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Operation Shower San Diego: Go Baby Go!

February 6, 2013 | No Comments »

What’s that you say? Another Operation Shower? Uh, yea?! We don’t stop. Our absolute favorite organization is constantly on the go, providing baby showers for military moms across the country. We were lucky to be asked to design a table for the Go Baby Go shower in San Diego at Torrey Pines!

This time around, we got to use designs from the amazing Hostess with the Mostess!

For our table we created a hatbox centerpiece with a mobile scene around the base. Topped it off with some clouds and an adorable Airplane Piggy Bank from Pottery Barn Kids.

Our napkin treatments came with a little gift for the mommies, made by my sweet daughter. She hand sewed these rosette pins all by herself. I couldn’t resist adding them to the table!

Just a little ric-rac and some buttons never hurt anybody! Oh and chevron too….

Jelly bean moat… you saw it right here!

Mommies received a little favor box full of jelly beans and a couple of gifts for baby. We gave them all Train Nightlights and Puzzles from PBK.

The dessert table was easily the eye candy of the room… no pun intended. I could not take my eyes off of the gorgeous sweets these vendors supplied. Everything looked almost too good to eat!… almost.

Pushcakes from Meringue Bake shop, Macarons by Jennywenny Cakes, and the star of the table, a flawless cake by Hey There Cupcake.

The lovely mommies of the day. They all received a goodie bag from USO and two packages of diapers!

Each expecting mom was given a box of gifts, and some special moms won raffle prizes!

Of course we found a few cuties in the crowd for you

Table design from YourBash!

Adorable table from Tori at Thoughtfully Simple

Loving the table edge from Nancy at A to Z Celebrations

Super cute design from Montrilla at Lavender Pudding

Two adorable tables from Michelle at Maddycakes

Designs by Made by a Princess

Table by Tawnia Fischer Design

Love love love the flower arrangements! I Go You Go

One of my favorite tables by Carolyn from The Christmas Specialists

Anything chalkboard goes for me! Table by Shawna Brockmeier Styled Events

Paper & Cake girls!!!

it’s intern time!

January 29, 2013 | No Comments »

Paper & Cake is seeking a Graphic Design Production intern!
We are looking for a fun, creative, smart and savvy intern to join us at the office and help make Paper & Cake a household name!

Job Description:
1.   Finalize design concepts
2.   Apply artwork to templates
3.   Create PDFs for consumer use
4.   Upload jpgs, text and PDF files to wordpress website
5.   Optimize SEO on new and existing products
6.   Organize and backup files on cloud

Intern Requirements:
1.   Must be experienced with Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
2.   Experience with HTML/CSS/javascript is a plus.
3.   Knowledge of Acrobat is a plus
4.   Must be dedicated and have a desire to learn and be a team player with a positive attitude.
5.   Must have laptop with Adobe Creative suite 4 or better
6.   If in school, should be enrolled in a graphic design or related degree
7.   Internship is for 1 semester
8.   Work 10 hours per week.
9.    Should be local to the Long Beach, CA area

Time commitment: 10 hours per week with an initial 1 semester commitment. This is an unpaid internship, we will fill out appropriate paperwork to for school credit. To apply, email us at info@paperandcake.com.

peace & human rights night

December 27, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Peace & Human Rights Night is an event annually celebrated at my kid’s school, right before we break for the holidays. Naturally, I seem to have a hand in any type of event they throw… I can’t help it. Since chalkboard is the new mustache, we went there. If you have noticed, we have this wine bottle obsession, much like any avid Pinterest-goer. We took our wine bottles (scroll to bottom to see previous uses) and spray painted them with chalkboard paint. We used burlap and snowflakes to adorn everything- and I mean everything! The great thing about burlap is that its so versatile and goes well with just about any color palette. I personally like the rustic, deconstructed look it gives to a tablescape. Each bottle got a big burlap bow and some sparkly branches. We took some fishing wire and strung snowflakes along and hung them from wire. We wrapped some gifts with snowflake patterned craft paper and gave each a gift tag made from book pages… Tom Sawyer to be exact!

