Summer Sips & Sweets with Desiree Hartsock

I think one of my talents is being able to come up with any excuse to throw a party. Last week I co-hosted a super fun girls night with my friend Desiree Hartsock.  We invited a few of our girlfriends over for a relaxing night of cookie decorating and cheese eating! I mean, who wouldn’t love that?? We gave the night a Summer Sips and Sweets theme with a yellow and mint green color palate.

For the “sips” we invited OneHope Wine to be a part of our night, with proceeds donated to United Way of King County, and for the “sweets” I gave our guests a DIY cookie baking and decorating lesson in my signature sugar cookies!

First things first, invites.  We sent out these gorgeous invites Minted created for us.  As always, Minted continually impresses me with their amazing stationary.

Guests were greeted at my door with the most darling aprons from Jessie Steele. They make my absolute favorite aprons. Always the cutest fabrics and best fitting. Who cares what you’re wearing underneath, pop one of their aprons over a plain white tee and you’ll look great!!

My friend Sarah from Paper White Designs made these adorable paper garlands to look like lemons and this vintage paper ruffled garland. She posted the garland on Instagram a few months back and I had to have it. I knew I’d find a party to use it!

I really enjoyed setting the table for the cookie decorating. I pulled out my jadite and milk glass plates, and vintage yellow hobnail glass. I couldn’t have found a more perfect coordinating fabric at JoAnn Fabrics and turned it into a makeshift table runner, then filled the center of table with the yellow glass and simple white cake plates. Cut wood rounds made an interesting “charger” and added some nice texture to the table.

Had to include some “sample” cookies for the girls to enjoy while they decorated their cookies.

To keep everyone’s glasses straight, and instead of using cheesy wine charms (SO hard to find anything cute), I found washi tape in yellows and greens from cutetape.com and made simple flags on each glass stem. SUPER SIMPLE and it turned out adorable!

What’s a party without FROST? My favorite local doughnut and sweets shop made us coordinating yellow and green (buttermint and pistachio) macarons for our special occasion!

Instead of doing a big dinner, we decided on a cheese and crackers appetizer bar. This table was so fun to create. Typically I’m setting dessert tables filled with cakes and cookies, so this was a nice change! I loved how it turned out.

See those awesome dried fruits? If you aren’t familiar, you HAVE to check out Simple & Crisp. I met Jane (owner of Simple & Crisp) at an Anthropologie event earlier this year. She introduced herself and sent me a few samples of her fruit crisps to play around with. I’m obsessed! They are not only so gorgeous to look at but pair with SO much. They have a giant list on their website with all kinds of ideas. They were such a perfect fit for our cheese and crackers bar.

One of the best comments of the night was hearing Desiree say “I love this! This is my first apron!!” as she put her apron on. So funny to me because as a baker, I go through aprons like crazy. Go Des!! Hopefully this cookie night will inspire future baking.

After everyone had something to eat, we put our aprons on and started our cookie class. It was really fun to have girlfriends over to do it since none of them had ever taken my actual cookie course. The girls gathered in my kitchen as I demonstrated how to make my sugar cookie dough, roll it out, and bake the perfect cookies.

The girls followed along in my new book Eat More Dessert. (My sugar cookie and icing recipes are featured prominently throughout the book) I’m not kidding when I say this recipe is NO FAIL and people go crazy for these cookies!

After the cookies were baked, I demonstrated how to make icing and how to fill decorating bags. Using my favorite Wilton products, each gal was shown how to cut a disposable decorating bag, insert a coupler, attach a decorating tip, and fill with icing. If you’ve never done this before, it can be a little challenging. After cutting a few bags back a little too much, each girl successfully filled their bag with icing fitted with a decorating tip! It seems daunting but once you do it, it’s SO MUCH faster than decorating cookies with a knife!!

After everyone had filled icing bags, I gave the girls a quick lesson in decorating their cookies. We baked summer themed cookies, lemons, assorted flowers, and the cutest ice cream cones and sundaes! You can find all the same cutters we used at Wilton.com.

The girls were doubtful they could do it but them totally surprised themselves. They all did so great!!

As the girls decorated their cookies, I brought out their gift bags. What’s a party without a fun swag bag?? I was so excited about these bags, I literally went through every gift inside explaining what it was and where we found them!

We were absolutely spoiled by Lily and Jade with the most beautiful bags. Lily and Jade is most known for their designer baby bags but these bags are also THE most incredible bags for any woman, with a baby or not! There are so many pockets and cubbies, it’s nearly impossible to lose your keys or lipgloss in the bottom of your handbag. See that blue insert I’m holding? It comes out! So pack it full with all your day essentials and pull it out for an adorable handbag! This bag is a life changer.

The girls loved decorating their cookies and were beside themselves when I brought out a Wilton decorating kit for each gal to take home! The best mixing bowls, icing colors, decorating tips, my have-to-have cookie spatula and more!

Want to see what was tucked inside each Lily and Jade bag? Frost Macarons and Simple & Crisp dried fruits for the girls’ late night snacks!

Bip and Bop personalized bar necklaces for each gal. LOVE THESE!

Nickel and Suede leather earrings. Adorbs!

Horse Feathers Gifts beaded mint bracelets. The perfect bracelet for a simple jewelry day, or amazing to stack with others!

She Does Justice headwraps. SO fun for a day at the beach or when you don’t feel like washing your hair!

Lara Casey notepads, journals, and darling inspirational cards. Who doesn’t love a fresh journal and notepad? I’m the queen of lists so I love these!!

And lastly these gorgeous personalized Druzy necklaces by Wrenn Jewelry! Wrenn Jewelry offers just about every color stone you can imagine. These necklaces are so great and make the perfect gift. I love finding new goodies to give as gifts. So much more special and thoughtful than grabbing a gift card.

And guess what?? Desiree and I want one of you to have all of these same goodies we spoiled our guests with! That’s right! Enter below to WIN all the swag from our Summer Sips and Sweets party below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

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Photography by KCB Photograhy

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