Sweet Inspiration: 4th of July Party Ideas & DIYs

Patriotic Ice-Cream Sandwiches from A Farmgirl’s Dabbles

Can you believe the the 4th of July is just right around the corner? Where on earth did the month of June go? Wow! When my parents told me time would fly as I got older, I really didn’t want to believe it. But they were right. Summers come and go in the blink of an eye these days, which is why we should always make the most out of it! That my friends includes celebrating the 4th of July in style this year with some really cute and fun ideas for a party or gathering. We have put together a few of our favorite Independance Day crafts and recipes that are circulating Pinterst right now to help inspire!

How fun are those patriotic ice-cream sandwiches? Creamy cheesecake ice cream is sandwiched between crisp red velvet shortbread cookies, all in the shape of a star. Just the ticket for staying cool and celebrating the fourth of July! Visit A Farmgirl’s Dabbles for the recipe!

Bandanna Napkin and Silverware Mason Jars from A Soft Place to LandYet another awesome and oh so festive idea for the Mason jar here. Bandannas are pulling napkin duty in bright blue and red along with silverware and a jar. This is a great idea for a large party, guests can even use the jar for their beverage as well! Visit A Soft Place to Land for more ideas!

 Rocket Favor Pack from Martha StewartAnd what would the 4th of July be without a Martha Stewart idea as well? These Rocket Favor packs are too cute and a really easy DIY that young guests are sure to love! Pick your favorite patterned cardstock and candies and craft up a dozen or two for the kiddies.

Bandanna Garland and Place mat from ParentsIn keeping with the bandanna theme above you could also use them to create a fun banner decoration or even a flag place mat! These cute DIYs from Parents are easy and super patriotic too.

Our Independence Day Pinterest BoardJoin us on Pinterest here, we would love to see what inspires you!

Sneak Peek: Retro Space Rocket Ships & Ray-guns Party

Wikipedia defines “Retro-Futurism” as a trend in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced prior to about 1960. Basically this coincides around the same time that The United States stopped dreaming about the future, IMO. This extremely eloquent individual seems to agree with that sentiment as well: 

I apologize to everyone if this might be coming off as a rant about ideologies, and it’s not, just the opinion of someone who still dreams big, but politics and reality keep getting in the way and won’t stop being annoying! Breathe…In through your nose, out through your mouth…3 seconds in, 3 seconds out..

Okay I have successfully “enhanced my calm” (+1 Internets to anyone who leaves a comment on what movie that quote is from). I’m going to channel my quasi-negative energies into this blog post and the resulting awesome retro-futuristic themed dessert table that will unfold before your very eyes. It does, however, still bug the crap out of me that we as a species STILL don’t have personal rocket packs. Don’t even get me started on the flying car. Alas, it was not meant to be… But you know what was? Hello My Sweet’s spectacularly Retro Rockets & Rayguns themed dessert table, that’s what!

I have to admit, I was really super excited about designing this table, so much in fact that I started to build props of rocket packs and intergalactic rocket ships before I had even finalized the design of the table. It’s like the inner kid in me came out and didn’t want to go back to adult land and actually start to shape this table into a cohesive look. After gazing upon our dessert table it’s my hope that it too will let your mind wander off and you inner child come out to play, soaring through the cosmos to dispatch evil robot villains with our rayguns, even if just for a little bit! ‘Cause if the world needs anything, it’s a little more dreaming… So after watching the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis rendition of Flash Gordon and another cult classic, 1956’s Forbidden Planet, I had plenty of ideas just swirling around my noggin. I decided upon a more retro look akin to When Worlds Collide, after a disastrous accident with the first version of my rocket ship prop/centerpiece.

As I said earlier I had finished it so early that it was just perched precariously atop our refrigerator and met with untimely death on our kitchen floor. After ditching the Flash Gordon-esque look, I eventually went with more of a traditional rocket look.

 All the awesome party details will be posted this weekend, so be sure to check back in with us! We’ll go over the printables, food and some really cool ways to keep your young party guests entertained!

Sweet Disasters: The Time I Made Cupcakes (and they looked like poop)

Not so long ago I read an article regarding the merits of showing oneself as is. Meaning, not just the good and awesome, but the not so good and awesome as well. The point of this particular blog post was to illustrate how far bloggers go these days to make everything look perfect. We here at Hello My Sweet are guilty of this.

Jason and I try really hard to make our photos look perfect for when they hit the blog. So hard in fact, that when I realized that something has gone very wrong recently, I procrastinated the photo editing process for a long time, just so I didn’t have to be smacked in the face with my error. Putting this party off for as long as possible, was a subconcious effort however, and only after Jason asked me, “Are you unhappy with the way the party turned out? Why haven’t you edited the photos for it yet? You usually do not wait so long”  did I realize what I was doing. The poor man was feeling like he had messed up, because I hadn’t yet done my job. The part where I stare at the photos I have taken (over exposed, underexposed, blurry, you name it) and try to make them perfect in photoshop and ready for our blog.

You see folks, my error came in the cupcake decorating process this time. We made Milky Way cupcakes for a Retro Rockets & Rayguns space themed dessert table. Milky Way cupcakes consist of chocolate cake, with a milky way candy baked inside and topped with whipped chocolate buttercream and caramel drizzle. Sounds good right? Well leave it to me to make the delicious into the opposite. I baked the cupcakes, let them cool and commenced to decorating them with the buttercream. Everything was going according to plan, we were right on schedule. Only it wasn’t going well at all and I didn’t even realize it. I had chosen a wide round piping tip for the buttercream frosting process. I chose this because I wanted to keep it simple. This of course resulted in a fat swirl of chocolate buttercream. See where I’m going with this? Well I didn’t see it.

We placed them on the table and away I went taking photos. Fast forward 2 hours while I’m reveiwing the shoot on the computer monitor and BAM! It smacks me in the face. The cupcakes look like poop. And not poop in the metaphorical slang term sense, they are ugly. Oh no, no, no. Actual poop. A perfect brown swirl of chocolate buttercream “poop” on each and every one. I tried to tell myself it would be ok. But the more I looked at them, the more I saw just “poop.”

So this is just my little confessional today. I know I am not perfect. And most of you probably know it too. But in case you were in the mindset today of, “does this kind of stuff only happen to me?” I’m here to tell you, “Heck NO!” It happens to me too. And Jason. And everyone else. I bet even Amy Atlas has had her fair share of uh-oh moments.

But if you take nothing else away from this little decorating lesson today, just remember this:

Never use a round tip to pipe chocolate frosting onto a cupcake. EVER.

So tell us, what was your funniest baking or decorating disaster? We’d love to hear it; leave us a comment up top!

Cake Stand Ribbon Skirt DIY

Hello everyone! 

We are going to share with you a simple and snazzy DIY today, showing you how to create your own Cake Stand Ribbon Skirt! Often times in our line of work we re-use our vessels, cake stands and serveware. We are all about budget partying, so whenever we can we try to make good use of what we already have by jazzing it up temporarily to serve a new purpose. With that in mind, we have a DIY project to demonstrate. We recently threw a party for our son where we made great use of some ribbon we already had and a cake stand we made last year. The result was a super cute Ribbon Skirt that fit around the stand. This skirt is simple to make and VERY inexpensive. It completely transformed our cake stand, and was removable, so we can use our stand again without the skirt. Since we already had the materials to make it, it cost us nothing but a couple hours! However if you did need to buy everything to make this (assuming you already have your cake stand) it would cost you about $10, and most likely less if you bargain hunt.

So let’s get right down to it…

To see the entire DIY tutorial, step by step, click here and visit our full post on The Flair Exchange blog!