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Portland Themed Baby Shower - A Well Crafted Party
A Well Crafted Party

Pitter Patter in PDX Baby Shower

4 Comments A Well Crafted Party

Baby Sprinkle

I was absolutely honored when my friend Joan offered to host a sprinkle for me and my newest baby. A sprinkle is similar to a shower, but is designed to be a smaller celebration for a second child because the mother likely has some items from the first time around. I was super touched that she would want to throw me a party in the midst of her own move into a new home. My friend Alicia jumped in to help with the sprinkle and the two of them even outdid the amazingness they pulled off in my first baby shower that they hosted together— A Robot Themed Baby Shower. I offered up my backyard for the party and they based the color scheme to match my newly decorated porch area. This is a LONG post with lots of ideas for hosting a Portland-rain themed baby shower as well as some free downloads! If you enjoy this post, I’d be super duper happy if you PINNED an item to your Pinterest board or SHARED via your favorite social media platform.

 

This post contains some affiliate links. Purchases made from affiliate links do not cost readers any money, but does help keep this blog running. Thank you for reading and supporting A Well Crafted Party. To learn more about my for-profit policies click on over to my policies page! 

 

Rain in Portland Themed Baby Shower

 

They themed the party around the “Sprinkle” theme as well as my love of all things Portland, Oregon. The Pitter Patter in PDX Baby Shower was born and with it came Food Truck-themed foods and rain drop decorations. We even got to be spoiled with some local gourmet ice cream! I ordered event sized portions of King Creamery’s amazing ice cream flavors. It went perfectly with the theme… also, the champagne pear sorbet was simply the most amazing sorbet I’d ever tasted in my life.

 

Pitter Patter in Portland Facebook Invite

Rain Themed Baby Shower Decorations

Joan is an amazing graphic designer and she created a beautiful rain themed items to use throughout the event including the above Facebook invitation cover. (The image is free for personal use in case you’d like to throw a Portland rain themed baby shower! Just click on the image, right click to save to your computer and upload to your Facebook event cover area!) She built a cloud out of balloons and pillow stuffing utilizing this great “How to Build a Cloud” tutorial from The Farm Chicks.

 

Baby Shower Party Favors

Baby Shower Party Favors

Joan utilized the graphics she used on the invite on the labels she created for the awesome party favors she put together. Utilizing the same graphics and color scheme in different areas throughout your party can help pull together different elements to make the party look professionally put together! Joan found corn on the cob from a local farm that simply goes into a paper bag with a little oil and is instantly microwave popcorn! How cool is that? I have a fantastic umbrella that has the “Thank You” in several different languages printed on the inside of the umbrella. We added that detail at the last minute because it went with the theme AND was the perfect addition to the favor table!

 

Flavored Sparkling Waters are great beverages for Baby Showers! Portland Beer for a Portland Themed Party

Bumptown Coffee for a baby shower coffee bar

Baby Shower Beverages

We kept the beverages for this party pretty simple with sparkling waters, coffee, tea and—because it was a Portland theme— beer! Joan created little tags for the coffee cups to make it coordinate with the Portland theme. She named the coffee shop “Bumptown Coffee” a play on words from the famous Stumptown coffee! Seriously one of my favorite details. The coffee cups and sleeves (aff link) were totally affordable from Amazon and she simply printed up her label on round 2-inch sticker sheets (aff link). An affordable and simple way to bring the coffee bar up a notch for a party!

 

Food Truck Theme for Party Food A Well Crafted Party

Food Truck Theme for Party Food A Well Crafted Party

Food Truck Theme for Party Food A Well Crafted Party

Food Truck Theme for Party Food A Well Crafted Party

Food Truck Theme for Party Food A Well Crafted Party

 

Food Truck Themed Party Food

My absolute favorite detail of the party was the food. Now, that isn’t JUST because I was 8 months pregnant and eating everything under the sun. Though, that helped. The girls came together with different ideas for Food Truck themed food. Joan then made these amazing little food trucks using a great free template sourced from The Fox is Black and an artist by the name of Goopymart. The food trucks included Mac and Cheese, Please!, Sweet Elvis PB&J, Nom Bowl, Taco Taco Taco, and The Waffle Beneath My Wings. The food containers such as the paper food trays with wax paper and the bamboo bowls (affiliate links) added to the whole “food truck” feel. And, of course, we had a REAL Portland food vendor present with the cute little event size King Creamery ice creams. They do home delivery of their monthly flavors with their club membership, but they also cater events.