Some bottles were already painted white, so those got a hefty dose of glitter spray and a wrap around of the snowflake craft paper. Because no craft is complete without a mason jar, we filled some with snow and suspended some snowflakes in them for a “snowglobe” feel.

After the buffet of tamales and cupcakes, the kids hit the stage. Jack’s class created a musical accompaniment to a dance routine, and miss Autumn wrote a short play where she was a Unicorn Cop… you heard me. And it was awesome! Crazy kids had a great time and overall the night was a success.

Here’s how we’ve used our wine bottles in the past!:

Sweet Heart Valentine’s Day Decor

A Masquerade Prom

Staff Holiday Party Decor

it’s kind of a funny christmas

December 18, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Let’s face it, the perfect family Christmas portrait is darn near impossible to achieve, especially when you have young children! Over the past several years, it has become a tradition to do things a little bit differently when it comes to taking the Holiday card picture – somewhat out of necessity. So, without further ado, the 2012 Barnes family Christmas card…

2012 “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, when family photos and bribery go hand in hand.”

~~~

Here’s a look at our Christmas Cards from the past few years!

2011: The fine print reads,
“The only thing that has saved them from craigslist is the fact that they have always been
such cute kids, don’t you think? Although, we are willing to let you have them, for
the low low price of a 6 pack & a chocolate cream pie.”

~~~

2010: Can you tell I had a lot on my mind??

~~~

2009: Crazy kids, crazy husband, crazy life! Once upon a time we were able to get it together…

~~~

2008: Have you met my daughter the crafter? She kind of runs the show.

~~~

2007: Busy is an understatement… I particularly love this one because it seems to be the truest depiction of what life is really like in the Barnes family!

~~~

2006: That’s right, I have a cardboard cutout of my husband. Beat that!

Wishing you and your goofy, funny, crazy and wonderful families a
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

autumn’s annual holiday craft bazaar

December 13, 2012 | 1 Comment »

My daughter, the crafter… I don’t know where she gets it from! Last year my daughter, Autumn, came up with this idea to throw her very own Holiday Craft Bazaar. She handmade ornaments and holiday adornments and sold them to the neighborhood just as if she was running a lemonade stand. This year, we cranked the crafting up a notch and made some really cute and unique things.

For the little bottle caps, she cut out images from her favorite magazines and glued them with mod podge. After adding a little glitter and glue, she turned them into a pin. Clever little girl. She also took clear plastic ornaments and sprayed them with chalkboard paint. Also, notice the cute little felt ornaments and garland we (I mean she) whipped up!

To my surprise, this event was wildly successful! Autumn literally sold every single item. Here’s what she sold:

Bottlecap Pins
Gift Tags with hand drawn Holiday images by Autumn
Party Food Labels and Recipe cards with hand drawn images by Jack
Felt Garland
Chalkboard Ornaments
Felt Snowmen, Christmas Trees, Gingerbread Men, and Mitten Ornaments
Wooden Ornament Rounds

Jack also got involved with his sweet treats and hot chocolate stand… needless to say, we all had a great time! Huge thanks to our AMAZING friends who came out to support Autumn and her bazaar ideas. See you next year!

How to: Sugar Cookie Garland

December 10, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I love sugar cookies. I love pretty garland. Do you get where I’m going with this? Whether you have your own tried and true homemade recipe, or some sugar cookie mix in a box, just follow along how we made our own shaped cookies into a beautiful and tasty garland.

Start out by mixing up your dough, split in in half, and refrigerate both pieces for an hour or so. Take half of the cold dough, and roll it out on a floured surface – you can either grab your cookie cutters at this time, or cut out a paper template to trace around and cut out your cookies by hand.

