Favors...All in the Details

I posted a little while back on our favor change from a candy/dessert buffet to making a donation to a local non-profit bakery and giving out samples of their tasty maple cashew granola to our guests.

To ensure we wouldn't change our minds to something else, I quickly ordered 125 3"x5" muslin bags from Etsy and we picked up a stamp from Jo-Ann Fabric that said "all you need is love." I gave Mr. S the stamp and a green ink pad and he stamped away. Cute, right?


Using my handy dandy 2-inch scallop cutter (one of my favorite wedding/crafty purchases thus far!), I laid out a message to attach to the muslin favor bags. Each bag will have three of these scallops - 1 with a thank you message from us, 1 with information about Blue Sky Bakery, and 1 with the address and web site of the bakery. Using my recent purchase of a Fiskars Eyelet Punch & Setter (another fun crafty tool), I joined all three tags together with an eyelet and threaded through it the strings of the muslin bag, like so:


Oh, and don't forget about the good stuff...this to die for maple cashew granola! I bought 3"x4" plastic ziploc bags from Etsy that fit perfectly inside of the muslin bags. It's not more than a few bites of granola-y goodness, but hopefully those who live in Chicago will seek the bakery out to get some more!


Now we just have to wait until the week of the wedding to pick up bags and bags of granola to fill all of these tiny little bags. We've talked to the bakery and it sounds like they should be able to fill our huge granola order for that week! Beyond the granola (I'm estimating spending about $180 on it), the rest of the items - from the bags to the tags - was less than $60 for 125 favors. Yay!

Beyond the fact that we're making a charitable contribution and supporting a great cause, my favorite detail of the favors is how great the "all you need is love" stamp looks on the bags. What little detail really makes your favor special?

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Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes!

Source: Oregon.gov

Changes are afoot in the Stiletto household. As September continues to draw closer, we've had to really look at some projects and make some final decisions in order to get started on things. Expect some new projects and different ideas to come!

After posting here, here, here, here, and here about our candy buffet, of course we're still planning on offering the buffet-o-sweetness as our favor at the reception, right? I mean, who would post so obsessively about something and do so much research if they're just going to nix the idea in the end?! Oh, that's right, ME.

All of the candy was starting to give me nightmares. So many logistics, expensive things to buy, just far too much to think about. For months now, I had been dreading the summer and actually putting this whole thing together. To top it off, when Mr. S and I did our tasting with the caterer last week, he mentioned that at the end of the meal, in addition to wedding cake, each table would be served a plate of cookies and cannolis. Hmm. With my plans to have both cookies and candy as a part of the buffet, that would be a whole lot of sugar.

So....we completely crossed out the candy buffet. I ended up in a minor panick attack last week. What's in budget but not just giving people stuff?! Since I work in the non-profit/fundraising field, there are always different organizations I would like to support. I like the idea of making a charitable donation, so I started thinking about what organization we, as a couple, would want to support.

Not far from Mr. S's and my condo in Albany Park (Chicago neighborhood on the northwest side of the city) is a placed called Blue Sky Bakery. While true to their name, they churn out some fabulous baked goods, they're a bakery with a mission. They serve as a training ground for homeless and at-risk youth who go through an established program working at the bakery, where the goal is for them to gain enough work experience to then gain employment elsewhere. Just opening last fall, I think about the bakery a lot and hope that they survive during these tough economic times. With such a strong mission and so close to our home, we try and support them when we can. And...well...they also have REALLY tasty maple cashew granola!

So...why not take a mass quantity of that really tasty granola, package it up in these great muslin bags (probably first in ziploc bags, then in the muslin bags) - Etsy seller Essence of Gaia currently has these 3x5" bags priced at $9.50 for 30 bags. We'll need around 120, so these are incredibly affordable.

Source: Etsy

Then, using a stamp that says "thank you" or simply "love" or whatever we decide, we can stamp these babies. I love this one I found on Etsy that says "lovely things." Too cute.

Source: Etsy

Once we're done, we'll make up little tags to attach to the bags, providing a brief overview of the bakery, that a donation has also been made to support them, and then a little message of thanks to our guests.

Sweet. Simple. Tasty. I couldn't be happier with this idea! We'll be supporting a cause in our community that we feel strongly about and sending our guests off with a little treat that Mr. S and I both enjoy. We still have to approach the bakery and ensure we'll be able to the get the quantity of granola that we need, but otherwise, we're ready to get going on this idea.

