party Archives -

This is a flashback post:)! You know how I mentioned that I was going to try and dig up a few things I MEANT to post about but never did? So here’s one of them! These photo are from my Annual Chinese New Year Party. I used to throw a CNY when we lived in Minnesota (in fact, Aimee and Bryant (pictured in the center) were the first attendees of my Chinese New Year Party seven years ago in MN!). This was my first attempt to throw this party in our new, little house in Utah. We managed to squish 20 people into our tiny living room. We moved out most of the furniture and put tables on the floor. It was tight, but cozy.

My cute husband bought me a darling set of dishes that was perfect for this party. I ended up making invitations, menu cards, and and place cards to match (I should dig those out and turn it into a digi kit, huh?).

I spent the day cooking the way my mom taught me (She just recently came into town and fed us our favorite dishes). My sister came over to help cook and manned the camera during the party (thanks, sis!).

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My favorite thing about a party like this? Getting to know new people and catching up with friends. We always invite a mix of new and old friends to a party because it adds variety to the group dynamic.

I’ve already started thinking about next year’s party. Chinese, anyone?

Felicity’s birthday was on Thursday, but we celebrated yesterday with Josh’s family. It was a really fun time with an easy dinner of soup, salad, and breadsticks, chocolate cupcakes with pink icing and sprinkles for the kids, and coconut cake for the adults. My extra treat was the white chocolate suckers (see the post before this one). Everything looked beautiful! I used my new Paradise Collection to make all the accessories for this party. The new collection is happy and bright with vibrant colors. It hits two peas on May 5th! I will be sure to give you a few sneak peeks in the coming days. You can also buy all the party stuff I put together in a new digikit that is also part of the collection (also coming May 5th). Here’s a peak at the printable digikit:

carinagardner_2ps_paradise_partyprev

Here are some photos of the fun night celebrating Flissa’s second birthday! Here’s the birthday girl wearing her pink party dress and wrapped in her blanky.

These are my cute sisters-in-law:

Party food always makes everything better!

I cheated on the cake—just white box cake (Duncan Hines), but I didn’t skimp on the frosting. I used the Barefoot Contessa’s coconut cream cheese frosting.