We’ll, thanks to this tutorial Wanessa put together, here’s how you can make one, too…

To put together these paper flower centerpieces, all you need is a tall glass cylinder or a large vase, a spray painted wine bottle, some pretty paper flowers, and voilà!

I wanted to make 3 centerpieces so I chose one color for each bottle. You can see how I clean the wine bottles here.

The cylinder glass and the large vases I found at Walmart for less than $20.00 each.

First, I customized the vases by gluing rope to the bottom.

To make the paper flower bouquet I used two different techniques.

For the rolled flowers you can find the tutorial here. You just have to start rolling tight from the end to the center, then release the paper, and glue the bottom.

For the petals flower here is a step-by-step:

• Scrapbook or wrapping paper
• Spray adhesive (to stick the papers together)
• Hot glue and gun
• Scissors
• 3 sizes of hand punches
• Floral wire

I always like to double side my paper to make these flowers. I chose a plain color for one side, and a patterned one for the other side ,and attached them with spray adhesive.

Directions:

Just gorgeous, Wanessa, thank you for sharing! To learn more about Wanessa and see more of her designs, please visit her blog, Facebook page, and Etsy shop.

And if you make a paper flower centerpiece, please send photos. I’d love to see how yours turned out.

I love this season of outdoor parties and barbecues, and with Memorial Day and July 4th coming up, I’ve been dying to do a red, white, and blue dessert.

I think strawberry shortcake (with blueberries and lemon zest) is the perfect summertime dessert because it’s so fresh and light.

You can prepare almost everything beforehand, then just as you’re ready to serve it, either whip up some fresh whipped cream or pull out a can, and you can put these desserts together in seconds. Or better yet, set up a strawberry shortcake “DIY bar” and let your guests make their own.

I promise, these are super easy and absolutely delicious! Here’s how you do it…

Ingredients:

2 cups strawberries, sliced thin
1 cup blueberries
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/8 cup sugar +  3 tablespoons of sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick cold butter, sliced
2/3 cup half-and-half + 1/8 cup half-and-half
White sanding sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a bowl, gently mix strawberries and 1/8 cup sugar. Set aside. The longer this sits, the more strawberry juice it will make.

In a food processor, pulse together flour, baking powder, salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, and lemon zest.

Add cold butter and continue to pulse until the mixture looks like cornmeal.

Pour the mixture into a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture, and pour in 2/3 cup half-and-half.

Mix gently with a spatula or wooden spoon. Be careful not to overmix. It should be sticky.

Pour the sticky dough onto a lightly floured surface. Turn it over a couple of times until the dough comes together. Pat it out so it’s 3/4″ thick.

Cut out 8 round 3-inch biscuits.

Place biscuits on a Silpat or parchment. Brush the tops with the remaining half-and-half and sprinkle with white sanding sugar.

Bake for 12-18 minutes or until the biscuits have risen and are nice and brown.

While they are cooking, you can make your own fresh whipped cream. It’s easy and takes five minutes…

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Place empty bowl and beaters in the fridge for 10 minutes to chill.
Beat cream with added sugar and vanilla until the whipped cream makes peaks.
Don’t overbeat or you’ll end up with butter.

Once the biscuits have cooled, either cut/break in half, or use one whole biscuit as the bottom and one whole biscuit as a top. Add strawberry mixture, blueberries, and top with whip cream. Serve immediately and enjoy!

If you make some, please send a photo to jillian(at)catchmyparty(dot)com. I’d love to show off what you do!

And of course, here’s Lainey, my official taster, after a day at the farmer’s market getting her face painted…

Orbit® gum is a global brand, enjoyed by millions of people around the world.  Chew Orbit after any meal to leave your mouth with “A Good Clean Feeling®”. Eat. Drink. Chew™ Orbit! Like us on Facebook here.

Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Orbit® gum via Glam Media but such compensation did not influence any opinions expressed herein.  The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Orbit® gum

Now it’s time for our community to vote for our three favorite cards.

The designers with the three most popular cards will each receive $100 Amazon gift certificates.

The three finalists will then have their designs featured on the HP Facebook page and in the HP Newsgram newsletter, and the winner, voted on by the HP community, will receive a brand new HP OfficeJet 7500A printer worth $199.

Here’s how voting works:

• You can vote once a day for as many cards as you like
• Voting ends at 11:59pm on May 20th
• If you want to share a card on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, just click on the card you like and you’ll see the links

Good luck, everyone! I can’t wait to see the winning designs!