Once you have a group of cookie shapes cut out, you will need to punch a hole at the top – for your ribbon later. We used a plain pastry decorating tip, it can be any size really, just keep in mind that the hole will be smaller after baking. Place those cookies on a silicone baking mat (for best results), and bake in a preheated oven according to your dough instructions. Repeat until all of your dough is used – or until the kids start screaming.

After you take them out of the oven, cool completely before decorating.

Our cookie mix came with frosting, but you can make your own Royal Icing (works best for piping), just color it with food coloring. You can also use candy melts in your favorite Holiday colors (this is what we did). Grab some pastry bags, and get creative!

Lastly, find a nice sturdy piece of ribbon to hang them – we used red ric rack. We hung them between two cabinet nobs so we could be sure they would stay in place before gobbling them up. Now, let’s be realistic here – this cookie garland isn’t going to last until Christmas. It will be eaten by dinner time. It may be best to set this up for a surprise when the kids come home from school, or for eating right after your holiday meal. Sugar cookies usually get soft as they sit out, so if you can imagine they may start falling off of the string after a day or two. Have fun with it, and Happy Holidays!!

holiday baking: mini pies

December 6, 2012 | No Comments »

I. Love. Pie. But then you may have already known that? It was my turn to host Thanksgiving at my house this year, so of course I chose to make way too many tiny pies. We all know that apple and pumpkin are the traditional expectations, so I decided to add a little surprise. Lemon! And not lemon meringue ether – because really who likes the meringue part? Lemon Cream is the way to go. I borrowed Martha’s recipe, and you might be thinking, “Martha’s recipes are always too complicated!” – not this time! Nope. Easy and above and beyond the favorite pie this year. In fact, we have 3 Christmases in our family and I plan to have this ready to go for all of them. I should probably go find someone with a lemon tree.

Martha’s Best Ever Lemon Cream Pie

FOR THE PIE AND FILLING
◦   1 recipe Our Favorite Pie Crust, unbaked
◦   4 large eggs
◦   1 cup sugar
◦   1/2 cup sour cream
◦   3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 4 lemons)
◦   1/4 teaspoon salt

FOR THE TOPPING
◦   1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin (from a 1/4-ounce envelope)
◦   1 1/2 cups heavy cream
◦   1/4 cup sugar

Directions
1.   Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line crust with aluminum foil; leave an overhang and fold over edge. Fill crust with dried beans, pie weights, or uncooked rice. Place crust on a baking sheet; bake until set and lightly golden, about 20 minutes. Remove foil (and beans). Bake without foil, 5 to 10 minutes more; if crust bubbles up, press down gently. Cool.
2.   Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk eggs, sugar, sour cream, and salt; gradually whisk in lemon juice. Pour mixture into crust. Place on a baking sheet; bake until barely set (center of pie will still wiggle slightly), 25 to 35 minutes. Cool completely.
3.   Make topping: Place 2 tablespoons cold water in a small saucepan, and sprinkle with gelatin; let soften about 5 minutes. Heat mixture over very low heat, stirring, until gelatin dissolves. Let cool.
4.   In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat cream and sugar until very soft peaks form. While beating, slowly add gelatin mixture, and continue beating until soft peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, spread over cooled pie. Refrigerate until ready to serve, at least 1 hour or, loosely covered, up to 1 day.

Let me know how it goes? and Happy Holidays!

Operation Shower: land of wonder

December 4, 2012 | No Comments »

If you hadn’t noticed yet, we are kind of in love with Operation Shower. We have, yet again, designed a set of themed baby shower printables for one of our favorite non-profit organizations. This time around: Land of Wonder. This was a “whimsical winter wonderland” inspired collection with lots of snow globes, snow flakes, and toys – in shades of purple and blue. Operation Shower partnered with Babies R Us this time and showed these mommies-to-be in Ft. Hood, TX with a little bit of love… and wonder!

Get involved! Volunteer / Donate / Support Operation Shower today!

