{Giveaway} BIG Party Package from Crossroads Cottage {aka Pinwheel Heaven!}

This is a big one, people. (over $114, people!) If you haven't noticed, I love pinwheels and Adria does, too. (Remember Jeffrey's pool party? That was featured on Hostess with the Mostess blog)

Shana, the mastermind and creative paper genius behind Crossroads Cottage, contacted us a bit ago because she loved our Vintage Carnival Invitation design. She wanted to design beautiful accessories that coordinate perfectly with our Vintage Carnival design. She did an awesome job coming up with TONS of fun products that would make any party perfectly accessorized and coordinated! Just wait and see below.

Crossroads Cottage has generously offered up a fabulous giveaway for one of our lucky readers! Read on....

Crossroads Cottage is a total eye candy destination for all things party. Shana designs and assembles several varieties of pinwheels, cupcake toppers, banners, party hats and lots more. She even offers a DIY package for those of us crafty ones that like to save a buck and don't mind doing it ourselves! She does custom work and that is her forte. She has so many patterened paper designs styled that she prints custom for each client! (No pre-purchased scrapbook paper there!)

But WAIT... these are not just for birthday parties and showers. She creates the most beautiful accessories, pinwheel placecards and more for WEDDINGS! Just wait til you see some of the beauties she has created...

She was even featured in THE KNOT magazine! That is huge!





I mean, check out these pinwheel placecards for weddings...


I especially LOVE this shot - at the beach. Can you picture how beautiful that must have been with the wind blowing and the little pinwheels twirling!?
Beautiful and such a fun and whimsical idea for a wedding, right?

The DIY kit is super cool and budget friendly!
I love all of her paper varieties. She has TONS to choose from!





Cute centerpiece ideas....


and favor bag decorations...
A fun vessel filled with pinwheels on a dessert table?

Or just for a summer picnic! Kids love them!
How cool is this color scheme below.... I love how classy these look. I could picture these at a rehearsal dinner or engagement party. LOVE them.





How PERFECTLY would these have been for our Happy Halloween Design Collection photoshoot? They would be perfect decorations and favors for a halloween party. How adorable!?


So now to the fun eye candy that she created and photographed for the Vintage Carnival invitation accessories.... She printed our vintage carnival invitation for the shoot. (So nice of her!)

So here you see a shot of lots of fun items. banner, pinwheels, party hats, pinwheel cupcake toppers and cupcake wrappers, invitation.... they all coordinate so well!

Giveaway Description:
Your choice of any paper pattern color...

16 traditional pinwheel cupcake toppers (mini lolliwhirls)
16 cupcake wrappers
4 handheld peony pinwheels
4 large handheld traditional pinwheels
16 assembled party hats
1 Happy Birthday Banner
1 Pennant Banner

Total value: $114.30!



First Way To Enter
• Visit Crossroads Cottage Etsy Shop and leave us
a comment here telling us what product you love best!

For Additional Entries* (not required but LOTS of extra ways to win!)
• Subscribe to Follow our blog
• Follow Crossroads Cottage Blog - Pinwhirl Parties
• Post about this giveaway on facebook
• Post about this giveaway on your blog
• Tweet about this giveaway
• Become a fan - “Like” us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter (@andersruff)


{*For each of the additional entries, you must leave separate comments here
on our blog telling us you did the specific step (or already have done that step)
We check to see if you did the step if you win!}
Winner chosen!

Winner chosen Friday at 11:00 am

Winner is: Comment #13

CandiceR said...
My son would looove these on his next bday or any day for that matter :)

Congrats, Candice!
I hope you share photos of the event you have where you use these fabulous accessories from Crossroads Cottage!!!!

Contact us to claim your prize!
andersruff@gmail.com

{Giveaway} BIG Party Package from Crossroads Cottage {aka Pinwheel Heaven!}

{Coming Soon} Sneak Peek of the giveaway for Friday

Just a little sneak peek (I am all about sneak peeks this week) of the giveaway this upcoming Friday. (It is going to be a pretty BIG one!) You have to check back Friday around 11 am to see what it is!

