spring Archives - Knock It Off Kim

Spring Tea Party

on March 22, 2016

Need ideas for an upcoming spring tea party? We’ve got you covered! Get comfy, grab a coffee, and start planning a special day to spend with your loved ones, friends and family!

* Thank you to Evite for kindly sponsoring this post. Although I was compensated by Evite for my time in developing this post, .all opinions are 100% honest & completely my own. This post may also contain affiliate links. See my disclosure statement, found under Contact Me, for more information.

Oh, Spring! Glorious Spring! How I love thee!This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. See my full disclaimer statement for full details.

Seriously, though, we’ve been talking about Spring a lot these days, what with the recent Spring Home Tour, various Spring pies and cakes and crafts. But, do you know what we haven’t talked about in what seems like forever? Parties! And what better way to celebrate the arrival of Spring than with a Spring Tea Party!

Of course, it starts with the invitation. Unless it doesn’t start with the invitation, which was the case here! Ha! In this case, all of my inspiration came from a salad plate. This lovely, vintage style salad plate from Pioneer Woman’s new dinnerware line to be exact. I was busy buying paper towel and laundry soap and came home with 6 of these plates for my table as well! I love the colors; I love the floral pattern and scroll work. And, I live for the red border. These salad plates scream warm and sweet tea afternoons. Spring Tea Party swoon-worthy – they were just perfect!

Pioneer Woman Country Garden Salad Plates

Armed with inspiration, it was time for invitations and to visit my go-to guest list management site, Evite! Evite has a wide variety of invitation options for tea parties, but my heart was set on the vintage floral look. There were a few options that came very close, but I was determined to have a near exact pattern and look to my inspiration plate. Luckily, Evite offers not only free designs but also offers a Premium invitation that allows you to upload your design. Perfect.

I created my design, loaded it up to the Evite site, added the party details and my guest list and pressed send! It was THAT easy. I love that I can go on about my planning and just wait for the RSVPs to roll in. Evite has other fun features that allow you to select gifts and interact directly with your guests through the list. Fantastic.

Tea Party Image|Invitation Created in PicMonkey and Evite

Decor was up next, and I kept it simple.

Although I would have loved to be sitting in the middle of a garden, wearing an amazing Fascinator and sipping mint juleps, the weather isn’t quite up for that yet. So, I brought the garden inside.

Flowers were a must for this party, and I found all of these at my local grocer. Mixing a matching a few bouquets, and bringing in a few daffodils from my yard gave me the look and color I was going for.

A practical centerpiece, the teapots were labeled with the selections of the afternoon and placed on a pedestal.

My favorite accent had to be the paper doilies I picked up on clearance at my local grocer – they are also available at Amazon.com. The doilies up the vintage-factor for me for next to no cost.

I used my grandmother’s silver and mismatched serving dishes to take away some of the formality. This party was supposed to be fun after all!

Cute and inexpensive clip-on butterflies, which came in a perfect pack of 6, were ideal for place markers!

Tea was obviously an important component to this party. Because I like to offer a cocktail choice at my parties, I decided rather than go with the usual tea flavor favorites; I would offer those that complemented cocktails that included tea. The teas I found that were a natural fit for this were a fruit sangria by Adigio teas, a citrus green tea, also by Adigio teas, and a hot cinnamon tea by Harney and Sons which had the distinct flavor of red hots candy – this would be great in the fall or winter!

To complement these I offered prosecco, sparkling water and sparkling fruit juices and my guests and I enjoyed testing the different flavors!

Make sure to have both sweet and savory food options for your party. I kept the food fairly simple. For savory, I went with a selection of finger sandwiches, mini croissant chicken salad sandwiches, and devilled eggs.

On the sweet side, petite fours, various other cookies, and other sweets finishing off with a lovely lemon cream cake. I mixed homemade with store bought – don’t feel you have to hand make everything.

White Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies

I always like to plan a game or activity – there are a million (who knew?) well loved favorites for tea parties. Our favorite “Spill the tea”, where each guest writes a tidbit of information about themselves anonymously and puts the slip of paper into a teapot. Everyone passes the teapot around the table, pulling and reading a sheet from the teapot. The players then try to guess who wrote the slip. It’s a great icebreaker for when not everyone knows one another, and great fun for when everyone knows each other well!

My favorite part of the afternoon by far – hanging out with these crazies. I couldn’t ask for more lovely ladies in my life!

At the end of the afternoon, each guest left with a linen drawstring bag filled with sachets of tea and cookies and a cute little teapot thank you for spending their time with me!

As my gift to you, feel free to download the label file by clicking on it!

