An elephant sized celebration - Our wee boy turns 2

This past weekend we celebrated our wee man's second birthday......I can't believe he is two already, where has the time gone? I guess it is true what they say though, that "time flies when you are having fun", and we have had trunk loads....

So many ideas were buzzing in my head when it came to planning a theme for his party, but when it came down to it there was really no debate. Our little man's favourite toy is his constant companion Ellie........a very unusual looking stuffed elephant. So an elephant theme it was to be.

First step was designing the invitation. I had settled on a soft colour palette of grey and lemon with a chevron pattern and balloons as added details. It is a double sided invitation with "Callum is 2" on the reverse. This was used as a poster backdrop for the dessert table as well.

Grey & Lemon - Elephant themed birthday invitation

I sent the invitation through to my super talented mum (Trudy) and she matched the dessert table elements to the invitation perfectly.

Some of the yummy desserts Trudy created for the day:

• Vanilla Elephant cupcakes - with vanilla butter cream and a fondant elephant topper.
• Absolutely GORGEOUS gingerbread elephant cookies (also as individual take home favours)
• Bite sized lemon curd tartlets
• A beautiful Lemon and Poppyseed birthday cake covered in lemon fondant with a cute elephant topper
• Passionfruit macarons

 ooops, macarons are not added to the table yet in this image.

 Elephant cupcakes, Gingerbread cookies, Lemon curd tartlets

 Lemon & poppyseed cake, Passionfruit Macarons, Vanilla cupcakes

 We also had a couple of take home party favours:

• Test Tube Pina-Colada jelly beans with custom labels
• Mini Lindt chocolate bars with custom wrapper
• Take home gingerbread cookies with custom bag topper that read "pack one in your trunk for the trundle home".

 Pina-colada jelly beans - take home favours with custom labelling

 Take home gingerbread cookies with custom bag topper

 Lindt chocolate bars with customised chevron wrapper

It was such a fun and beautiful day, Callum had a fabulous time and was spoilt rotten with very generous gifts from his doting Aunt's and Uncle's, family and friends.

Our wee boy enjoying his chocolate milk.

All of the printables from Callum's party are now available for purchase. Prices start from as little as $15 for the invitation. We can also provide a quote for a tailored cake and desserts. Our details are available on the contacts page.

All artwork and printables - Kylie, The Little Oak Tree

Styling and Photography - Kylie, The Little Oak Tree

Catering, Cake and Desserts - Trudy, The Little Oak Tree

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Invitation - 2011 Seafood & Semillon Festival

Sunshine, seafood and a cold glass of Semillon......Yummo, so where is the invite!

Funny you should ask, as we recently created these summery little invites for a group of friends that were holding their annual Seafood and Semillon Festival.

DL sized, the invites are double sided with the wine glass silhouette on the front and the wine bottle detailing all of the information on the reverse.

Printed on 300gsm white card stock and presented in translucent glassine envelopes.

The invite is completely customisable and is available for purchase for only $15AUD. Just drop us a line and we can discuss your needs.

Roll on the long hot Summer!

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Invitation - Best of British (London Calling) Farewell Party

We recently created a gorgeous invitation for a very special young woman who is heading to London for a year.

Based on the highly popular "Keep Calm and Carry On" British World War II poster, the invitation is double sided with a full bleed Union Jack on the reverse. The A6 invitation is printed on 300gsm white card stock with a matte cello-glaze finish.

Mailed in royal blue matte C6 envelopes we think these invites look lovely jubbly !

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Stay tuned for photos of the farewell as The Little Oak Tree will also be creating the dessert table and cake.

If you have an upcoming event, we can create bespoke invitations for you at a cost that won't break the bank, just drop us a line.

Have a grand day,
 

A Rustic Country Birthday Celebration

Last Saturday was the weekend of the big 30th country birthday party that we were styling. I had already created the invitations weeks earlier (you can read about that post here,) Trudy had completed the birthday cake which was designed as a cowboy hat, and everything was falling into place for the big day.

Sydney had been experiencing some gorgeous weather leading up to the day so I was relatively confident that the outdoor event we had planned would go off without a hitch......Hmm can you sense my overconfidence!!!! Even with all of our planning and detailing we couldn't control the weather, cue freezing temperatures, black clouds and howling wind ! Thankfully it didn't rain though.

Picture a huge bonfire with bales of hay for seating, roasting marshmallows, sun setting and people relaxing on the lawn, drink in hand.....NOT ! The wind was so fierce, if we attempted to light the fire I think we would have burnt down half the countryside.

The marquee where the dessert table was supposed to be nearly blew away ! We had designed the dessert table to sit beneath the white marquee with a sheer white cotton curtain backdrop, bare tree branches with glass ball votive candles were to be suspended above the table and tree logs were to be used as risers for the desserts. Given the horrible weather, this gorgeous design flew out the window, along with every other outdoor activity. Trudy and I quickly turned to plan B, the bonfire was canned, the dessert table was set up indoors, and the drink station was moved under the verandah of the house, but most disappointingly for us, we didn't get to see the full design come to life. Oh mother nature certainly is a cruel mistress.

So, the big lesson for us was to never take the weather for granted and to always have a rock solid plan B, for when everything turns pear shaped.

Here are a few shots of the day courtesy of my gorgeous photographer husband. Thanks babe x

We tied a manila tag with brown string to each of the bottles, the idea being that the guests wrote their name on the tag to "keep their glass for the night". If you have a large party of guests that don't know each other, the tags on the glass make it an easy reminder if a name slips their mind.

