Bye Bye Birdie

(I totally hate that musical, by the way). So remember when I shared my ideas for the Widows' reception at our church? Well, today was the big day. I thought I'd post a few of the highlights.

Here's the buffet centerpiece:

The plants are Dusty Miller. They were sold in 6-packs in the Walmart nursery, and they were 50% off, so I paid 84 cents per 6-pack. My original intent was to use English Ivy or another trailing plant, but I just couldn't find any cheap enough and in small enough pots. We cut the 6-packs apart and wrapped the little pots in burlap, then tied them off with synthetic raffia ribbon. We also tied on little "You are loved" tags. In addition to this centerpiece, we clustered several more Dusty Millers in pots on a few of the tables.




We put squares of burlap on the tables, then added a large twig, a next (or a pot with Dusty Miller), a few eggs, and a couple of glass bowls filled with crinkled paper (we put Robin's Egg malted eggs in these bowls).




I even made cute little nest cupcakes. But I forgot to take a picture of them at the reception! Here's a picture of the buffet table, and you can kind of see them:


When I realized I didn't have a better picture, I took the leftovers out of the freezer and took this picture of a few cupcakes on top of the washing machine! And just so you know, after I took this picture, I had to eat one. Oh yes I did. And just so you know, Brian had to eat one too. I love frozen frosting. Reminds me of those little Baskin Robbins ice cream cone clowns I used to get as a kid. But I digress. So anyway, here's a closeup of the cupcakes on the washing machine. The colors are kind of wacko. In reality, the jelly beans are very pale mint green and a pretty turquoise blue. I only made small cupcakes for the reception, but I made 4 large ones because I had a little extra batter.


At the end of the reception, each of the widows received a long-stemmed rose:

(the cute nametags, by the way, were made by another deacon's wife, Rosalyn)

They also took home a Dusty Miller plant and a box of goodies:


We had a good time visiting with these sweet ladies. Some of them are under 45. Some of them are newly widowed. Some of them have been widowed for many years. God tells us to care for the widows and the orphans, but we were blessed today by our time with them.

It was a fun reception, but now it's time to put all the birdies and nests away. I'm going to share one nest with one of the ladies that was there today. But now? Right now it's time for this little chickie to get some rest!