 

Baby Shower idea - meal train cards!

Baby Shower Activities

I don’t have any photos of the cute little activity that Joan put together for the event. She had hand cut out felt items so that guests could help put together a mobile for the baby. (There is a great little tutorial for felt mobiles over at Craftiness is Not Optional.) I seriously prefer crafts and activities over baby shower games, so this was perfect for me! In addition, she whipped up cute little cards with a link to a meal train that she had set up for me on mealbaby.com. It was amazing to have food delivered those first few weeks after the baby was born.

 

Free Food Truck Printables

 

Joan, who has a rad little business with her husband called Stogle Studios, put together these fun designs for the party’s food trucks using the template from The Fox is Black. You can download them and use for free for your next party! Want to create your own? The template is free to download over at The Fox is Black’s Food Truck Design Contest Post! (Personal Use Only)

 

Free Paper Food Truck Printables

Directions for printing and putting together your free food truck party paper food truck:

  • Click here to download your five free printables, download by right clicking the image and saving the PDF to your desktop.
  • Print on 11X17 paper — you can also choose to “fit to print” to 8.5X11 paper or 8.5X14 paper, but please know you will have a smaller food truck if you do that.
  • Cut out along outer edges of design.
  • Fold along solid lines and glue along flaps. Cut out the window area and put in your food truck window as the pictures show.

 

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DIY dip dyed linens via A Well Crafted Party
A Well Crafted Home

DIY Dip Dyed Linens – DIY Porch Projects Pt 3

5 Comments A Well Crafted Home

I don’t know if there is any DIY I love more than dying fabric. I have used the technique on a variety of projects including party backdrops, napkins, curtains and clothing up-cycles. It is a quick, inexpensive and super easy way to make an impact.

For my Summer porch makeover I knew that I would want to have cloth napkins for the many parties that I would be having in my new space. They already had a space on the bookshelf that houses all my entertaining supplies, but I didn’t have exactly what I wanted on hand. I wanted a fairly durable but inexpensive cloth napkin, ideally in a bright yellow or ombre yellow. People get messy in the back yard and BBQ meals don’t really lend themselves to the really nice cloth napkins due to staining. I needed something that could get messy and wash up easily, but wouldn’t be terrible to move into my cleaning cloth pile if stained. After searching unsuccessfully at all my favorite stores I landed on DIYing the napkins out of flour sack towels.

At the very last minute I also decided that we needed curtains for our porch area. One trip to Ikea and I came home with inexpensive white curtains that I was able to dip dye to coordinate with the napkins. The curtains are seriously my favorite part of the whole space and I hadn’t even planned on doing them!

dip dyed napkins and curtains via A Well Crafted Party

DIY Dip Dyed Linens

I used the same process on both my DIY Dip Dyed Napkins and my DIY Dip Dyed Curtains. The curtains were a slightly different material than the napkins so the dye didn’t soak in quite as well and get the bright yellow look, but I loved the paler ombre look nonetheless. That is the joy of dying cloth… you never quite know what you are going to get!

(Some of the below links are affiliate links. Affiliate links help support this blog with no cost to you the reader.)

Supplies:

  • — Linens of choice in WHITE! For the napkins I purchased 12 Flour Sack Towels via Amazon for just about $22. The curtains I got at Ikea for $10!
  • — Rit Dye of Choice. Personally I have used the powder and liquid Rit Dyes for dying linens and have had good results both times. The biggest thing to remember when using the powdered dye is that you really need to mix in the powder well because if it isn’t mixed in well you will get speckled results on your final product. Follow the directions on the Rit bottle. They are there for a reason and they really do help! I used the Golden Yellow liquid dye and one 8oz bottle was enough for all 12 napkins and two curtains with some to spare.
  • — Large pot for stove or bucket for dying fabrics. I used my canning pot for this project because it is huge and I can put it on my stove top to make sure the water stays hot enough. The package directions also gives options for large buckets or the washing machine, but the stove top has always been my choice of dying method.