Make sure to enter this week's giveaway, too! (A free customized tee from the fabulous LITTLE UNI!)


Like the invitation? It is a pretty new design from our shoppe! It is a vintage carnival invitation that has inspiration from vintage screen printing and patterns. (The text is meant to look a little offset! So fun!)

(Photo taken by Crossroads Cottage)

{Coming Soon} Sneak Peek of the giveaway for Friday

{DIY Finds} Pinwheels - Perfect for 4th of July!

I LOVE pinwheels. Remember, I used them all over in Jeffrey's Pool Party?!?

Now you can make them yourself! I think these would make a dashing touch as centerpieces, table decorations or just for the kids to play with. It doesn't have to be for 4th of July, but these sure would look stunning with our 4th of July Printable Design Collection! Spruce up your 4th of July!

Here are the steps:

Supplies

• Scrapbook paper (preferably with double-sided pattern)
• Wooden dowels
• Hot glue gun and hot glue
• Double-sided tape
• Scissors
• Star stickers
• Spray adhesive (if necessary)

Instructions

1. To create dual-sided pinwheels, gather double-sided scrapbooking papers in patriotic hues, or if you can't find pages in palette, create your own. Find pages in contrasting patterns, and use the spray adhesive to adhere them together.
2. Cut paper into square shapes — we made 8-inch and 6-inch squares to create pinwheels of varying sizes.
3. Fold squares in half diagonally to create a triangle. Crease.
4. Open the triangle and fold diagonally the opposite way. Crease.
5. Open up the triangle and flatten out the square.
6. Cut along each diagonal fold three-quarters of the way to the center.
7. Pull the tip of every other corner toward the center. Use double-sided tape or white craft glue to adhere the first tip to the center, then each folded-in tip on top of each other. When you finish, you'll have the pinwheel shape.
8. If you want your pinwheel to spin, skip to step 10. If not, simply hot glue the pinwheel to your wooden dowel. Skip cutting down wooden dowels from the hardware or craft store and use inexpensive flag dowels (removing the flags, of course).
9. Finish your pinwheel with a decorative star sticker in the center.
10. If you want your pinwheel to spin, you'll need to push a pin through the center (a straight pin works), then a bead beneath the pinwheel. You'll drive the pin into your dowel with a hammer. If needed, fold over (or cut and then fold over) any part of the pin that sticks through to the back to prevent injuries.

Thanks, Good Housekeeping!

{DIY Finds} Pinwheels - Perfect for 4th of July!

{Straight From The Studio} A Blue and Green Pool Party - Jeffrey Turns FIVE!

I can't believe my big boy is 5! I spent a couple months planning (I like to plan over a period of time so that I can complete all of the ideas I get and not get stressed!)

Adria took some fabulous pictures at the party. She is not only a great graphic artist but a killer photographer!

I will be posting another note with pics of behind the (messy) scenes!

Update: Jeffrey's pool party has been featured on Hostess with the Mostess!
Photo above is from their writeup they did about Jeffrey's pool party!

You all saw the invitation that we added to our shop, right?

I made tissue poms to line the entrance to the party area (on the gate to the pool). There is a great tutorial on how to do this at Martha Stewart's website.

Since my new crush is Amy Atlas, I had to make an attempt at a dessert table.

Our pool has a nice long covered terrace where we had all of the tables and the sweets table. I decided against an "under the sea" or "beach" themed party and instead stuck w/ a fun green and blue color scheme for the party. We repeated patterns and pinwheels throughout the whole party.


I just LOVE the pinwheels! We stuck them into buckets with sand (to hold them down)
I found these super fun blue and green clear vinyl square bucket things and put those on the tables with goldfish (a standard party snack, right!?) in them - they kinda looked like fish bowls on the tables.

The sweet birthday boy....
and his Peanut brother, Pierson! ;-)

This is a funny photo of Jeffrey... his facial expression is so funny!

So,... on to the details!

Lunch - We served lunch in personalized sand pails (bagged lunches) - We made butter croissant turkey and provolone sandwiches, bag of chips and a fruit cup. Each bagged lunch had a little sticker on it with a coordinating party logo from our shop. We hung a napkin over the side and the kids were off! They could sit on the beach chairs by the pool or at the tables. They feasted!


Water bottles had a custom water bottle wrap from our shop that said "Don't drink the pool water" "Jeffrey's 5th Birthday" on them.
We also had cups (with the logo on it) for lemonade. I got some blue and green sippy cups for the babies, too!


I have been a huge fan of Amy Atlas and her amazing dessert tables, so I did my own first try at a themed dessert table.

I couldn't fit "Happy 5th Birthday Jeffrey" on a banner so we just had the words "Jeffrey" and "Five" on the seersucker covered backdrop.


I always loved cupcakes in ice cream cones when I was growing up. The kids LOVED them! I made like 75, so I had extra to hand out to lifeguards, etc.

Cookie pops were stuck into a long aqua box with a lime ribbon wrap.



Old fashioned candy sticks - blue in color, of course!

We had fun lemonheads in all sorts of crazy flavors (green, blue, pink and orange in color), and also blue gummy sharks:




Jeffrey's cake was in a waffle cone bowl and had a "5" cookie pop sticking out of the top.
Cupcake toppers adorned all of the fun cupcake/cones!

Lolli pops with our fun lolli pop cover on them... organic pops in yummy flavors like pomegranate pucker, mango tango,...MMM!


We did 2 games. 1st game was Pingpong Pool Search game - I had 144 ping pong balls and several had a 5 written on them. J had all of the kids stand back on the side of the pool and then he threw all of the balls out in the pool - they all went rushing to find the balls with the 5s on them. So fun!

The 2nd game was just the "biggest splash" contest. The kids LOVED this!
Jeffrey and Gabby were tied for 1st!
Pingpong Pool Game:


Pierson playing his own games ;-)

The 8 winners got bubbles!



Favors are almost my favorite thing to plan - I just love doing something nice for all of the guests and they have to coordinate with the party. In this case, Jeffrey had tons of friends at his party and lots of them have siblings Pierson's age. We did a favor for each kid/age.

The older kids got a wrapped present (which they LOVE to open a gift at someone else's party!).
Jeffrey had originally wanted a LEGO party but we decided to do that next year, but he decided he wanted his friends to have a building block favor. We got Fisher Price TRIO building kits for each kid and wrapped them saying "When it gets to hot to play in the sun, go back inside and build your own fun"


The little toddlers got a bucket of sidewalk chalk that had our party logo on it.


and last but not least, everyone got a fresh sugar cookie pop that I made. Fun polka dot or striped patterns.


Adria and I.... exhausted!
Thanks for all the help, Adria! Thanks to all the guests for a blast of a party!!!
XOX
Maureen

By popular request, I am listing where I got some of the key items from my party:

Pinwheels - Hobby Lobby

Navy/Green Striped Cups/Paper Plates/Napkins - Ikea

Green/Blue Sippy Cups - Dollar Tree

Sand Buckets - Michaels

Bubbles - Walmart

Chalk Buckets - Target

Table Cloths - Garden Ridge

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes and Iced Sugar cookies - Maureen Anders' kitchen (I love to bake!)

Old Fashioned Candy Sticks - Cracker Barrel

Blue/Green clear boxy basket/containers - Dollar Tree (of all places!)

Items that you can have designed from our shop (www.andersruff.etsy.com)

- Birthday Banner

- Cupcake Toppers

- Party Logos (for stickers on the cups, bubbles, fruit cups, lunch bags, etc)

- Favor Tag

- Water Bottle Wraps

- Custom Wrap (as shown on the chalk, etc)

- Lolli Pop Covers

- Invitations

- Address Labels

{Straight From The Studio} A Blue and Green Pool Party - Jeffrey Turns FIVE!