Candy Mini-Reception

I haven't posted anything in a while... but that's because I've been so busy

planning bridal showers! I will have to get better at posting them, because they

are just too cute... anyways... this past Sunday, my church had a little reception

to honor a couple who served as Interim Youth Directors for the last 14

months. So I put together a few decorations to go along with the reception.

It isn't too over the top, but it's still adorable.

We thought something fun to decorate with would be candy... who

doesn't like candy?!? I decided I was going to make gumball topiaries.

They turned out super cute.... but I'll be honest - it was HARD to make them!

My sister had a bunch of these little pails that she painted bright colors for me.

I put a piece of floral foam in the bucket, stuck a dow rod in it, and covered it

with glass beads.  I hot glued gumballs to a circle styrofoam and then put the gumball

circle on the top of the dow rod. The final touch was a simple bow around the dow rod.

Making these were more difficult than I thought, because the gumballs didn't stick

so well to the styrofoam. They kept falling off and I had to re-glue a LOT.  Also, the

gumballs were pretty heavy, so the circle would have a tendency to lean to one side instead

 of straight up. I even had one dow rod go straight through the top of the gumball circle.

Also, hot gluing the gumballs was messier than I thought - glue strands were everywhere

and I spent a lot of time picking them off the gumballs.

After I made four of the gumball topiaries, I decided to make things easier

on myself and made the rest of the centerpieces with blowpops. This took

about 5 minutes total, and the blow pops could still be eaten after they served

their purpose. I put glass beads in the bottom of the pail, bought a half circle

styrofoam piece, and stuck the blow pops into the styrofoam. Added a bow

around the pail, and it's done.

I made a couple banners to hang at the reception using a Cricut. They said

"thanks john & amy" and "you did a SWEET job!"

I didn't want the reception to look too girly... so I decided to use blue as the main

accent color. We used blue plates and blue polka dot napkins.  The drink dispensers

had blue fabric in the bottom, and then I put some leftover gumballs on top of the fabric.

I used gray fabric to make "curtains" on the black scrims and white lattice, and cinched

the fabric with blue ribbon and blue fabric. 

My favorite part of this reception was the Candy Thank You Card. I came

up with the wording, and my sister put the card together for me. She took

the pictures before she found all the candy for it, so some parts of the card

have post it notes where candy bars ended up being. But here's what it says:

Dear John & Amy,

We were going to give you 100 GRAND to show you how much we

appreciate you. With that money, we thought you might get a pet KITKAT,

or go on a trip to New YORK, or ORBIT around... 

the MILKY WAY. But... the money slipped right through our

BUTTERFINGERs. We are down to zilch, really, I mean ZERO.

We didn't have an EXTRA WHACHAMACALLIT to sell, and it wasn't

PAYDAY. Then we realized that a WHOPPER of a gift would be to tell you

that even though we sometimes act like AIRHEADS and may have played

TWIX on you, we think you are such a SMARTEE and have taught us

RUNTS in the youth group GOOD N PLENTY about our LIFESAVER.

Hopefully, leading us this past year gave you MOUNDS of

ALMOND JOY!!! From the GOOBERS of youth group

who love ya to PIECES.

Hopefully I'll get around to posting more often... Have a

great day and God bless =)