionary.

With this definition in mind, think about how you can play with it to stimulate your guests' sense of sight at your events. What colors, patterns, or light fixtures can you have at your party to activate sense of sight?

This week we will take a thorough look into how you can activate sight. I will feature parties that do an excellent job at it to give you some ideas on how to make your party better than the next.

I hope you can't wait to see! ;-)

Chocolate, chocolate, and MORE CHOCOLATE!

This tray of chocolate treats looks too good to be true! For all you chocolate lovers, I am sure your taste buds are dying for a chance to taste this amazing display of activating taste from Paula's Edibles. I love the way that with but a little tray, each option of chocolatey treats from Paula's Edibles is fully visible and provides options from milk chocolate, to dark chocolate, to white chocolate. This tray of chocolatey treats from Paula's Edibles would fit in perfect at any occasion and successfully activate your guest's taste buds.


Regretting giving up chocolate for Lent ;-)

Cake of the Day!

Today's Cake of the Day comes from Kara's Cupcakes. You can find Kara's Cupcakes all throughout the Bay Area! These cupcakes cater to any event whether for a wedding, kid's party, or special event.

The thing that stands out the most to me about Kara's Cupcakes is the fact that you can get her famous cupcakes to go with the Kara's Cupcakes "KaraVan".

She calls it the Mobile Cupcake Bakery...too clever!

Pictured: Candace Kim & Madison Holmes

Easter Party

To finish off this week's lesson on taste, I want to introduce you to a party that features EVERYTHING we have talked about thus far to activate taste: good food/drinks fitting to your theme, spelling it out for your guests (ie: labels on your food), and dressing up your food. Below, you will find a party from Wants and Wishes. I thought, how fitting to feature an Easter party since Easter is around the corner. This Easter party is one for the books! Let's walk through how Wants and Wishes successfully activates taste for this party.

Right off the bat, Wants and Wishes picked a high and low focal point like I discussed in my blog, How to Say Thank You to a Group with $30. Wants and Wishes did this with the center piece being a creative carrot bowl as the low focal point, and the 'Happy Easter' banner as the high focal point.

Focusing on the food and drinks, where do we begin?! When we think of Easter, we think of chocolate, jelly beans, Easter eggs, and pastel colors like lavender and mellow yellow to name a few. Wants and Wishes activates taste by playing with that theme.

By labeling some of the treats this too was tastefully enticing!

Above all else, Wants and Wishes did an excellent job at dressing up food & drinks!

Wants and Wishes did such a great job of showcasing how to activate taste and if you would like to find out where to get some of the personalized labels and decorations Wants and Wishes used for their party go to Wants and Wishes blog. I hope this week you feel a little bit more comfortable in just one of the ways you can plan a successful event for your guests by activating taste! Our next lesson coming up is how to activate sight!

STAY TUNED!

Pin It

Dress Up Time!

As we start to wrap up this week's lesson on activating taste, I hope you are beginning to grasp how pertinent good food and beverages can enhance your guests' experience. So far we have learned that you can activate taste simply by the quality of food and drinks provided, and you can activate taste by spelling it out to your guest (ie: labels on the food/drinks). But did you know you can activate taste by merely DRESSING UP YOUR FOOD?

Adornments/decorations on and around your food is one of the best ways to directly activate taste without even putting a morsel of food/drinks in the guests' mouth! Let's see some examples in which dressing up food/drinks was done!

Abby from, Style Me Pretty, does a great job of dressing up her pink drinks at her daughter's birthday party by matching the pink drinks with “YUM!” drink stirrers and pretty pink straws!

Another great way to DRESS UP your food is with toppers! My favorite cupcake toppers come from The TomKat Studio where they make and feature great cupcake toppers. Check them out and consider using them for your next party!

Cake of the Day!

Today's Cake of the Day is rather, well uhh...unique. Unique in the sense that IT'S NOT REAL! How you might ask could anyone get away with having this beautiful cake at their wedding? Through Cakes Confidential they create these gorgeous masterpieces for people who want a memorable cake, but have a less than gorgeous budget. The top half of the cake pictured is Styrofoam while the bottom tier has a section for a large slice of real cake so you can enjoy performing the cake cutting ceremony and having all those fabulous photo opportunities. To find out more, visit Cakes Confidential.