Some of the props we placed around the property to help enhance the "country" feel. Used wine barrels old steel wheels and the owners driza-bone and Akubra hat. The birthday boy is affectionately referred to as "tractor boy" this was captured in the invitations with the silhouette of the tractor removing trees from the property. The party wouldn't have been complete without the tractor, so we drove it on to the lawn and it worked well as a cheeky reference.

The drink station under the verandah.

The dessert table was moved inside due to the horrible weather. The cowboy hat cake was designed and created by Trudy, and was nearly picked up accidentally by an unsuspecting guest. The cake was a caramel mud cake with white chocolate ganache covered in fondant.

The Little Oak Tree designed and catered the dessert menu. The key ingredient was caramel, which we were told was a favourite of the birthday boy.

Featured on the table:

~ Lamingtons

~ Rocky Road

~ Chocolate Brownies

~ Caramel Slice

~ Anzac Biscuits

~ Fleur de sel Caramel Macarons

~ Fleur de sel Caramels

~ Belgian Chocolate Mousse w' whipped cream and caramel sauce

As I mentioned in a previous post we trialled a new recipe from the Miette cook book for the Fleur de Sel Caramels. These were such a success, we should have made two batches.

Vendor Credits

Glass beverage dispenser - The Little Big Company

Paper Straws - The Little Big Company

Mosser milk glass cake stand - Sweet Style

Invitations, printables and styling - The Little Oak Tree

30th Country Birthday Invitations

Just finished the print and assembly of the invitations I designed for the rustic country 30th birthday party. 

A lovely package all wrapped up with brown paper and string ready for delivery. Hope the birthday boy likes them. 

I loved using the brown and blue colour palette. I wanted to make the matte brown envelopes a little more interesting, so I customised them by adding lovely striped paper on the inside flap which was individually hand cut and glued in, this was madness in retrospect as it was a time consuming task, but I was happy with the end result.

Invitations all wrapped up and ready for delivery to the client

Hope you have a lovely weekend, let's hope we see a little sunshine.

Take care,

Our little boy is just plane sweet - Up in the air party

We are super excited today as we have just realised that Callum's first birthday party has been chosen to be featured on Babyology, only the BEST website for all things hip and happening in the baby world.   

We have been so overwhelmed by the response to our wee man's first birthday party, thank you all for your lovely comments and feedback. We would love to say a big thank you to Nikki Tandy for featuring us on such a hip website, we really are chuffed !

Callum has been rather obsessed lately with pointing his finger and loves nothing more than pointing to the sky with an excited Oooh Oooh as he watches the planes flying high. Given that he is the first grandchild in the family and that we were also having a naming ceremony for him we wanted it to be a fun celebration for all.

When it came to a theme the idea was 'plane' simple (okay I promise that is the one and only pun). Pale blue, red, white and grey are a favourite colour combination of mine and once I had settled on the little plane the invitations came together really quickly.

The invites were printed on heavy white stock and the edges trimmed with a corner punch. The red envelopes carried through the flying plane motif with the plane stamp found at Kikki-K this was stamped with white ink and then the trailing dashes were individually hand drawn with a white paint pen.

The bamboo cake forks were stamped using a red ink pad and the words "here comes the aeroplane" were hand written on each fork using a light blue paint pen.

Trudy did a fantastic job on the cake. We only had about 30 people attend but we wanted to create height with the two tier cake to enable the silhouette design to really work. The bottom tier is a classic chocolate mud cake and the top tier is a Styrofoam cake dummy. Great idea if you want to save money on cake but still make it look good. 

I discussed with Trudy the idea of having a cake with a silhouette of Callum and myself with him pointing to the plane in the sky. Trudy ran with the idea and after taking a photo and modifying it to a silhouette she hand painted the image onto the cake. The little red plane was hand made out of fondant. I think the whole cake tied in nicely with the invitations and theme I had created.

The dessert table featured a lolly bar with take home lolly bags. The cute muslin drawstring bags were the perfect size for a scoop or two of the lollies and these were personalised with the little plane motif which was printed onto iron-on paper, individually cut out and ironed on. Blue, red and white lollies followed the theme.

Some of the yummy items we created were Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with Raspberry Coulis. These were served in shot glasses and proved to be a big hit.

A little tip is to tie the spoons to the shot glasses before pouring in the panna cotta and coulis as it is quite a fiddly task and will send you bonkers. Keeping the spoons all to the same side and the ribbon tied at the same height creates a nice uniform effect when lined up together on the platter. The spoons can remain tied to the glasses and refrigerated until you want to serve.

We also wrapped mini Lindt chocolate bars with our own wrappers featuring the words "Our little boy is just plane sweet". These were also the perfect size to fit into the lolly bags.

Trudy made some moreish aeroplane gingerbread cookies covered in red fondant. These were sealed in zip lock bags with a thank-you tag that read "thanks for flying by".

Strawberry and Vanilla macarons were so popular they were snuffled up by the end of the day and the baby blue vanilla marshmallow was also a winner.

No party would be complete without a toast to the birthday boy with these cute little chocolate milk bottles.

Customised bunting printed on 200gsm card stock and then cut out and strung with twine.

The birthday boy cutting his cake and blowing out the candle.

Credits and suppliers:

Cotton muslin bags -Sharnel Dollar Designs

Bamboo cake forks - Donna Hay General Store

Milkglass Cake Stands - Sweet Style

Straws and Mini glass milk bottles - The Little Big Company

Lollies - Goody Goody Gumdrops

Printable Invitations, dessert table signage, lolly bags, thank you tags and bunting - The Little Oak Tree

Cake, cookies and catering - The Little Oak Tree

Photography - The Little Oak Tree

Please drop us an email at thelittleoaktree@exemail.com.au or leave us a comment if you would like any more info on any of the items featured in the party.