planning, planning, planning...

Ok, I'll admit it...planning our wedding has become pretty much all I can think about these days...which is, unfortunately, a reason I haven't been blogging as much. I'm still reading blogs, and have added 4 new wedding blogs to my google reader, I'm just not actually posting. I will try to do better and start posting stuff about the planning process...promise!

This past weekend I took a break from wedding planning and took on birthday cocktail party planning! You may remember that my birthday is just around the corner (March 20 to be exact), and my sister's birthday is on the 9th. Well, long before I got engaged, we decided to throw ourselves a joint birthday party this year. It was last Saturday at our Mom's house (her house is SO great for entertaining, whereas our condo...not so much).

We decided to have a cocktail party, and my sister found these SUPER cute napkins that were light blue with a pink martini and green, brown and pink polka dots. I decided to run with the colors and really coordinate everything...I figured it was good practice for the wedding...right?

We bought a few bags of valentine's day M&M's and picked out all of the reds, which left varying shades of pink and white. Then I found Shrek M&M's and picked out the green and brown ones to add to our pink/white combo...SO CUTE! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of this...oops!

Instead of cake we opted for cupcakes. So, the weekend before the party, my mom and I were up until 11pm Friday night baking 4 dozen regular size cupcakes and another 4 dozen mini cupcakes...both chocolate and white. We froze them and I decorated them the night before the party.

Here is a picture of my work of art!

And a close up...(notice the color coordination!)

I hand decorated each and every cupcake with homemade cream cheese frosting (the chocolate was store bought). My mom has a cake decorating kit and for most of the cupcakes I used a star tip to make little stars all over the top, right next to each other. I think Martha would be proud!

This was not where the party planning ended...we asked everyone to BYO(favorite)B. Knowing full well that people would bring alcohol, I just couldn't not make a punch of some sort...which then led to making jello shooters as well. Between the punch and jello we went through 4 bottles of vodka! Not to mention all the beer, wine and other bottles of stuff people brought over.

(You can see the napkins & plates on the far left and that cute frame has a pic of us when we were little!)

We also had a full spread of appetizers including: BBQ wings, gyoza, spring rolls, spinach dip, veggies and ranch, hummus and pita chips, homemade salsa and tortilla chips...and something else too, I just can't remember.

Anyway, the party was a HUGE success and I finally breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday morning! Now it's back to WEDDING PLANNING!

The birthday girls!