A Garden Party Kiddush

My baby is now 5 months old. Little Meira is growing into a beautiful sweet girl. 

There is a Jewish custom to hold a "kiddush" after the birth of a girl. "Kiddush" literally, "sanctification," is a blessing recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat and Jewish holidays. (Wikipedia) When you make a Kiddush, people come and give you brachos [blessings] for you and your daughter. They wish you Mazal Tov. They express all sorts of good wishes to the family and to the new baby. You can read more about it here.

I knew that I wanted to do the celebration in my backyard on a beautiful spring day. We have a really nice size backyard that would fit a lot of guests. The idea for a garden party soon evolved and so I began to make plans for my shabby chic kiddush.

 I love ETSY, it's a great source for inspirational ideas and a wonderful forum to purchase products directly from the crafters themselves. I decided to purchase the invitation and printable designs through paper+pip. She was great! Fast service and when we changed the date due to inclement weather she redid the invitation free!

I knew that I wanted to have TONS of flowers of all different varieties, but most importantly I wanted hydrangeas. I bought a bunch of mason jars in different shapes and sizes, painted them up and distressed them to make them look old and warn out. You can see how I did this in my older blog post - Shavuot Crafting. 

I used Papaya Events for all of my flowers, table clothes, tables, and chairs. Papaya is a full scale event production and rental company. They also have a local boutique floral shop (Passaic, NJ) that offers a variety of GORGEOUS floral arrangements. Devorah Deutsch the owner of Papaya Events was so awesome to collaborate ideas with!  Not only was she extremely helpful, but she was able to bend to my vision and go with all my crazy creative ideas. 

So the next thing I did was have my kids paint bird houses for me. I thought it would go with the whole vintage, shabby chic, garden party theme. I also picked up some pretend books from Michaels (thank God they were 40% off that week!). While I was there, I also got a bunch of wooden crates in a variety of sizes. I knew all of these things would be great do display the food on.  


I also made a bunch of cake plates from martini glasses and plates. I got the project idea from here.

Now the Kiddush was to be on Saturday, as an Orthodox Jew we do not use camera's or anything electric on the Sabbath. So please note that these photographs below were taken the day before the event - on Friday.


 

Kiddush Color Scheme - Burlap and Dusty Rose table clothes and a variety of shabby chic napkin.

A pretty sign on our fence "It's a Girl" 

Tissue Paper Flower Pom Pom's in our trees. 

A close up of the pom pom

Table-scape

Here is a close up of those sweet little flags in the watermelon. Too cute.

I had the cupcakes made by Malya's Sweet Treats. It was seriously like eating a cloud. They were so good.

Refrigerator stuffed with yummy foods for the Kiddush!

For the Kiddush we served tons of salads, fruits, and desserts. We had a veggie platter with chumus along with those super tasty pita chips. I got some potato kugels from our local take out store Main Ingredient. Daniel the owner was not only extremely helpful getting me checked out real quick on a busy Friday afternoon at the store, but he intuitively knew what I needed - A true gem! Thankfully people dropped off yummy baked goods and treats (I don't bake). There were so many desserts, there wasn't enough room to display it all! Malya from Malya's Sweet Treats, a local cupcake designer, made me my cupcakes. She was so open to my vision and the cupcakes came out better then I could have ever imagined. They tasted unbelievable!

All in all it was a beautiful party and we had over 200 guests show up. Yes, the clean up was a mighty big job, but it was certainly worth it. I can't wait to design another event soon!

- Abbey