Pink & Pearl Baptism Party Food Table & Decorations

So you learned all about the Pink & Pearl Baptism banner in the last post.  This is the rest of what went into our sweet girl's baptism party.  I had originally wanted the backdrop to include lacy white & pink hanging paper fans.  However, nothing was the color that I wanted.  It was all wrong.  So I scratched the idea of hanging fans & decided to talk the hubby into making some crosses with some scrap wood he had in his "man-cave/garage".  So he found some regular wood (I think these are 1x4, but I could be completely making that up) & he cut it & made it into a cross.  It was really easy (especially for me, haha) & looked great.  Then I went to paint them & remembered I had no pink paint.  But what did I have?  White paint & red paint.  Perfect.  I had gotten really crazy about the particular color of pink that I wanted everything to be.  Luckily, I was able to make this pretty close.  I think they turned out pretty great, especially for a last minute project the night before the baptism.

For the table itself, here is what the set-up looked like on my dining room table.  Here is another perfect example of my OCDness.  I do this for all of my parties.  I set up my dining room table weeks (ok, once months) in advance & I label on post-its where every dish I am making will go.  If I like the symmetry or set-up of a table & the food I am making won't work in that dish, I will sometimes change what I am making to still be able to use that dish.  Do you see where the "manic" in "Manic Mama Miles" comes from now?  Haha.  So this was the set-up I was originally going with.  You will see in the final pictures that I ditched the little bowls.  I didn't like them & we got the BBQ already with sauce on it, so I didn't need them. 

As I mentioned in the previous post about this party, I am Southern & have tons of pearls in my jewelry box.  I don't wear them as much now, but they were totally the thing when I was in college.  So I used the bracelets & necklaces to decorate the serving dishes.  I also used the necklaces to decorate the two crosses my hubby made.  The little pink candle holder is one that I got for another baby shower that is usually in Addy's room.  It turned out perfect for this party because it even looks like it has a little cross in the front.  

 

 Next up was the food.  I wanted to keep this simple with BBQ, pimento cheese, rolls, fruit, cheese, pasta salad, potato salad & sweets.  Everything was purchased except for the cupcakes.  Well and I sort of made the pasta salad...by that, I mean I mixed the ingredients in the box with some vegetable oil & the spice pack that it told me to. : )  Which is also pretty much what I did to make the cupcakes.  I love strawberry cupcakes & make them pretty much whenever I can.  So I grabbed a box & some strawberry cream cheese icing from the store & made us some strawberry cupcakes. 

 I wanted these to have a little extra, so I sprinkled some shiny crystalized sugar & added some white sugar pearls. 

 I had honestly thought about trying to make a cake.  Like a real one, but once it got down to crunch time, I backed out.  I had seen a beautiful cake at Publix & decided to just buy it & throw on some sugar pearls. 

 I just added pink sugar pearls all around the cake & then the bigger white sugar pearls around the base & the flower on top. 

I knew I wanted some sort of flowers on the table & I hate buying flowers that are just going to die, so I decided to get hanging plants instead.  I had really, really wanted to buy these beautiful dwarf peach trees that had pink blooms, but they were expensive & were also a little tall for my table set-up.  So I went with my $5 hanging plants. 

 I definitely woke up at 4:30 a.m. the morning of the party freaking out because I had overlooked the hanging plants being in brown planters.  So by 7 a.m., I was out in the garage painting (yes painting) the planters.  I was obviously still a little out of it because they were a little streaky, but party guests said they thought they were "distressed".  Haha.  Nope, but hey, whatever.  They worked.  Here is what everything looked like on the table.  The backdrop was a big white tablecloth that I hung up.  There are actually two tablecloths on the table, since these weren't really the right sizes for the table.  I was originally going with a pink tablecloth, but none of 3 or 4 I had were the right color pink.  So I went with white & I think it worked with the lacy theme. 

 One thing I wish I had set up a little differently was the cross below the cake.  I stuck it on the bottom tier of the cake stand because the cake had a flower on top.  In hindsight, I think it would have looked better had I just stuck it on top of the flower & had it sitting up on top of the cake.  Oh well.  Anyway, the party turned out very nice.  We had a lot of wonderful family & friends come support us & our sweet Addy girl & it was a truly beautiful afternoon.