Party in a Box From West Elm

Now I have my orange tree in my garden covered in fairy lights it looks like the Singing Ringing Tree, an East German fairytale that scared the life out of me when I was a child, but we are now looking very festive and sparkly!  Is it only me or does anyone else remember this short film?!

The trees they decorate at Picasso restaurant in Puerto Banus also remind me of this old fairytale particularly with the red apples and fairy lights!  I often sit there and expect them to start moving, shaking and ringing!

It is so lovely this time of year to have time to spend time with my youngest daughter. 

Today we went to a birthday party and it was magical to watch her having such a fun evening with her little friends.  They had their beautiful faces painted and ran around for hours squeaking with each other in their high pitched Spanish voices whilst enjoying a birthday tea party and lots of fun games.

Sometimes there are things thrown at you that are so completely out the box it is hard to comprehend, even when you have already had some fairly testing experiences which they call life, somewhere deep within the human resources as you are faced with even greater challenges it makes you focus and draw upon what is important, to try not be frightened by what you see and to continue to do what you love.

To make sure you take time to enjoy simple precious moments whether it be family, friends, focus on enjoying them and everything that makes you happy.  I did this today at the party, it is normally something I would dread but enjoyed every moment of the noisy mayhem today!

Whilst I know many people are now deep in the midst of Christmas parties I am personally preferring to have quieter times in my own beautiful home and enjoying taking time to refresh the brain, find new trends and look at beautiful things, gathering fresh ideas and getting inspired.  

This is what makes me happy and feel at peace and I am grateful that my design skills are able to transport me to a beautiful world and to look at things that make me smile and enable me to switch off and relax.

I really wish I had more time during the year to visit these fabulous websites as I am sure all my Christmas shopping would now be done instead of planning the next week frantically dashing around La Canada!  I have kind of put everything off this year, not sure why as it will still arrive but perhaps have not been in the mood as I face different challenges.

Anyone that knows me knows I love sparkle and any excuse for a party or to throw myself into festivities armed with my hugely organised check list, Santa list and everything is perfectly turned out for Christmas list, this year I have kind of waned I think to try to put the not so nice things off too but of course that won´t happen and I now have less than two weeks to get off my butt and get organised.

However tonight I am relaxing, looking for lovely things to inspire me and I am swooning over West Elm and love the idea of a Party in a Box.  Gorgeous entertaining essentials and aren´t they just such a fabulous idea to quickly bring some glamour into perhaps a New Year´s Eve soiree.

Whilst I love the muted silver blush collection, which is a hugely popular colour scheme for our 2014 weddings, the jewel collection is so much more me with the gold sequins!

Just loved these so had to share and be warned you could spend hours on this website :)   

There is a fabulous range of mercury glassware which sadly is not shipped to Europe and I also have my eye on some lamp bases and the snow globes, which I seem to have started collecting, are beautiful.

I hope sharing my finds sprinkles some sparkle into your festivities and brings a smile and a bit of glamour and hopefully some festive inspiration.

We love Garlands!

One of the key elements to any event dressing or design is to work overhead, (above 6ft in my old terms of learning the display basics :)

Any decorations that are above eye level immediately capture the attention of your guests and create a convivial atmosphere whether it be party, spooky or festive.

If you want to add impact to decorating an event or a room there are a few key elements and this is one of the most effective to date, as well as lighting an event.

What I love at the moment is the creativity that is appearing with garlands and decorations, taking it away from the rather tacky foil 70's decorations we all knew and possibly loved, with the Retro 70's fashion back in style this could be now forgiven and almost classed as tasteful, although not in my book :)

However I do love these new ideas emerging from the tissue pom poms and then the hanging garlands strewn around venues to create a lovely party atmosphere from paper hearts to buttons on a string, the theme for this idea is endless and I think really it kicked off in 2009 with the fashionable bunting idea and has progressed from there.

Definitely a trend worth creating from photos strung up on strings of your loved one and your courtship, to paper hearts, tassels really the possibility is endless and one garland would make such a difference to your event, personalise it and make it more fun.

Reviva Weddings are now offering paper heart garlands from as little as 5 euros for 2 x 3 metre lengths in their shop and can make bespoke garlands and pom poms to fit in with your wedding theme, we also advocate the use of your photos to string on a washing line at your wedding to create that truly personal touch to your wedding and have the cutest clothes pegs and washing lines ready!

I have stolen these fabulous photos from Elizabeth Anne designs one of my inspiration blogs I visit constantly, for more inspirations head over to take a look.

A wonderful idea for kids parties too that could easily be made up with favorite characters, in my case princesses!

In fact many moons ago when I decorated my sister's 21st birthday party (yes I was doing it then!) I created pink baskets of dolly mixtures as well suspended from the ceiling for the guests to help themselves, all I recall from this party was pulling out the staples from my parents ceiling the next day with a delightful hangover before they arrived back from Spain, they were none the wiser!

We don't just do weddings!

Whilst Reviva Weddings are obviously associated with planning, styling and creating fabulous weddings, we are stylists for all occasions and often turn our hands to other celebrations.

Last night was no exception and we were hired by a family vacating here in a private villa situated in the Marbella Club.

Our brief was to descend upon the villa last night whilst the family were out having a celebration dinner at the fabulous restaurant Babilonia at Olivia Valere, and turn the villa into a beautifully decorated birthday surprise for when the mother returned with her family.

I have to confess we felt like stalkers creeping in at 10pm and within 2 hours the transformation was completed!

