Our Baby Girl's Baptism

Much of our family drove over a hundred miles in the cold and blowing snow this morning to join in celebrating our daughter Carley's baptism.  We had several friends come show their love and support too!

I enjoyed planning the party 'almost' as much as I enjoyed celebrating with our friends and family.  I hope you'll find some inspiration for your next celebration here.

I sent out formal invitations to all of our family and friends.  What I like to do is find a design online that I like and make my own version.  The invitation that I found had a picture of a baby with a coral drape and a headband with a coral colored flower; I decided to go with purple.  When I took the photograph I left extra space on the left side of the photo for the text.

Once I have my design made I save it on a flash drive and take it to my local printer.  I had them print my images front and back onto metallic card stock.  The metallic gives it a nice shimmer so it looks similar to a matte photograph.  The advantage to having the invitations printed at the copy sore is that I can have them printed front and back for a reasonable price $.62 per side (two invites per sheet) and I can get exactly the number I want printed; you don't have to print in multiples of 25.  Oh, and you have your prints the same day; in minutes really.

Carley wore the same dress that I was baptized in 31 years ago.  It is a delicate ivory colored garment that is beautifully adorned with lace.  My mom had custom made when I was a baby.  It has a matching bonnet too.

Our family and friends joined us for a celebration after church.  We had lunch and lots of pretty desserts.  I decided to run with the purple theme this time and I had a lot of fun using food for decoration.  Here area  few of the details:

Oreo pops were a new adventure for me!  Through Pinterest I found this blog that shows you just how to make them.  They were super easy; just unscrew the tops, scrape off a little frosting, 'glue' in the stick with some chocolate then dip and decorate.  I made the stand from several pieces of wet foam bricks (found in the floral section at the craft store).  I actually left the foam in the plastic packaging and wrapped it with 3 layers of tissue paper (all at once) and a little ribbon.  The plastic wrap and tissue paper were light weight enough that you could poke the sucker sticks right through.  I made the Oreo pops five days ahead and kept the in a plastic zip-loc bag.

Chocolate covered marshmallows are super sweet and pretty cute.  I attached the marshmallows to a bamboo skewer, dipped them in melted chocolate, let the excess drip off and sprinkle lightly with nonpareils.  Let them sit in a tall glass while they set up and make sure that they don't touch together.  I stored mine in a a gallon sized plastic zipper bag  in the refrigerator.  At the party I displayed the marshmallows in a tall vase that I purchased at the dollar store.

My mom was kind enough to bring chocolate covered strawberries for the party.  I told her that I was going to make several purple desserts and she showed up with purple strawberries!

I made chocolate covered popcorn.  I popped a cup of popcorn and melted white chocolate with violet chocolate and mixed it all together with a little salt.  I let the popcorn cool on cookies sheets and stored it in an airtight container.

No child's party is complete without rice krispie treats!  I pressed a few purple sprinkles into the top of mine and served the on a purple plate (from the dollar store).

We had miniature cupcakes with homemade butter cream frosting.  I decorated them with tiny purple frosting flowers with white sprinkle centers.  These were my favorite!

We had mini pudding cups.  I found mini shooter cups at the dollar store and couldn't resist.  I made these the night before the party.  The bottom is chocolate pudding, the center is white chocolate pudding that I colored purple and the top is whipped cream with sprinkles.  I was worried that the purple color would seep into the whipped cream over night but they turned out fine.  By the time we were eating them, the sprinkles had started to melt a little but for the most part they were fine.  The best method I've found for filling these tiny desserts is to put the pudding in a plastic bag, snip the corner off and pipe it into the cup. 

I made a banner for the front of the table out of different pieces of scrapbook paper that I had on hand.  I printed out the letters with circles around them and then cut each one out with a zig-zag scissors.  I glued each of the pennant pieces to a piece of white ribbon.

Each of the dinner tables had a violet table cover and a thin, white table runner.  I used mason jars and purple daisies for center pieces.  Cute, cheap and easy.

Carley enjoyed her party and would smile and smile any time someone came to take to her.  I can't wait until she can talk back!