D.I.Y. Projects for a Bridal Shower!

Back in December, right before Christmas, a dear friend of mine got engaged! You may remember her from this post- yep, she just graduated last May and she and Paul began their courtship in late August. They're getting married in March and we can't waaaaaaait!!! :-)

My mom, sister and I decided we'd like to host her bridal shower this past Saturday for the ladies in our church. I had the best time brainstorming for decorations and food ideas!! I thought I'd share them with you (and a few pictures from the fun time we had at the shower, of course!).



First of all, we bought fabric in Sarah's wedding colors: plum and teal. The main decorations I wanted to do were fabric triangle pennants- and, thankfully, they turned out to be really easy. I cut the fabric into 6" strips, then made diagonal cuts alternating every four inches. (That sounds confusing, but just look at the picture.)






The next step was feeding the triangles through the serger. I originally wanted to do royal blue thread (Sarah's main color inspiration for her wedding is peacock feathers) but couldn't find that, at least not in the big serger spools. So I got regular-sized purple, teal, and blue spools of thread and just used those.



The finished product! I left a few inches of serging on each end of the pennants, wrapped that around a thumbtack, and pressed it into the top of the door frames.




(Sorry for the blurry picture!) Another decoration we did was wrapping a pressboard letter with 1" strips of fabric. I put a small bead of glue on the back as I wrapped the fabric- the corners were tricky, yes! But the glue worked. I hung it using another strip of blue fabric- the edges were serged since cotton frays so badly.






Being a photographer, I thought it'd be fun to include pictures in Sarah's guestbook. Unfortunately I couldn't manage to find a small 4x6 photo album, so I got an 8x8 scrapbook from Hobby Lobby. I traced the outline of a 4x6 photo at varying angles on each page. The ladies shared special verses, books, and things they had learned in their own marriage- I later took a picture of Sarah with each of them, and I'll print those out and put them in the book.








We set the guestbook table up in the entryway so people could sign it when they came in (or before they left).




The last decorating project we had was pretty last-minute! I was going to put the fabric "D" on the front door, but my mom said she thought something else might look better...and thankfully, she remembered a couple of heart-shaped baskets my piano teacher had given us! They had been sitting up on a shelf in the garage for years, just waiting to be used for a fun project like this. :-)



It was pretty simple- I used some extra material to cut out a heart (it was actually two halves sewn together) and the letters. I heavily starched and ironed them, dotted them with glue to secure them to the heart, then used thread to attach the top of the heart to the basket.



The other thing we had lots of fun making was....food!! The cookies are from a box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix and chocolate chip cookies. (The recipe is here - we left out the walnuts.)



Surprisingly, the only idea I got from Pinterest were these cheesecakes baked in muffin tins. Even then, it was a variation on the original recipe, which called for raspberry puree. We melted Hershey's Special Dark chocolate, drizzled it in, swirled it around, and it turned out great!



Here's the adorable bride-to-be! I had to post this particular picture because she received not one...not two...not three...but four boxes of iced tea glasses. That's right, she now has 32 of them! It became quite the joke!



Here's Sarah and her mom and sister. Aren't they beautiful? And since I know them personally I can tell you for a fact that they are just as beautiful on the inside. :-)



Here's Sarah with my mom and me. (My sister, Sarah, is with my dad helping our grandparents in SC- we missed her so much!)



Sarah was so sweet to bring us a hostess gift- these beautiful tulips!

We all had such a lovely time and I know Sarah is thrilled to have so many wonderful gifts with which to make a home for her and Paul. It has been so exciting to witness the LORD bringing them together in marriage and we know they will be blessed as they seek to glorify Him together!

Because of Jesus,
Rebekah