Dole is running a contest on Facebook where they are asking people to submit their favorite summer recipe that is…

• Made on a grill
• Uses 1 cup of Dole products
• Includes no more than 7 additional ingredients
• Can be made in under an hour

The three people with the best recipes will be flown to LA to compete in a Dole California Cook-Off and the winner will receive $10,000!

I love a challenge, so I was happy to participate, but I wanted to come up with something  that would taste great grilled but would be a little surprising…

That’s why I came up with these grilled strawberry banana basil empanadas with a touch of cayenne pepper! The bananas add sweetness, the strawberries bring tang, the basil provides earthiness, and the cayenne pepper that nice pop of heat.

I can’t tell you how delicious they are. And what makes them so unique is the grilling. The slightly charred crust perfectly complements the sweet, tangy, soft, spicy insides.

These are definitely worth trying especially since they’re simple to make.

To see the whole recipe, head here to Foodie.com.

Also, if you don’t want to come up with a recipe but still want to be part of the contest, Dole is running a sweepstakes where the winner gets to be a Fan Judge of the Cook-Off, with a free a trip to LA and $500 in cash. Not bad…

Compensation was provided by Dole via Glam Media.  The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Dole.

If you need free Mother’s Day party printables, wait until you see the fantastic collections we have! And if you need more Mother’s Day inspiration, take a look at all these great Mother’s Day parties on our site.

She tagged me and four other party gals to write the same post and after doing so, tag some other party friends. What a cool idea! So here are 25 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Me…

1. I was born in Connecticut and grew up in New Jersey (I had bad hair for a lot of those years and didn’t know it).
2. My favorite party style is shabby chic with lots of personal details.
3. I am a chocoholic. My current chocolate bar obsession right now is Chocolove’s Almonds & Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate.
4. I’m 5’2 1/2″ tall.
5. I have one daughter, Lainey, who calls herself the official “model” and “taster” of Catch My Party. She takes her jobs very seriously. (You’ve probably seen her on the blog.)
6. I’ve been with my husband for twelve years (married for eight) and still find him to be the most interesting person I know.
7. I am an amateur photographer and have been taking photos since I was a teenager.
8. In five weeks we are moving from Santa Monica, CA to Palo Alto, CA. I have not packed one box yet.
9. I have sleepless nights before throwing a party because I worry about every detail.
10. My favorite TV show is Top Chef.
11. My desk is covered in Post-It notes.
12. My favorite food is sushi and my favorite sushi restaurant in LA is Sasabune.
13. I love smaller, more intimate parties because I find it easier to talk to people.
14. My favorite color is green.
15. I believe in dreaming big.
16. I love to cook.
17. We have a dog named Gertie who is an eight-year-old Tibetan Terrier and we take her on vacation with us.
18. I’m shy but like to speak in public.
19. Before starting Catch My Party, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood and once wrote a movie for Salma Hayek. The movie never got made, but I got to work with her. She’s funny, smart, and even more beautiful in person (if you can believe it).
20. I can spend hours on the Internet looking at shoes and handbags.
21. My favorite party trends right now: food and drink bars, funny photo booth props, tassel garlands, chalkboard anything, and ombre cakes.
22. I’m really into gel nail polish.
23. I love orangutans.
24. The most satisfying part of my job is getting to showcase creative people from all over the world. I find it humbling.
25. I never want anyone to throw me a surprise party because I think I would freak out!

Hope you thought this was as fun to read as I did putting it together…

I’m tagging:

Lynlee — Lynlee’s Petit Cakes

Rebekah – A Blissful Nest

Kristy — The Purple Pug

Brittany — GreyGrey Designs

Do — Piggy Bank Parties

If you’re throwing a graduation party we’ve got this fantastic set of free “Graduation 2012″ printables from Yulia at Sarah Hope Designs. I love how versatile the colors are!

The collection includes: cupcake toppers, cupcake wrappers, blank tented cards, mini cake bunting, drink/food flags, mini candy bar wrappers, an 8×11 party sign, water bottle wrappers, and a “Congratulations 2012″ banner.

DOWNLOAD THE HIGH RESOLUTION FILES FOR PRINTING

• Printables
• Banner

Here’s a sample of the printables in action…

If you use these printables at your graduation party, please add it to our site, I’d love to see what you did!

Thank you, Yulia, for such a vibrantly fun collection!

To learn more about Yulia and see all of her designs, visit her at Sarah Hope Designs.

Over the weekend our youngest daughter turned 3!

