Stylish and sumptuous birthday party ideas

On my twitter travels I found some really amazing sites, inspiring ideas for birthday parties.

I am going to expand my birthday invitations to cover some of these themes, but in the mean time just email me if you would like a specific card.

There is the most inspiring site in the US, called hostess with the mostess and her blog is just full of beautiful parties - different takes on princess parties, fairy parties, baby shower parties, everything really, see pics below and links.

Look at the links below for a dinosaur party, vintage toys party and woodland fairy party

Dinosaur party, Vintage toy party,  Woodland fairy party

Sheer luxe awards finalist

Sheer Luxe's 1st Annual Online Shopping awards - I am nominated, not sure if it means much but would be nice to win, up against some big companies.

Voting for the winners lasts until September 20^th, and all winners will be included on a page of editorial in our upcoming magazine (running with subscriptions of InStyle, Grazia, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Times’ Style and The Telegraph’s Stella magazines).

If you have a minute please vote for me using link below

Sheerluxe shopping awards - stationery

Cherry compote

We made 6 litres of cherry compote today, which meant picking about 2000 cherries, well it felt like 2000, destoning all of them, then making the compote, but by golly it was worth it, it is just delightful, swapping it with my friend for some of her veggies as mine are very sad. The kids absolutely loved the whole process especially the messy bit.

It is funny how you move on and change, 1 year ago I would never have thought I would live in a small french village, making cherry compote and tending to a veg garden, but then 3 years ago I would never have thought I would have a business designing cards, which is doing pretty well even though I say so myself. I absolutely love every minute of it. I still enjoy personalising all of my orders and love designing new cards.

Settling in France week 2

Well we have a vegetable patch now, courtesy of my hubbies digging, with melons, tomatoes, herbs, pumpkin, cucumbers and courgettes, lets just see if they survive. I feel really good about my first ever veg patch, simple honest living is the way forward.

We have filled our paddling pool so the kids are very very happy and our table is under the cherry tree in the garden, so we can relax while they play - heaven.

As you can see suddenly lots of blogging, well that was one of my main aims along with developing my marketing skills when I moved to France, I also wanted to make it (hopefully) a bit more interesting by adding  little titbits from my new French life.

I am just loving assessing my site with google anlaytics - which pages most people go to, bounce rates, where they come from - what about Ribeirao Preto in Brazil or Sofia in Bulgaria, how come they find CocoCards - but the person from Sofia only looked at 2 pages, so not that good a site she or he thought and the Brazilian spent 5 minutes and 26 pages - but sadly no order.

Eh what did you say?

So learning new words every day, Birth announcements are called faire part naissance in France, El anuncio del nacimiento in Spanish, and geboortekaartjes in Dutch. Hopefully I will be designing some baptême invitations very very soon.

Some beautiful quotes

These 2 quotes I feel are so important in my life right now:

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless." Mother Theresa

There are always flowers for those who want to see them." Henri Matisse

Bilingual birth announcements and bilingual christening invitations

Seeing as being bilingual is so relevant at the moment to me, I just wanted to say I have designed many bilingual birth announcements, even bilingual Christening invites. One birth announcement was in chinese, english and spanish and I designed a greek christening invite last week, which the lady loved. I cant proof read Greek or Chinese obviously but I can send it to you to proof read.

On the subject of being bilingual, my little daughter just sat down in the cafe with my hubbie and I today and said 'bonjour, jus d'orange please'.