We had completely decorated the villa with flowers, lanterns and candles and fabulous balloon displays.

Here is the text message we received in the early hours of this morning after the family had returned.

Hello Laura!  Thank you so much for the lovely decoration.  My mother was overwhelmed with joy when we got back home.   The flowers, candles and balloons are amazing!  Thank you, the both of you, for this breathtaking setting.

This is unforgettable birthday and I shall definitely be contacting you for any future events.

I hope to see you again real soon.

I could never do this solo so a huge thank you to my fantastic team of professionals, Loraine for the fabulous flowers and to Silvia for the wonderful balloons :)  I was playing the skivvy, sweeping up and fetching and carrying :) 

Magical Moroccan Night at Puente Romano Hotel

We had a fabulous time decorating this Moroccan party at the beautiful Puente Romano hotel. One of my favorite venues here in Marbella.

This party was the start of a 3 day event last weekend to welcome guests for a wedding weekend to the Marbella Club.

 It was quite short notice, about 3 days! but we managed to pull it off, only just though as we had another 100 chairs added in on the day so a quick visit to the shops to finish this off, thankfully the rain held off although the following day on the 3rd July here it rained? 

We were allowed in to photograph this before the guests arrived but I did get a phone call at 11.30 that night from one of the suppliers to tell me how fabulous and beautiful it looked once it had got dark, we are hoping we may get a few photos of this in darkness as I had some fabulous lighting and millions of candles here.

Our thanks to the forever cheerful and patient Jennifer Jane from Jeremy Standley for coming along again to photograph one of our events, always with a last minute panicked request from me!

My thanks also to my brilliant team, Izzi and Maddie my long suffering daughters, Susana that has now worked with me for 3 years and our new team member Anoulka, without these fabulous ladies I could never pull off an event like this and thank them for their hard work, reliability and tireless efforts.  Also to Carlos from Lipara Productions, a lovely man I work closely with all the time, without Carlos there would be no staging, lighting and sound!

Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland theme

Isn't it strange, last year we were looking at the Alice in Wonderland theme for parties and weddings with the fun elements of 'eat me' and 'drink me', the tea party set up and slightly quirky ideas you could incorporate into this theme.

Now with the much anticipated Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland just about to hit our screens, some fabulous ideas are popping up on the blogs we watch and love.

I found these posts on Green Wedding Shoes and the Wedding Chicks of an Alice in Wonderland styled shoot for a bridal shower and it is fabulous. Cannot wait to see this film!

Calling all vampire lovers!

As Twilight and True Blood are hugely popular and the latest rage and of course it is Halloween, we found this fabulous board on It's a Jaime Thing for a vampire style wedding!

Deep reds and blacks, truly goth, and how about some ghoulish cupcakes thrown in!

Image found on www.twilightfangs.com

Fancy hosting a Twilight Party check out the Hostess Blog for more vampish ideas!

Vampire Chic for Weddings and Parties

This red and black wedding is perfect for a Gothic celebration and we love the spanish style cake.

The table names are in elaborate ornate blackframes with the names Dracula in this image, I can imagine, with all the vampire hype at the moment, of all the other table name possibilities you could come up with! Twilight springs to mind of course!

A vampire themed night would be amazing, getting away from the usual pumpkins with the orange and black theme, this theme would be far more stylish for a Halloween soiree. Image found on www.swankytablesblog.com

More from the Chopard Morrocan Party Marbella Club

Ok so my small Pentax is not doing the trick, I was delighted when Carlos sent me this pro photo of the Moroccan Night, more to come! Here you can see how amazing this evening was for the Chopard Gala Night. We do really need a before and after shot though as this is a white beach bar!

Chopard Moroccan Party at Marbella Club

Hot or what!

Here we are decorating the Marbella Club's Chiringuito for the Chopard Jewellery Morrocan Night.

Just when we thought we were going to have a quiet August, the phone starts ringing!

Carlos from Lipara Productions needed our help with putting this amazing Moroccan party together, not only completely covering the chiringuito with fabrics but needed a stylist on board for the day plus our team to complete this party within 4 hours, by the time our team had finished it looked amazing. We were thrilled and the decorations Carlos and his wife has supplied for us to use were really something else. A huge effort and we have to go back tonight to clear down so drinking lots of coffee! x

Fabulous Table Settings

Whilst surfing yet again I paid a visit to the Grace Ormonde Site and found these fabulous table settings, again the use of twigs for centrepieces, beautiful coloured linens and those chair covers are amazing. I love the aqua setting perfect for a romantic dinner for two and yet more inspiration!

Lanterns we love them!

Two images above Hanging Lanterns and Sky lanterns at Los Monteros Images courtesy of Jeremy Standley

Our new product for 2009 floating water lanterns

One of our most popular products are our lanterns, we love them, they create such beautiful atmospheres for our weddings and parties on hot balmy Mediterranean nights.

Water lanterns, sky lanterns and a whole host of hanging lanterns,

we cannot stock enough of them!

Winter Wonderland themes

Although we are only just out of a very hot August I am now working on some Christmas themes for a client in Ireland who is organising a white week event, so having decided to visit the land of ice, snow and crystals I came across these fabulous designs from the designer Tord Boontje, who ironically designed the fabulous lights I love in Habitat. His website is well worth a visit for anyone who is interested in hugely creative fabulous designs http://www.tordboontje.com/

When I have designed the white Christmas theme and finished it I will post it!