How to Plan a Party Using Pinterest

Last Friday night, my friend Stacey and I co-hosted a table at our church's Advent by Candlelight.  It's an evening of desserts and devotions centered around Christmas.  Women of the congregation sign up to host tables, and then invite friends to sit at their tables.  The hostesses decorate their own tables, and let me tell you, some of them take it quite seriously!  The evening ends up being a lot like the "Table Settings" part of the county fair, with women walking around from table to table seeing what other people did.  It gets kind of crazy.  Last year, a woman hired a florist to decorate her table, and this year, one of the tables had a centerpiece that was over 4 feet tall.  Some of it gets kind of ridiculous.  But the message is always good, bringing us back to remember the importance of Christmas, so I enjoy going anyway.

Stacey and I knew we wanted to host a table so that we could invite some of the newer young ladies at church to join our table, but we had to do it on a budget.  A serious budget.

So how did a stay-at-home mommy and a first year teacher decorate their table without spending any money?

Pinterest, of course!

Pinterest has to be one of the best resources out there these days.  I've found ideas for Christmas presents, decorations, recipes, even photography ideas.  It's awesome!  If you've never used Pinterest before, think about signing up.  And when you do, find me :)

Ok, so, how do you plan a party using Pinterest?  Easy!

1. Stacey and I created a board specifically for Advent by Candlelight, to which we could both contribute.

2. Once the board was created, we could both search Pinterest and the web for things we liked.

3. The board operated as a way to share ideas with each other and  keep everything together in one neat and tidy little space (something we both get a little too excited about!)

Once our board was full of ideas we could put to use, we got together and started crafting.

We made name tags using Whitney's tutorial

We made pretty felt tree ornaments inspired by Alicia to put at each seat as a gift for the guest

We made a yarn ball snowman from my tutorial, and trees that were inspired by these trees on Pinterest

I pulled these cinnamon-scented wicker balls out of my glass hurricane candles (bought the balls at Target 3 years ago and use them in my candle holders every Christmas--they didn't mind being borrowed for the event!)

We spread Kayleigh's future Christmas dress over the table as a makeshift table cloth, placed the centerpiece on my glass cakestand, and set three glass votives around the bottom of it.

Stacey and I were pretty proud of ourselves for pulling this night off without spending any money!

How did we pull this off without spending anything?  We worked with the things we already had in our craft rooms at home.

We used:

♥Stacey's felt and sequins for the tree ornaments and the snoman's hat

♥My yarn and buttons

♥We made cones for the trees out of cereal boxes instead of spending about $7 on styrofoam cones

♥ The candles and votives came out of our closets

♥The Christmas plaid will be turned into a Kayleigh's first Christmas dress :)

Pinterest is a great way to see ideas that other people came up with using what they had.  We didn't make anything exactly like someone else did, we just used our own style and our own items.  Have fun with Pinterest, and see how it can save you money, too!