She loves to watch her older sister’s DVD of Tinkerbell and asked me, back in February, if she could have a fairy party. Of course I can do that, I said. HOWEVER, our “Samantha” aka Sammie, is not a girly girl….so I needed to change it just a little, and went with a Woodland Fairy Party theme.

Right away I knew that I would be using elements from our yard/woods to help create the perfect setting for the party. If you are familiar with my parties, budget is very important to me, but so is quality. I challenge and pride myself on styling and executing a top notch party on a not so top notch budget. Once I got my wheels turning there was no holding me back on this one!

Starting Point: The first thing I do is always write down all my ides in a notebook and brainstorm before buying anything. Impulse buys can turn out expensive and sometimes a waste of time. A routine trip to our local Christmas Tree Shop gave me the idea for more natural colors for the party. Greens, yellows, oranges and reds. I found these beautiful huge butterflies and flowers there for $ 2.49 a piece (granted it was 3 months until her party). 

Mushrooms: Another trip to the local Dollar Tree gave me the idea for these brown “natural” looking mushrooms. The idea came to me to use these moss planters for mushroom tops and also for snack bowls. I took two Dollar Tree plastic planters and hot glued them end to end, stuck another Dollar Tree Moss bowl on top and there you have it! The red mushrooms were the same “stems” but I painted our wooden salad bowl set (yeah not sure why I ever had these on our wedding registry) to look like mushroom tops!

Fairy Wings: My first intention was to buy Dollar Tree fairy wings and “glam them up” with flowers and ribbons. Since 15 girls were originally invited, cost was a factor. After scoping out more than 4 Dollar Tree stores with no luck, I turned to Ebay, Etsy and other sources. I finally found a good quality wing for a great price and then used Dollar Tree flowers and ribbon that I bought last Fall from Pick your Plum to make them more “woodsy”…They were $5 a pair but that was really the fairy goodie bags. The fairy “crowns” I made from pipe cleaners and flowers from Dollar Tree and left over curling ribbon from Christmas. These cost me less than $.25 each to make.

My mother made the little Woodsman Hats out of felt for the boys! (if you sew or have a friend that does, hats off to ya! I don’t sew at all…) Less than $ 1 per hat!

Activities: Keeping little ones busy at a party is a tough job sometimes. You need a variety of options at any time. One of the activities was a Fairy Story being read by an older fairy (I hired three young girls from our Church to help out at the party – this way I can spend time with the birthday girl and soak all of it in) and I wanted that Mushroom Grotto feel to the story area. I looked all over for little red cushions to make toadstools and everything was out of my budget — so at IKEA I found red round mouse pads and added my own “spots” to them…voila – toadstool pads for them to sit on in the mushroom grotto! $.99 a piece.

A fairy parade was so much fun for them using instruments and “flying” around the yard to wake up the enchanted forest.

Woodland Crafts – for the girls – paint your own fairy house. Each house was $ 1.00 at Michael s and I bought plenty of them. The Woodsman – my hubby, cut and sanded wooden plaques for them to paint.

Food: Kept it simple. I always seem to have so much food left over and the kids never seem to want to eat while they are so busy playing. However this party was opposite. I put out fresh fruit, homemade salsa & chips, tomato, basil and moz. sandwiches, salads. It was enough and the kids all ate.

Misc Items: My husband made the cake stands from elements in our yard. Cost was nothing! I found the “fairy” house in the woods and added a few elements to it from around the yard. Cost nothing. Fairy Houses – I found two bird houses at Michaels Craft store that were on clearance and turned them into fairy houses “for rent.”

This theme could get out of control easily as I had so many more ideas that I just had to stop somewhere! The birthday girl had a blast and so did all the other children. The fairies have all returned to the Enchanted Forest and the woods are quiet again!

Budget: decor $ 50 + food $ 25 + goodie bags/wings $65 + misc $30 = $170

Thank you, Melissa, I always love hearing your stories and how you come up with your amazing ideas!

Do check out Melissa’s other fantastic parties on our site, her new blog, My Party Passion and her Facebook page.

Amanda recently changed the name of her company from Shindig Parties To Go to Amanda’s Parties To Go and in the process has had to rebuild her Facebook fans. So to download this gorgeous collection, please  like her on Facebook and show her some love!

The collection includes: cupcake toppers, Mother’s Day gift cards, chocolate bar wrappers, table cards, gift tags, and bunting.

DOWNLOAD THE HIGH RESOLUTION FILES FOR PRINTING

Thank you, Sweet as Designs, for offering these delightful printables to our readers.