“Bee” prepared to be swept away by the sweet details of this honey-themed housewarming party hosted by Kori of Paper and Pigtails! She did an absolutely “bee”autiful job welcoming friends and family into her new home.

By using a simple theme inspired by the various types of honey that are readily available at the abundance of farmer’s markets in her new town and choosing a color palette based on the color of her new house, Kori was able to keep things warm and sweet – everything a home should be! And although this open house was hosted in the Fall, this theme transitions easily into a spring or summer housewarming by simply replacing the wheat bundles for bouquets of fresh daisies.

The photos that follow are buzzing with inspiration…“BEE” sure to read on for all of the sweet-as-honey details…

PARTY DETAILS, as told by Kori…

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Inspiration

“Late last summer we made the move to a new town and in a whirlwind found a home we fell in love with and moved. Luckily we were only an hour from our old home, so our friends could still come and visit. We decided to organize a housewarming/ open house for our friends. I began looking for inspiration and chose one of my favorite aspects of my new home; the warm honey yellow color of the outside. Looking at inspiration photos, I kept coming back to food…specifically honey and wheat.

Invitation

I wanted something that looked warm and sweet, and was more “family oriented than child”…so I illustrated a honey pot and a small vintage looking bee instead of cartoons. As it was an open house, I didn’t need to set up true activities (other than showing people around the house) so I focused on the decor, favors, and food.

Food

The food was focused on honey. In our new town, you can find farmer’s markets on every corner, so I started collecting different flavors of honey and learning a lot about the amazing benefits of it as well! For fun, I set up a honey tasting area on the food table…this had variations of honey, from Blueberry Honey to Wildflower Honey, in individual glass “honey pots” with honey wheat pretzels and breadsticks to taste them with. I also had a cheese tray with real honeycombs for people to try.

Desserts

There were of course “sweet” treats too. I had the most beautiful sugar cookies, Renee from Bees Knees Creative made honey pot cookies and bee cookies which matched my invite perfectly and Better Bit of Butter made BB minis with yellow stripes. In place of cupcakes, I chose to make mini Harvest Honey bundt cakes (and a large bundt cake), which I decorated with fondant honey pots from Two Sugar Babies. I also found Handmade Honey Marshmallows which were as pretty as they were tasty!

Decor

For decor, I bought a burlap table runner for the food table and a roll of burlap which I used to wrap around different accents, such as favors and decorative boxes. I used brown twine to accent the glass pots which held honey samples, and to tie up silverware and attach tags to the favors and silverware rolls. I used my lanai wall as the “backdrop”, as my home was the inspiraiton for the party, and I found yellow fabric that matched perfectly to cover the tables.

Favors

For favors, I wanted to offer something for the adults, and something for the kids. I decided to give honey sticks and spoons for the adults to use in tea, or as a sweet treat. They were wrapped in burlap, then twine and a tag saying “thank you for making our home Sweet As Honey”. The kids favors were by far my favorite thing of the entire day!! I found an amazing Etsy shop that was selling hand carved tiny wooden honey pots for children to play with. They came with small honey sticks and spun wool inside for “honey”. They were the sweetest things and the kids loved them!

At the end of the day, the weather was perfect, the company of our friends was amazing and everyone from large to small had a wonderful time!”