Easy Christmas Entertaining!!!

Having a party this Christmas? It does not have to be stressful, you can decorate for only a few dollars and dazzle your guests, without them know any different.

When you decorate your house for Christmas and your party, one rule is key, uniformity, if you keep everything one or two colours and continue a theme throughout your decor, automatically you create a cleaner look and one that will wow all visitors to your home. Pull natural elements into your home, take a clear vase and fill it with branches you can collect from outside and hang a few Christmas bulbs on them. Boughs from evergreens around your house looks fresh and also provides a great Christmas atmosphere. Branches are free...and a vases you can even get at your local dollar store or department store and then they are yours forever.
As for adding colour, most stores sell their decorations in a colour scheme and price them rather reasonably.

For serving your food, if your platters and dishes are not uniform, do not worry! find a garnish that you can use for all of your platters of food, and if you insist on matching platters...again, visit your local dollar store, for amazing deals on everything.

The is only one splurge that I would recommend for your party, and that is a service staff. For any gathering of more than 10 people, a valuable expense is to hire someone to help you serve your food, beverages and clean up!!! You want to enjoy your party, not spend all your time in the kitchen during your party. Service staff can take care of everything, and be that helping hand that will not complain about helping you out. Service staff can cost as little as $100 an evening, a very small price to pay for the best party of the season!

For more information or to hire a service staff, contact Pumpkin today!!!

Top 5 Tips for Helping Your Wedding Day run Smoothly

Wedding day can be a stressful experience if not planned for carefully. There are many details that have to be planned for and considered in order to prevent stress, unexpected satiations, conflicts and misunderstandings between you and vendors as well as among family members. Here are a few helpful hints that will ensure your BIG day will run smoothly and be as memorable and exiting as you have pictured it.

1) Have an up-to-the minute schedule for the day of the wedding – sit down with your fiancé, family members and even close friends and think through every minute of your day – when you wake up, time for preparations, traffic account into your schedule, etc. On the day of the wedding try to relax, have family and bridesmaids around, and have a glass of champagne to clear your thoughts and take away the pressure. Do NOT drink more than one day as being tipsy on your wedding day can ruin the experience.

2) Take your time while walking down the aisle – many brides do not realize when they are walking to the altar too quickly, which makes harder for photographers and videographers to make pictures and videos. Make an effort to slow down and really enjoy walking down the aisle – after all, you are the most important person in the room!

3) Check other large events that are happening on the day of your wedding. Keep in mind that large political, cultural, and celebration events such as elections, visits of political parties in the city, and musical concerts may make it hard for you to book a hall, reserve a block of rooms in the hotel, and book a limo or a number of buses. Due to large number of people visiting the city during such events, vendors may not have a piece of business that they can offer you.

4) Choose your first dance as man and wife carefully – make sure you have chosen a song that will really connect you two on the dance floor, ensure there is an adequate space in the hall’s dance floor, and practice the dance many times beforehand. Nothing can be worse than having to concentrate on the moves instead of enjoying your first official day together.

5) Segregate the roles among your family members – when it comes to making important decisions such as choosing the dress, buying the cake or renting a hall for the day of the wedding, all of the family members from your and your fiancé’s side absolutely must participate and tell you what they think should be your choice. And of course, at the end you have 12 or so people who want to go everywhere with you because they ‘just want to help’. Instead, this can slow down the planning process, make you loose your concentration on what YOU want, and just look awkward in front of the vendors. To prevent this situation and make everyone happy and feeling important you should separate the duties among all the family embers so that each person can help you with a particular aspect of the wedding. For example, you mom will help you with a dress, your maid of honor can plan a bridesmaid’s party, and you really need your aunt’s help to decide what flowers should you choose for hall decoration.

It is great if you have already considered those tips, however with some many things involved in planning the wedding there is a chance that little details can be forgotten until it is too late. Have a GREAT wedding!

april...may...JUNE!!!!

Ahhhh wedding season is upon us and it is down to crunch time. With only 3 short months to the month of June, one of the busiest months for weddings, it is easy to get over whelmed with the ever increasing list of things to do. You can not complete one thought before another fills your brain and before you know it you are in panic mode!!!

My advice is first to Relax!!!

Panic will only make matters worse, instead get out a pen and paper and start a list. Many times if you can visually see everything that you need to get done, it does not seem so over whelming.

Start by writing down everything that you have to do in any order that is comes to you. Then develop a ranking system for yourself. Get out those coloured high lighters or simply use a 1-5 system. Once your list is complete use your rating/colour coating system to figure out what needs to really be done now, and what can wait until tomorrow or even next week.

The next step is to divide and conquer. Now is the time to recruit your friends and family to assist you with your list of things to do.

Keep your list and add to it as you need to. This will help keep your wedding plans in check and you and everyone else around much happier!!!

Pumpkin my Pumpkin

Welcome to my Blog...and my life as an Event Planner turned Entrepreneur!!! Currently I am in the early stages of creating and running my own Event Planning company.

My company's name is Pumpkin and a side effect of this is that I have become Pumpkin...yes against all business advice...I have become one with my company...but how could I not, Event Planning is my passion, new ideas, the creativity, the innovation, seeing what works, what does not and finally putting these to the test!

What have I come up with Event Planning that works...for everybody and anybody, any idea, any theme, and event type, and any budget.

Welcome to my Blog and welcome to my journey as I document the excitement, the stress, the ups and downs, and the ultimate success to creating and running my own Event Planning company!!!