Dip Dyed Napkins via A Well Crafted Party

After our Summer Porch Makeover - A Well Crafted Party

How to Dip Dye Linens:

  1. Prep your dye according to package instructions. My dye required super hot water and some salt because I was dying cotton items. It only took a few minutes to really get this all set up, the heating of the water taking the most time! As the water was heating I prepped my linens.
  2. Prep linens by wetting them and ringing out. I’ve dyed things from dry before and just do not like the results as much as I like the results of dying from wet. I wet all of my linens and rung them out prior to dying.
  3. Slowly dip linens into prepared dye. I am not one to take a lot of time in DIY projects. I just don’t have the patience. So, instead of dip dying these one at a time I chose to do them all at once. I put each of the napkins in with about an inch of the fabric in the dye water. I let sit for about 5 minutes and then lowered each one more into the water. I continued this process until the first dipped ends were in for about 30 minutes. You can choose to not dye the very ends at all if you’d like the ombre look to go into a full-on white, or dip the ends in the dye for just a moment. I chose to have the entire napkin be covered in the dye with the top ends being slightly lighter.  The ombre on my napkins is very subtle. The ombre on my curtains is much more pronounced because of the difference in fabric. The fabric was a polyester blend and didn’t soak in the dye quite as much as the cotton flour sacks.
  4. Rinse and dry as directed on dye package directions. After rinsing out the dye in the sink a bit I threw in the washer for a good rinse cycle. I then dried the linens in the dryer.

I love how these came out and with the napkins costing around $2 each I could not have gotten the same results for the same price any where else. I was able to do the entire process in one evening as well, so that is my kind of DIY!

Summer Porch DIY Projects - A Well Crafted Party

Check out my other Summer Porch DIYs:

Other great Linen DIYs from around the web:

Have you ever dyed fabric for a project? Comment below telling me all about the project! Links welcome.

 

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Holiday Potluck Free Downloads & Printables // A Well Crafted Party
Christmas

Free Holiday Potluck Facebook Invites & Recipe Card Printables

2 Comments Christmas

12 Days of Christmas DIYs // A Well Crafted Party

This post is the seventh in my series of the 12 Days of Christmas DIYs for A Well Crafted Party. Check in each day for the next 12 Days for new DIY posts. There will be LOTS of free printables to boot! (Check out yesterday’s post: “Saturday Spirits: Chocolate Peppermint Martini & DIY Candycane Rimming Sugar“

Holiday Potluck Free Downloads & Printables // A Well Crafted Party

I love, love, love a good paper invitation. However, I’m just like every other busy person out there and sometimes don’t get around to sending the invitations in time and need to get out an evite or Facebook invitation instead. I’d even say that a Facebook inviation is a handy way to enage with guests prior to a party even if you DO send a paper inviation. Gather RSVPs, post sneak peeks, inform guests about parking… you get the idea!

I created a few different versions of holiday potluck invitations and printable recipe cards.

Holiday Potluck Facebook Download // A Well Crafted Party

For the Facebook invite cover photo you simply need to download the image of choice by clicking the link of choice. Then upload it into the invite cover photo area following the steps through Facebook.

Printable Recipe Cards // A Well Crafted Party

 

The printable recipe cards are great for having at your potluck party for guests to share their recipes on or to give out as favors at the end of the party. You may even want to print off a set of 12 cards and wrapped them in baker’s twine for a cute and inexpensive hostess gift! Simply download the printable of your choice by selecting a link below and saving to your computer. Print in full color on white cardstock and cut out!

Free Printable Recipe Cards // A Well Crafted Party

Free Downloads:

These printables and downloads are created for personal use only at no cost to you. If you like these downloads I’d appreciate you sharing with friends via Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter!

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