Pretty Brunch Photos
Just a few pretty photos I took on the point and shoot from an impromptu brunch this past weekend…
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Eat.Drink&Be Merry: Part III, The Details
So, the whole idea of the this party started on the fact that me and Hannah:
(Photo by the amazing Kate McKallagat)
…well, we kind of love doing creative things together. Hannah is like the younger, hipper and more gorgeous Martha Stewart, and I adore all things photography, styling and creative…
I’ve always wanted to attend AND photograph a gorgeous dinner party, with beautiful details, amazing food and good friends… but you don’t get a whole of those here in Ohio… so, we decided to make it for ourselves.
I think we started seriously planning in early June, and set our date for August 20th. Hannah’s parents have the most gorgeous house and they graciously allowed us to host our party there. There were so many stages to the planning, but first and foremost, we needed to get the invites out to our guests!
We kept the party size fairly small, which allowed us to put hand-done elements into the invites. I designed the invitations in PS, printed them on vellum, and used one of my photographs as the back layer. We then stitched them with gold thread and hot glued on silk rose leaves. We purchased the vertical envelopes at a small stationary store, hand-wrote little disclaimers to take the formality down a notch. We then finished them with more gold thread and silk rose leaves.
Part one down.
There were lots of little things, menu planning, ideas, decor brainstorming that went on in between… but most of the work happened last Wednesday (sorting glassware and place settings, serving dishes, arranging chairs and figuring out places at the table)
Cue Friday. Grocery shopping, cooking and set-up:
Hannah made the most delicious bread. We had to smell it baking and rising all day…. so tempting…
We spent the next chunk of time working in a chocolate covered pretzel factory… or something like that… we then wrapped them in wax paper, ribbon and ‘Eat Me’ tags… (the final product I forgot to photograph! Too much to remember…) and… proceeded to neglect to hand them out to most of our guests… good intentions are what matter, right? They looked pretty though…. and Ben and Jonathan stuck around long enough to get theirs. Sorry to everyone else who left early!
Some of our decor choices and inspirations were gleaned from this site. We had originally planned on using pears as our place cards since Hannah’s parents had a pear tree… but a sneaky raccoon decided to foil our plans… so we purchased green apples.
Our glassware and place settings were a combination of vintage, thrifted and our combined family collections… Hannah’s mom has an amazing collection of dishes and glassware…
We stuck with a general theme of green and white, a light summer feel. Tissue paper rosettes, chandelier crystals, white twinkle lights, clear cut glass…
we used garden greenery (Rub barb, Hasta leaves, Mint, Lemon Grass, Ivy, Morning glory vines…)
We had drinks in the dining room, with my collection of vintage glasses, wines, Pink lemonade, Sweet tea with frozen peaches, Berry Green Tea icee, and ice cubes with mint leaves…
Appetizers consisted of cheese, crackers and red and green grapes. We used my vintage/handmade cake plates, grape leaves and Hannah’s new cheese labels to accent.
Dessert was homemade peach sorbet that Hannah’s mom had prepared for us ahead of time, garnished with a little cookie, frozen peach slice and mint leaves. (the photo was before the mint leaves)
Dessert was followed by garlic popcorn, brown-bag caramel corn and Mexican cokes while we watch our movie in the theater…. by that time, I was too tired to photograph anything else… which was fine with me, it gave me time to enjoy the evening.
Eat.Drink&Be Merry: Part II, The Party
Dinner was in the garden room….
and can I just say how AMAZING everyone looked? I was seriously impressed- although, not surprised. We’re a classy bunch of people….
We had appetizers and drinks in the living room….
Dessert on the patio… followed by ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ in the theater. An amazing night- thank you so much to everyone who came!
Eat. Drink&Be Merry: Part I, The Portraits
Good friends, good food, good times… a picture is worth a thousand words, no? (please note that I am barefoot in half of these photos, using the self-timer + running in heels=hazardous to Emily’s safety)
Props… and possibly one of my favorite photos of the entire evening…
Sopranos/Mafia style…
Candidly…posed? Not sure what happened here…
Awkward Family photo! (and it came so naturally)
Yay- a nice one!
The Couples:
Andres&Allison…. awkward, awkward- lovely!
Hannah&Ethan- seriously folks…
Rachel&Nate
The Non-couples:
Jonathan & Ben- I should probably hire these guys to do some modeling work for me… if guns or ‘cheese’ is ever required…
Val& myself (I feel so awkward in front of the camera- times that times like, 50, when people are watching!)
What I’m Listening to…
These posts are few and far between nowadays… never fear though… I am still listening to music. Promise. And no worries, there will be no Taylor Swift on this post…
Obviously, The Arcade Fire ‘Suburbs’…
My favorite track is definitely ‘Suburban War’
Future of Forestry Travel II & Travel III EPs:
I had a chance to see them live in July… and I would do it again.
John Mark McMillan ‘The Medicine’
On the recommendation of many friends and the fact that it was $5 on Amazon.com (plus I had a $5 credit there…) I made this purchase (and I’m definitely a fan of the song ‘How He Loves’) and I am quite pleased with it… it has a raw feel and sound like a lot of people said, and I’m really appreciating it. ‘Carbon Ribs’ is the song is sticking out to me on a few listens…
…and just to diversify a little, the soundtrack to ‘Amelie’ by Yann Tiersen…(you probably wouldn’t put it on the same mix with most the above mentioned songs… unless… you were slightly ambitious and a touch crazy like myself… because I might just do that.)
Yann Tiersen is amazing. This one is completely quirky… but if you like gorgeous piano music I would recommend the score to ‘Good Bye Lenin’ or a Yann Tiersen Pandora station….
