Just Jill: Party

Showing posts with label Party. Show all posts

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, friends! This year has been the best one yet. I hope you all have a lovely day and happy 2014. XO

{Picture source here}

Our holiday party is at the Exploratorium this weekend. It recently reopened at Pier 15 in the city, so I'm excited to check it out. I normally shop for my holiday party dresses online, but it snuck up on me this year and I completely forgot about it. I ended up buying this dress at Anthropologie this weekend, which I think I'll pair with this necklace. What are you wearing to your holiday parties? xo

Wedding Partybooth

BFF Kristina made this fantastic backdrop for our wedding Photo Booth. We were super pumped with the outcome of it. It's amazing what 700 tassels and some glitter can make. These Partybooth photos turned out to be pretty epic. There are about 200 more where this came from.

{Pictures by the talented duo Caroline Fontenot and Ben Massey}

Wedding Shower

Our friends Meredith and Kristina held the sweetest wedding shower for us this weekend. Hooray for having lovely friends! It seems like just yesterday that the roles were reversed and I was co-hosting Meredith's shower, and now she's all married. :)

The day was so much fun. Kristina made all of the decorations (she's the best DIY'er) and my friend Haley designed the little state print of California, North Carolina, and Georgia intertwined.

Meredith cooked up the most amazing spread of food. We snacked on homemade caramelized onion dip and then she served delicious comfort food for dinner: pulled pork, mac-n-cheese, fruit skewers, baked beans, and homemade ice cream sandwiches. Of course, I ate two ice cream sandwiches (she made two types, so it would be rude not to try them both, right?). She even whipped up individual cocktails in tiny mason jars - spiked Arnold Palmers, which were amazing.

Thank you so much for hosting, Kristina & Meredith. We were blown away by the adorable shower and loved being with such wonderful friends. xoxo

Wedding Shower

Last weekend I co-hosted a wedding shower for our close friends, Meredith and Andrew. They're getting married on Labor Day weekend in Half Moon Bay, so it was nice to celebrate the couple a few weeks before their big day!

They're using jewel tones (think: deep purple, turquoise, fuchsia, and emerald!) in their wedding, so we decided to run with that theme and focused the decor around purple and green.

We created a dessert bar complete with purple and green French Macarons (pistachio and black currant - yum!), salted caramel brownies, and grape and lime licorice.

I think my favorite part of the party was the mimosa bar! In addition to champagne (of course!) we had orange juice, pomegranate lime juice, and guava passion fruit juice for mixing.

Andrew and Meredith (who unknowingly dressed in the perfect color palette!) posing with Helen and Phil, the party co-hosts whose lovely house the party was at, myself, and Drea, who cooked an amazing meal.

We served pulled pork, cornbread, strawberry and goat cheese salad, apple and walnut quesadillas, and roasted red pepper soup sips. Cornbread is Andrew's favorite food ever, so we had to put it on the menu. :)

So many friends and family members came out for the shower. The weather was perfect - sunny and mid-70s. :)

One of my favorite parts of the shower was the "Who Said What?" game that we played. It's hard to find non-cheesy shower games, so we debated whether or not to play one at all. Here's the idea: basically I went through Meredith and Andrew's Facebook pages and chose a few of their status updates. Some of them were fairly tricky and it was really hard to tell who said what. We put a tiebreaker on the end, "How many FB friends do Meredith and Andrew have (combined)?" In the end, we only had 1 perfect score (out of around 30 party guests), and we had a ton of fun reading out all of the answers. I highly recommend this party game!

It was great fun with great friends. Congratulations Meredith and Andrew - we love you guys! xoxo

Minted Invitations

I love Minted. I just sent out wedding shower invitations for a party that I'm co-hosting, so now seems like the perfect time to write a little review of the company. All of the art prints, invitations, and paper goods are designed and submitted by artists, who get a cut of the profits, so the quality and design are really high.

The art prints are really affordable and suitable for hanging. We ordered this San Francisco print and had it custom framed in an Ikea frame at Michaels. All-in-all the project cost less than $50! We also ordered our holiday cards from Minted last year.

I also love Pinhole Press, but I find their selection a bit more limited when it comes to invitations and cards. I think Pinhole is great for specialty items like beer labels, photo books, and alphabet games. What are your favorite sites to order from? xo

Holiday Party 2012

We went to the Wildfire holiday party last night at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, which is a charming, old hotel smack dab in the middle of Union Square. The cozy room we stayed in had a four poster bed, plush carpet, and a roomy bathtub, so it was the perfect place to get ready before the party. We got together with a few friends and ordered pizza before the festivities began, so we could get some carbs in our system. :) The holiday party itself was a blast - we had casino games like black jack, craps, and roulette, photo booths with props, festive food (think: ham and roasted chestnuts!), and, of course, drinks! Fun was definitely had by all and I truly work at the best company in the world.

P.S. - "How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Christmas Party?" I can state, with confidence, that every single person at the party last night broke these rules. :)

Nooglers

My company, Wildfire Interactive, was recently acquired by Google. We officially became new Googlers (aka Nooglers) on Thursday, and Google has definitely been living up to its reputation as a great employer. We went through orientation Thursday and Friday and had a huge party on Friday night to celebrate. Here are a few photos from the festivities!

Hanging with a few of my coworkers on Day 1: