My Enchanted Unicorn and Rainbow Birthday Party (Featured on Hostess With the Mostess!)

First of all, let me say how much of a thrill it is to be featured on Hostess With the Mostess…  And to see the great responses!  There are certain blogs I’ve been reading since I started my business…  Style Me Pretty, Every Last Detail, Hostess With the Mostess, Kara’s Party Ideas…  And I’ve been featured in them all over the last year.  Oh my, yes, do I feel blessed!  In this new year I look at what I accomplished over the last year and think, “I can hardly believe I did all that!”

This party is very near and dear to my heart.  It’s because it’s mine.  I decided last year that I hadn’t had a proper birthday party in a long time (although I had invited friends over when I first started my business to sort of play at setting up a party) and that it might be my last birthday before having a little one (and I found out a week later that I was, in fact, pregnant with the little one who has been repeatedly kicking my bladder this morning!).  So why not celebrate it with pretty things? 🙂

I also decided that I wanted to celebrate with rainbows and unicorns party because of this post.  An inspiration board I created way back when I officially started Events by Elisa (almost two years ago now!) that, for whatever reason, has been bringing people to my blog consistently every month.  It’s been one of my most popular posts and one of the most pinned photos from my blog on Pinterest (along with some pictures from Natalie’s Under the Sea Baby Shower…  By the way, Natalie is getting married today and I’m a bridesmaid!!!)!  I decided I had to do something with it.  My inner eight-year-old demanded it.

I gathered together a bunch of my favorite people and rolled up my sleeves and went to work.  Like anything else I do, I trusted my vendor friends to come up with the most amazing interpretations of what I wanted – and boy did they!!!  Desiree of Penny Blooms Floral Design went especially above and beyond, crafting the huge paper flowers, putting together those phenomenal rainbow arrangements, and painting the Pin the Horn on the Unicorn (by hand, in front of me!).  Mark of San Diego Desserts couldn’t possibly give me a plain white frosted cake (especially after I gave him such trouble to tint each layer separately!), so he airbrushed away…  Jenny of JennyWennyCakes did such a beautiful job of making the colors on those macarons pop (even though I know that they spread more than she wanted because of all the color!), and the cake pops by Nicole of Calculated Whisk were gorgeous!!!  Alyssa of Hybrid Photography captured all the elements beautifully!!!  But I think you really just need to see them to get the full effect! 🙂

LOC_8806 LOC_8809 LOC_8817 LOC_8828 LOC_8857 LOC_8860 LOC_8864 LOC_8871 LOC_8880 LOC_8886 LOC_8893 LOC_8908 LOC_8922 LOC_8936 LOC_8957 LOC_8969 LOC_8971 LOC_8974 LOC_8983 LOC_8997 LOC_9004 LOC_9021

A HUGE thank you to everyone who was involved with helping me to make this a fantastic birthday party!!!  I know this is going to be another extraordinary year!!! 🙂

My Enchanted Unicorn and Rainbow Birthday Party Vendor Credits:

Rock & Roll Elopement Shoot Featured on Poptastic Bride!!!

I haven’t featured this shoot yet, since I knew it was scheduled to run sometime soon on Poptastic Bride and they wanted exclusivity.  So this might be your first look at it (unless you happened to see it on Facebook!). 🙂

Back in late May, Desiree of Penny Blooms Floral Design and Alyssa of Hybrid Photography and I met up for dinner.  Desiree had worked with us both and thought we’d get along well and wanted to introduce us.  Sure enough, it was as though we’d known each other forever – just like when I first met Desiree, we couldn’t stop chattering about projects we’d do together!!!

Alyssa was planning to have a booth at a bridal show in early July and wanted to style the booth after a shoot, so we started throwing around ideas. I have to admit that our first idea had to be put on hold, as our venue didn’t work out during the time period we needed, but we had so much fun creating this faux elopement!!!

I created the announcement (with a kind of graffiti-inspired vibe and lots of black!) and did a lot of the styling; Desiree did a ton of spray painting in addition to the florals (and you’ve never seen peonies like this!!); Ashley from Unbridled Beauty created a fun retro look with the makeup.  Unique Vintage, Pettiskirt Style, Whole Foods Hillcrest, and Serendipity Party Shop rounded out our look (the latter the night before the shoot – thanks ladies!!!) And of course Alyssa did a fantastic job with the photos!  Our models (especially our “bride”!) were troopers, as it happened to be an extremely cold June morning at Centennial Park!!!

My favorite element, I have to admit, was the snack cake “wedding cake.”  I’d been wanting to do something completely nontraditional for a while, and this was the perfect venue.  We used a drum (that happened to have pink flames on it!) that I’d purchased for my husband’s classroom at a thrift store topped with an old record, and three different types of snack cakes stacked precariously on top of each other (thanks to judicious use of toothpicks!).  I had waaaaay too much fun styling it!!!

Check out our whole feature on Poptastic Bride!

Rock & Roll Elopement Picnic Shoot Vendors:

What I’ve Been Up To Lately…

June was an extremely busy month for me (spilling into the first day of July).  I’ve got three more events happening in the next several weeks but I thought that on this beautiful holiday I might share a little taste of what I’ve been involved with over the last month!!!  Three styled shoots (including stationery for two) and two weddings (including programs for one and all the stationery for the other) meant a ton of work and very little time off.  But look at the gorgeous results!!!

I hope you have a fantastic holiday – I’m off to spend the day with friends and my husband.  Be safe!!!

What I've Been Up To!

Photo credits: