{Easy Entertaining} Halloween Baby Shower

Happy Halloween everyone! Remember that baby shower I was prepping for with our DIY cupcake wrappers?  Well, it happened yesterday and I think it was a great success!  A lot of the decorations were easy do-it-yourself projects and a lot of the food came from Trader Joe's.  Despite being a Halloween theme, I think the ideas and colors (black, white, purple, lime) could be used for a stylish birthday party or glamorous bridal shower too.

My initial inspiration came from this great party-design blog, TomKat Studios.  Kim's a very talented party stylist whose dream job started when she decided to leave her real estate career to stay at home with her kids.  I liked her Halloween design concept (no orange!) and I even found the same purple trees she used at my nearby TJ Maxx.

Trader Joe's was a gold-mine for most of the food we served - including vanilla meringues, Canadian maple leaf cookies, and 29 cent chocolate bars that I wrapped in a custom-printed label I made.  Michael's was my second home for scoring all of the cardstock and scrapbooking paper I used.  (Easy decorating tip: use scrapbooking paper as "placemats".  They add a bold pattern - and when they're on sale for 25 cents, they're inexpensive too)  The baby shower banner was really easy to make.  Between this Martha Stewart alphabet template and her Circle Cutter, I easily put together a personalized banner.

I made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and then decorated them with our cupcake wrappers and homemade cupcake toppers (all you need to do is print images on cardstock, lollipop sticks, mini glue gun, Scallop Hole Punch, and assorted gem stickers).  Yes, after my Thanksgiving toppers and Birthday toppers, I'm now officially addicted to making these guys!

The bright green mini popcorn containers were made using this template from another cool design website, Eat Drink Chic.  Instead of popcorn (because these cups are so small), I filled the containers with chocolate-covered almonds and yogurt-cover raisins.   I didn't have enough cake stands, so instead I wrapped empty cardboard boxes I had to add both color and height.

In keeping with the purple and lime green theme, I kept an eye out for matching candies.  I went everywhere from the M&M store in Times Square (where they sell single-colored m&m's in bulk), Chelsea market for the lime green juicy pear jelly bellies (which tasted like bosc pears!), and Target for grape-flavored Mike and Ike's.  Though jars of candy look beautiful, it can get expensive (and a waste if no one eats them!).  Instead I just used these candies for a pop of color, filling one layer of candy on shallow square plates, and adding vanilla meringues on top.

Loved these glow-in-the-dark tumblers! (Though it never did get dark enough for us to see if they worked!)  We bought the tumblers, rubber ducks, and fruit tote bags from Oriental Trading.  I bought the Sour Apple Cotton Candy (found at Michaels and Duane Reade), broke off pieces, and put them on 6 Inch Lollipop Sticks.  (Yes they tasted really sour!)

I had such a good time putting this spread together - especially because the parents-to-be are good friends of ours and exceptionally wonderful people! 

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