Sweets Table by Love The Day and BellaGrey Designs
Cookies by Firefly Confections
Printables by Paper & Cake
Photography by Elayne Dunn Photography
Gift wrap and boxes by Nashville Wraps

We do LOVE this design… don’t you think it would be perfect for a baby’s first birthday?
Stay tuned for our Winter ONEderland set… coming soon!

Cricut Craft: advent calendar

November 29, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Advent Calendars. You HAVE to have them during the Holiday season. But, instead of loading the kids up with candy, candy, CANDY… I decided to use this calendar as a way of loading them up with Holiday activities! We partnered up with Cricut to create this quick and easy craft with our Cricut Mini. Here’s how we did it. Using our Cricut Mini and some gorgeous scrapbooking paper from Martha Stewart, we chose a specific palette of golds and silvers and mapped out an ornament themed calendar.

We trimmed the paper so that it would fit on the Cricut cutting mat. Once trimmed, we loaded that baby into the machine!

Using the Cricut Craft Room software (which you can download directly from the website) we carefully aligned our ornament shapes onto the grid. We used the Holiday Basics Rental Bundle to get the ornament shapes. This cartridge is particularly good because it has about 700 holiday images! We had 6 different kinds of paper so we only did 4 different days (ornaments) on each paper. Following the instructions on the software, we began to cut!

To be honest, we had no idea how precise the cutting was going to be – it was awesome! Super fast too. Once the items were cut, we simply just peeled the paper off of the cutting mat. We repeated the previous steps until we used each paper and had all of our days covered.

Instead of just leaving the ornaments as is, we decided to add a little bit of neon fun to our silver and gold. So naturally, we went with hot pink! Using the same template for the numbered ornaments, we cut out 24 pink shapes (without numbers).

We didn’t just stop at 24 like most advent calendars, we did the big 25! And big it was!

To turn this into a true advent calendar, we had to add a hidden aspect. On the pink ornaments (or whichever type of backing you choose) you can write any type of Holiday activity ie. Go to the snow, Wrap Gifts, Make Gingerbread House, etc. Make it fun and make it your own!

And let the Holiday fun begin!

P&C real life party: Rock Star Birthday

November 29, 2012 | 2 Comments »

My sweet daughter turned 10 in February, and wanted to celebrate with her friends by rocking out to some of her favorite tunes and singing Karaoke. I was able to transform the living room, by lining the walls with zebra print wrapping paper and purple and black netting, into a club atmosphere complete with a stage and a space for the audience to sit or stand and rock out. We used our karaoke machine with an ipod to play a wide variety of tweeny bopper music and printed out some of the more popular song lyrics to sing with. With a spinning disco light nearby, and plenty of Paper Jamz guitars to borrow, girls and boys alike donned temporary tattoos, feather boas and 80s-hair-band-wigs (I’m not even kidding) and jumped on stage to perform.

Between sets, we offered a little rockstar craft project. My good friend Heather at the Sewing Loft, sent over her “how-to” guide for creating zipper flowers. Ordinary zippers were reworked into edgy little flowers that we then hot glued onto headbands. I was a little worried that the craft table would be largely ignored what with all the sparkle and glitter going on in the adjacent room – boy was I wrong!

My daughter decided on what we would serve her friends for food and beverages – and sweet treats too. Fruit, veggies and cheese and crackers, popcorn and veggie chips were perfect energy food for dancing. Grape jello with strawberries and whip cream, cake pops, cupcakes and push-up cupcakes provided the all important sugar rush. There was also a “Manager’s Only” area (for the mommies) where we served coffee drinks, ice tea, and grown-up only munchies.

Hope you find inspiration from her memorable party, to throw your own! Just stop by the shop for our Rock Star printable set. Special thanks to Missy Marie Photography for the unbelievable photography, to the Sewing Loft for the awesome Zipper Flower Headband Craft Project and to Jenn at Hostess with the Mostess for the great feature on her website!

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