Great memories were made – Thank you to Evite for helping me make this, and all of my parties, a complete success!

Links:
Invitations: Invitations and Premium Designs http://www.evite.com
Dinnerware, placemats: http://www.Walmart.com
Butterfly Clips http://www.WorldMarket.com
Flowers, Italian and sugar cookies, scones: http://www.thefreshmarket.com
Cake, cookies and all other food: https://www.knockitoffkim.com
Party Design, Decor, and Styling: https://www.knockitoffkim.com
Linen Bags: http://www.Target.com
Teapot Favor Labels: https://www.knockitoffkim.com
Photography: https://www.knockitoffkim.com

Pin for later: Spring Tea Party

ByKim

16 Comments

Tags : party, spring

Spring Burlap Wreath with Felt Flowers

Posted in DECOR, DIY, OUTSIDE, WALL ART

on April 4, 2013

I’ve been looking to make a new wreath for my door. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good wreath and I am not above spending some time to get exactly what I want – example: this deco-mesh carrot wreath that I made this past Easter.

Anyway, I was looking for something burlap-y, something spring-ish, something easy, and something somewhat unique-y, not necessarily in that order. Of course, I did some research – I could spend a million dollars on Etsy on any given day. I loved a lot of the wreaths that are out there – Burlap is so popular right now – but I decided to combine a couple of styles and come up with something probably not new.. but at least new to me!

And, here she is!

Making this wreath was easy, but a bit time consuming, as the ruffles are individually glued on to the wreath, but I’m really happy with how it came out. The felt flowers are the only part that requires sewing, and you can find a tutorial for how to make them here and a free flower template here. I am a little obsessed with felt flowers right now – you may remember that I made them for the first time to put on some throw pillows I recently made. Needless to say, I’ve been looking for anything and everything to put felt flowers on ever since!

Although it looks like Spring outside, it doesn’t actually feel like spring outside. I’m kind of hoping that if I just think Spring thoughts, and decorate as though it’s already here, the rest will follow. A girl can hope, no?

Easy to Make Spring Wreath made with fabric and burlap ribbon.

You can find a tutorial for this project here!

Linking up with Homecoming and the DIY’ers Link Party. Check it out!

ByKim

5 Comments

Tags : Projects, spring, wreaths

Burlap Wreath with Felt Flowers Tutorial

Posted in DECOR, DIY, OUTSIDE, SPRING: SEASONAL DECOR AND CRAFTS, WALL ART

on April 4, 2013

Hi there! I’m so excited to be sharing this project with you and hope you find it easy to follow along with! We will be making a Burlap Wreath with Felt Flowers that looks something like this:

For this project I used:

1 yard of burlap fabric – 45″ wide
1/4 yard each of three coordinating cotton fabrics
Glue and a glue gun
1 Straw Wreath Form
Scissors
Ribbon
Felt, thread and adornments for felt flowers

What I did:

Using the free template I found here and following the tutorial I found here, I created three large felt flowers in one of my coordinating cotton fabrics. I skipped the beading for the center of the flower and used burlap. Here is a closer look at my flowers:

For the wreath, I began by cutting my burlap into long 3″ strips. I wound the burlap around the wreath frame, in one direction, overlapping as I went, using glue to secure the ends. Here is a picture of the beginning of this step.

Next, I looped my ribbon through the middle and pulled up to the top, tying off to keep it out of the way – and secured the loop with glue – the ribbon length will depend on how far you want your wreath to hang, but mine was about 40″ in length.

Next, I cut squares of 3×3″ from the burlap – these would become my ribbon edge! I did not count the number of squares I used, but cut them as needed – I would cut a 3″ strip, fold it over, and cut the squares from the strip. I used approximately 1/2 yard for this step. Folding each square in to a triangle, and then again in to a triangle, I glued each corner to the center of the covered wreath form. I repeated this step until I had gone all around the form.

Here the wreath has a completed burlap ruffled edge.

Next, I repeated the above steps using the coordinating fabric in your desired pattern, placing the fabric ruffles on the inside of the burlap ruffle. Again, I cut as needed.

how to make a burlap wreath with two colors

Lastly, I applied the felt flowers I made in step 1, to right bottom corner, hung the wreath.. and we have completion!

Notes: I think using burlap ribbon would have significantly cut down on the time it took to make this project – at least for the ruffle border – I think I would still have used the fabric for the wreath form, as it doesn’t have an edge and I feel it would lay flatter because of this. If using the ribbon, I would cut the fabric size down to 1/2 yard and have an equivalent of 1/5 yard spool of burlap ribbon.