My blue and white holiday party

A while ago, my friend Christina and I decided to plan an extra-special holiday party this year – I hadn’t seen many of my friends for a long time due to my photoshoots and business school applications, so I really wanted to give them something special. Taking inspiration from one of the trendiest colors to exist on earth – the blue color of a Tiffany’s box – we created a hot pot party around that color. This is the first time I’ve planned any sort of themed / decorated party on my own, so I’ve learned a lot of things from it! I actually was very pressed for time, and a lot of things I will definitely be able to do better if I weren’t so busy, but all in all, we had a great time! Christina helped conceptualize a lot of the paper designs using Adobe Illustrator, and we printed everything on my laser printer

We used Google Wave to plan certain details of our party. Testing out Google Wave was interesting – it definitely had potential over Google Docs to a certain extent in that multiple people could comment and attach multiple files. However, during our testing, Google Wave did not have an easy way of notifying the owners of a wave that someone had added something, which meant that we often still had to email each other to alert to the fact that we’d made a change to Google Wave. I definitely think there can be things that can be improved.

My invites were flat printed on cardstock from Paper Source, stamped with star stamps, which Christina then hand-embossed. The outside of the envelopes were stamped with stars in shades of blue and “strung” together with two hand-drawn lines – a motif that repeated later in the party. Shoutout to my friend May who helped decorate the envelopes using my hand-drawn design because I was stuck in meetings all day!

The party took place in my dining room in my  new home. All the dining ware was from Crate & Barrel‘s essential dinnerware collection, and most of the linen came from Crate & Barrel as well – my parents gave them to me for a Christmas gift

I purchased these adorable favor boxes from beaucoup favors and filled them each with one white and one blue-wrapped Lindt chocolate truffle (not pictured). I then tied them together with white or silver ribbon, and added a favor tag that had the star + line design from the invitation. The favor tags were pasted on business-sized cardstock that matched the invitations

This is the appetizer table spread. The gorgeous white calla lily and dendrobium orchid centerpiece was created by my friend Dana at Bumble Bee Landing. The tissue paper pomanders were made from a kit I found at Michael’s, although there are many ways to DIY, I just ran out of time. I needed ribbon at the last minute but couldn’t find any to hang up the pomanders, so while rushing around my local Star Market for last minute food, a kind employee gave me strands of floral twine to hang the pomanders. The square vases and marbles came from Michael’s as well. I found the blue and white ornaments on sale at Target. The blue napkins I picked up while on a grocery run. The silver star confetti was leftover from my new year’s eve party last year, I found it at Oriental Trading

Since a Chinese hot pot meant that my friends would do most of their own cooking, it’s only fitting that I should make some appetizers! We created these food labels with a similar design as the gift tags, and mounted them on a decorative piece of cardstock

Here’s the hot pot spread! We used 2 hot pots – funny story, as we started up the pots to boil the water we killed the electricity circuit for my dining and living room, so after I took these pictures we had to dim the lights so that there was sufficient power. In the top right photo you can see my yin yang hot pot – which has a clear broth on one side, and a spicy broth on the other. A typical Chinese hot pot spread has various meats (lamb, beef, pork), and vegetables – I chose cabbage, turnip, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, tofu. I also had shrimp. A typical hot pot barbecue sauce is made by mixing sha cha sauce (a favorite from my province of Fujian) with egg yolk, salt, and a little soy sauce. We were so full that we never made it to dessert (lemon tart + blueberry tart)

Enjoy! I’m spending the Christmas holidays at home in Indiana, may all of you be safe in your travels!