Are you choosing to make a donation in lieu of or as a part of your favor? If so, how did you decide on the organization you'll be supporting?

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Adding It Up: Green Candy

I've already posted about the black and white candies I've found as possibilities for my candy buffet. I ended up around $135.50 for 33 pounds of candy and 12 suckers (not factoring in shipping costs. I was also able to find many different flavors, from licorice to blackberry to dark chocolate. But of course, what would my candy buffet be like without great pops of green?

Source: Candy Warehouse

This green rock candy is $72 for 120 sticks (and of course, I certainly could find it cheaper, but this was the best picture!). It looks like they run for around $8 or so for 10 rock candy sticks. However, I am planning on making then, hence the only thing I'll need is sugar, water and swizzle sticks or string! Check out these easy instructions for making rock candy, and it might just bring back memories of making rock candy when you were a kid as a science project!

Source: Candy Warehouse

I love these fruit wedges! I'll probably go with the lime flavor because the colors are brighter and I think it's much more common to have apple-flavored candy, so I want to diversify a bit! Only $24.50 for 5 lbs.

Source: Candy Warehouse

Love these hard candy sticks! Not only are there tons of green flavors to choose from, they're only $12 for 80! Woo!! I'm torn between the sour apple and the wintergreen. The colors of the wintergreen are brighter and I'd assume people would expect a minty flavor here?

Source: Candy Warehouse

Kind of more lime in color than I'd want...but really, I think I can stray from a specific shade of green for the love of candy. And I LOVE gummy candy. My favorite would be peach rings, so I think these apple rings are a good substitute in order to stay in the color family. And only $12 for 4 lbs!

So, where does that leave me...? $48.50 for 9 pounds of candy and 80 hard candy sticks. Grand total so far? $182 for 42 pounds of candy plus hard candy sticks and suckers. No too bad! And still a lot of items that I'd like to make. And of course...I haven't ordered any of these sweets yet, as I'm still months and months away from September. But a girl must plan!

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It's only candy...but why is it stressful?!

We've been planning since about the beginning to do a candy buffet as our favor. I've been approaching it with mixed feelings these days. For starters, candy is expensive. I'm really, truly trying to push that thought from my mind until I have to worry about it this summer. But beyond the cost, I've found that it's hard to do a candy buffet and make it look great! If you don't give a lot of thought to texture, colors, containers and varied height, your buffet will undoubtedly fall flat.

Fortunately Flickr has a Candy Buffet Photo Pool, so you can search through example after example with ease. To make the execution of this favor even more accessible, I've decided to break it off piece by piece. Let's start with signage, take away containers and texture.

Candy Buffet Take Away Containers
I've seen different boxes and bags for guests to fill up with candy. Chinese-style takeout boxes are popular, but I have no desire to have a stack of these just asking to be knocked over! The most functional (and affordable) option I've seen are bags that coffee is normally stored in, complete with the twist tie top.

Source: Flickr.com

I've found bags similar to these on a site called N State Packaging that come in black or white and are $19.35 for a package of 100 - brilliant! Slap a custom sticker on there and you're done.

Signage

I think you really need something that leaps out at your guests. Since my black, white and green color scheme is all about high contrast, I love the white on black signs that this bride created. Doing reverse text like this (as long as you do it well - using legible font and large font size) draws the eye right to it! The labels placed on the jars are genious as well, I want to dig in!

Source: Flickr.com

Changing Up the Texture

It seems like so many of the candy buffet pictures are just rows of clear glass containers filled with different colors of M&M's and jelly beans. I like the idea of using different containers and different types of candy to give the table different texture and height.

Photo from Rebecca Thuss

The above picture would be so easy to do and I think would be incredibly easy to reproduce in a variety of ways.

Source: Jamali Garden

I love the Jamali Garden web site because they have such great, modern products at really affordable prices! This 16 x 3 x 5 Kiri Wood Vase is only $12! How easy would it be to put a block of foam in it, cover that black rocks or something, and then stick in a bunch of different suckers at varied heights? So fun!

So now I've got an easy way to start the favor project...buying the bags then designing the labels and the signs. Easy, easy! I'd welcome anyone's suggestions out there for not only great places to buy bulk candy from (anything local in Chicago?) as well as how you decided on the right quantities...this would greatly easy my candy buffet anxiety!

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