This one really takes the cake....literally ;-)

Taste Test

When you see this image, what are some of the first things that come to your mind? I am willing to bet that you are not having a very positive experience with the above image. Why? Well, it DOES NOT ACTIVATE YOUR TASTEBUDS. Seeing the above food combination is enough to make you resort to vegetables for dessert instead!

My point in that photo is to show you how important the activation of taste is when going through an experience, especially at an event. If the food or drink does not taste good, then it puts a bad taste in your mouth (literally) and otherwise negatively alters your experience whether for that moment in time or for the remainder of the event.

The BEST way to activate taste is to spell it out for your guest. No, seriously SPELL IT OUT. When I write "Chocolate covered strawberries" what picture is painted in your head?

The picture you have painted in your head of "Chocolate covered strawberries" has now subconsciously made your mouth water.

MAGIC ;-)

Kendall did a great job of "spelling it out" at her "Hot Dog! The Bachelorette is Back!" Party. The party was appropriately themed to reflect Kendall and her girlfriend's new philosophy on men and hot dog condiments, inspired by Jillian from the show 'The Bachelorette'. Her philosophy:

“Ketchup guy is a good, strong, loyal, loving guy. He loves his mom and talks to her several times a week. Sauerkraut guy is the bad boy who they all go for. The onion guy – they all love him, but he’s never going to get married. And the mustard guy, that’s the guy who they all want to settle down with, because he’s part ketchup, part sauerkraut.”

Let's take a look!

Spelling it out is that simple! You can get beautiful card stock in any color or pattern at Hobby Lobby or Michaels, making sure the color white is somewhere in the mix. From there, cut out the colored or patterned cardstock into whatever shape you desire and cut the same shape out in a white color (a little bit smaller). Glue the two card stock shapes together with the white cardstock shape on top. If you want to be quick and simple, with a sharpie, write in whatever description you want for whatever food or drink you're describing. If you want it to look more clean, use a computer to write your label description and then cut it out into the shape you want.

Done and done :-)

Cake of the Day!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's an.....OCTOPUS..? I wish I could say this is a cool form of graphic art, BUT it is not; it's a cake! Today's Cake of the Day was made by Karen Portaleo of Highland Bakery in Atlanta, Georgia. This cake was made for a charity event at a local aquarium and it weighed more than 3,000 ounces.

One word; WOW!

CANDYLAND Birthday Party!

Continuing on with our lesson on activating TASTE, I bring to you one of the greatest examples of activating taste at an event; the Candyland Birthday Party for Max Sutter, son of Bachelorette couple Trista and Ryan. Max Sutter celebrated his first birthday in style!

The following photos of the event were retrieved from the brains behind this masterpiece of a party, Hostess with the Mostess!

Let's step inside CANDYLAND and see how great the activation of TASTE was implemented!

If you're going to have a CANDYLAND Birthday Party, well you must have CANDY and this was something that the party planners did a great job of. Rather than throwing candy around, Hostess with the Mostess creatively presented the candy in such a way that made you feel overwhelmed with options! What I loved the most about their presentation of the food, was that they kept in mind their audience; little children. They did not simply throw candy in an open bowl. They made it truly feel like a candy store (or candy land...lol) by placing the candy in jars!

Not only could you find the candy in cute jars (which you can find at Target or Michaels) but Hostess with the Mostess also creatively used them as both a food option and as a decorative piece when they placed it as a centerpiece.

On top of the plethora of candy, they even had scrumptious chocolate cupcakes that they creatively topped with lollipops! So cute!

The individually wrapped lollipops were definitely a nice touch to all of the candy they offered. If you would like to make your party look more exclusive, you too can have lollipops that are individually wrapped. Simply buy plain lollipops from Michaels as well as candy wrapping from Michaels and add a cute personalized sticker that says the event name onto the lollipop and you've just created a cute way to make your party look that much more exclusive.

I hope you enjoyed reading how the Hostess with the Mostess activated TASTE at the Sutters' son's 1st Birthday Party! Now, it's your turn! Keep reading to find more examples on this week's lesson of activating taste!

Pin It