No. 38 Surprise Party!

 Well I have to start out this post and say, Wow what a fun and exciting month June has been and we are still not even finished with it yet!  

 I have a sweet friend Melissa that used to be my next door neighbor.  A little over a year ago, her husband Tyler contacted a few of her friends, me included, to be apart of a party planning committee the P.P.C.  He wanted to throw her a huge Surprise party and needed our help planning it and pulling it off. So we set out to plan her party.  We did this all through emails and conference calls.  I was very honored to be apart of this.  Tyler emailed us with what he had in mind for the event, tent, live band, inflatables, balloons etc.  When I started to propose my ideas, I  thought of all the things that reminded me of Meliss.  I thought of her:
     Favorite colors, favorite things, and symbols that reminded me of her.  I then designed a couple logos up and went from there.  As the party drew closer, we began having conference calls to discuss the event.  I told Tyler I had some ideas for the colors, invite, logos and cupcake toppers.  As I started designing, I literally had a flood of ideas come my way!  
      Melissa loves Honeybees, that is the first thing I thought of about her.  She has a frame business with Honeybees in the name. heres a link to her blog: http://www.hollyhocks-honeybees.blogspot.com/

Some of her favorite colors are turquoise blue and yellow.  They remind me of her, so I proposed those colors.  I then set out to design the invite.  This is a rough draft of how the invite turned out.  We tweaked it a few times since...

 I must of got the design of the invite right.  She had so many people say when they opened the invite they were confused because they said it looked like she had designed it herself, but how could she when it was a surprise!  I designed it as a 5x7  on cardstock, Tyler had them printed at Buzz Graphics, then I picked up the invites, I printed off some honeybees on old paper and punched them out and glued them on to the invite.  I think they turned out pretty cute and the background even looks like honeycomb! Tyler's assistant Pilar was responsible for all of the email invites, she did an awesome job with that!


Next I started to design some logos and cupcake toppers.  I literally had so many ideas.  I did them all in Silhouette Studio.  It was so fun!  To propose all my ideas to Tyler, I designed up the toppers and took pics of them and emailed them to him for approval!  He loved them all.  Here is how they all turned out.... (brace yourself, there's  a lot of designs!)

This was one of the main logos, it includes the honeybee, Potterybarn font, old typewriter font, some pennant banners and her age.  She likes things mismatched and juxtaposed so thats kinda what I went with.

I made some notebook tags, designed up some different ways...

 Here is one thing that I thought of that was just so fun!!!  Instead of using a lollipop stick for the topper, I thought of a Paper Clip!  They were so cute!

She also likes to use playing cards to decorate with, so here is a fun thing I thought of.  I took her Initial of her last name and designed it as a logo and topper!  I included a honeybee tag, so the Q could stand for Quigley or Queen Bee!  Hee hee!

 I also did a playing card with her age on it, Eeek I know so cute!

I also did some tickets with her logo on it!  

She also loves Bingo cards.  I saw this idea and re-designed it for her.  I used the Bingo card,  put a honeybee for the center (free) space and instead of putting any numbers in the spaces, I used numbers that correspond with her life.  I put her birthdate in there, her husbands birthdate, her girls birthdates, ages, her addresses old and present, just different numbers that would mean something to her.  I think they turned out pretty fun!

I did up some kites!

I did a circle logo for her...

I also thought of some mini pennant banners, Eeek Again!  I know sooo cute!

 I made 300 of these cupcake toppers, yes, I know, I'm exhausted.  Thanks Madi and Texie for helping me glue some of these!

In discussion with Nicole M.  She thought it would be great if we could each make up some pennant banners to decorate with.  So I thought of a couple different things... I made some fabric kites that I saw online...

 A matching fabric banner, A paper lace doilie banner... and my most favorite banner, a fancy paper banner...

 I took all of the elements of her cupcake toppers and enlarged them and cut them out and made a banner.  It ended up turning out better than I expected! She loved it!

Tyler also took the logos and some of the toppers and had them made into stickers for cups and posters for people to sign! It really has been a crazy, busy,  fun, good month, I was literally in the middle of building our  outside Chicken Coop Run, going from the saw to the computer and on the phone with Chase from Buzz Graphics converting files to Pdf format to send off to him to make into stickers.  But we got it all done!

So the day of the event finally arrived... Once the tent company got the tent set up, we moved in. I have tried to remember what everyone was doing, sorry if I have overlooked anyone!  We moved around tables, set up the linens and food tables. The next door neighbors had their garage filled with balloons, people were working everywhere! We started to hang the pennant banners and set up the display tables, Erika L picked up all the cupcakes, fresh flowers and lemons.  Mace, Pilar, Natalie, Vanessa, and myself put sprinkles on cupcakes and put the toppers  in place!  

Tyler was busy with several helpers setting up inflatables for the kids to play on, and the band came to set up too!  

  We set out globes for decor,  Erika and Nicole M. arranged fresh flowers  in some cool Honeybee Soda bottles Tyler found for Melissa at an Antique Store!

 We had Glass Dispensers of Lemon Water, that Nicole and Erika filled.  Meliss loves Lemon water... Vanessa's suggestion!

Tyler and his assistant Pilar and her Sister,  Natalie put the stickers on the cups.  It was so cool to see the designs I had made up on cups!

Here is how the cupcake area turned out.  We used a lot Melissa's,  Nicole M's,  mine and Erica L's stands and various items to present the cupcakes with!

Erica brought one of Melissa's frames that she makes. We used it for display and Nicole M. made that cute Brooch for Meliss to wear that is next to the sunshine frame.

Here are the posters people signed...

 Here are the fabric Kites that Vanessa and I hung up...

 I also made Meliss this box with a logo from the party for her to remember the party from.  She can use it for whatever decor.

 at the party we used it to hold popcorn bags!

Nicole M had a plethera of fabulous banners that we hung all over too!

Some cute kids enjoying cotton candy and cupcakes!

The Guest of Honor finally came pulling up wondering what all of this was about!

and Guess what?  She was totally surprised!!!!!

Meliss and Tyler... once she walked over and knew all of this was for her,  Awww.

Meliss and Nicole H, the one responsible for keeping Meliss away while we did all of this!

I had a group shot of the P.P.C, but it didn't turn out!
Here is another angle of the party as the sun was setting...

To close out the evening Tyler had his friends do some fireworks!

Well there is the recap of the surprise party!  I think after all I have been involved in the month, it has taken me a couple days to recover, but it has all been good things!  I started preparing back in February for everything I was going to be involved in this month.  I have had a blast doing everything we have been involved in!  It was so fun to be apart of this Big event for Meliss.  Thanks Ty for having me be apart of this Grand Affair thanks to everyone involved, I had a blast and thanks Meliss for having a Birthday for us to Celebrate!

With Much Love & Gratitude,