yard party

A Very Merry Pastel Friendsgiving

October 10, 2016October 10, 2016 by Alyssa Garrison

I never really felt attached to Thanksgiving and its traditions until I moved to Toronto and started making my own. A lifelong vegetarian, I hated the idea of a turkey on everyone’s table, but my newfound big city friends showed me how to craft the perfect tofurky, complete with stuffing and vegan mashed potatoes.

Turns out, Thanksgiving is fun, but in my books, Friendsgiving is even better.

This year I found myself with the closest, loveliest group of friends I’ve ever had, and I knew it was time to do something extra special to celebrate how thankful I feel for each and every one of them. The answer? A gleaming golden dinner party with my nearest and dearest! Complete with a perfectly prepared Tofurky, a beautiful vegan apple pie from Plum Lucky, rainbow veggies and festive Palm Bay punch, we really set the stage for a cozy evening.

I know what you’re thinking- Palm Bay Punch? Isn’t that more of a tropical summer thing? Turns out Palm Bay actually has great Fall flavours, like Pomegranate Hibiscus and Ruby Grapefruit Sunrise! Paired with local apple cider, cinnamon sticks, fresh cut festive fruit, and a splash of sparkling, it’s the perfect addition to your holiday feast!

Scroll down for more photos and the full punch recipe

Ingredients //

6 cans of Palm Bay (we used Pomegranate Hibiscus)
2 Pink Lady Apples, sliced
2 Clementines
handful of cranberries
handful of concord grapes
1 jug Local sweet Apple Cider
Half a litre of Club Soda
cinnamon sticks (2 for punch, the rest to garnish)

*bonus points if you can procure a fancy punch bowl! We got ours at BYOB Cocktail Emporium

Recipe //

1. Soak your fresh cut fruit in the Palm Bay for a few hours before your party to create a stronger infusion.

2. When the festivities are about to get started, add the club soda and apple cider.

3. Ladle into glasses prepped with ice, garnish with cinnamon sticks and serve!

Special thanks to Palm bay for the beverages, Plum Lucky for the amazing Vegan apple pie, Wild North for the floral arrangements, Harlow and Grey for the tableware, BYOB Cocktail Emporium for the Copper Punch Bowl, Zipcar for giving us a fun way to gather all of our supplies, and to Johanna for doubling as gourmet vegan chef AND photographer!

This post was sponsored, but all opinions are my own. To inquire about sponsored posts, please email jess@shineinfluencers.com

Party Time

A Pre-Pride #RAOPrainbowparty

June 29, 2016June 29, 2016 by Alyssa Garrison

For the first time ever, Toronto decided to make their pride celebration last not only a week, but the entire month of June. That’s right: more rainbows, more sparkle, and a full month filled with love and support for one another.

We’re always looking for new ways to bring more colour to our lives, so the updated schedule gave us that much more reason to make pride-related magic. To welcome the final week of festivities (which includes most of the parties and the famous parade), we decided to throw our own little Pride kickoff party with all of our friends in a borrowed yard. We called it the #RAOPrainnbowparty!

A lot of different factors went into making this particular styled event a success. First off, we needed colour- lots of it! To brighten up the space we decided to build a balloon wall. Consider yourself warned- balloon wall building is not a relaxing weekend activity. The end result (shown in these photos) took two days of planning, about 15 packs of balloons (10x what we has estimated), and 7 volunteers blowing up balloons nonstop for hours in the sun to create!

After the amount of work we put into the balloon wall, we wanted to make sure that our drink selection matched the theme. We had a chance to try out Raspberry Starfruit Iced Tea and Frozen Strawberry Pineapple Pouches (YUM!) from Palm Bay. We also had a super cute cooler, pastel Turkish blankets, a record player for tunes, cookie dough ice cream, “Palm Bae” sweatshirts by Shop Nopal, and so many different kinds of sprinkles!!!
Palm Bay was an amazing complement to our pre-pride party. It was a total success, and the ultimate way to kick off the fun coming this week!

Hope to see you at Pride this year!

Photos by Josh Mitchinson and Johanna Martin
Styling and Direction by Alyssa Garrison
Assistance from Mikayla Kuehn
Cotton Candy via Fancy Pufs
Party Plates and extra decor via Confetti and Bows
XOXO Balloons via Northstar Balloons
Jewels via Cherry Pick
Hottiewood

A special thanks to all our magical rainbow models (aka our friends) too!

This post was sponsored by Palm Bay, but all opinions are my own. To inquire about sponsored posts, please email jess@shineinfluencers.com

Party Time

A Tropical Girl’s Night In

July 10, 2015May 19, 2016 by Alyssa Garrison

There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for a taste of the tropics at any given moment. I live for the stifling heat, for fresh fruit, blended drinks, and palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze. Maybe that’s why when Palm Bay Spritz offered to help me host a #GirlsNightIn party featuring some of their fruity new flavours, I jumped at the chance.

For most of my life, I’ve had a hard time finding and keeping girlfriends. Despite my online persona, I’m actually pretty shy and awkward, and my inability to put a smile on and small talk in group situations means that I’m really more of a “one best friend at a time” kind of girl. Though I love my one-on-one time dearly, I always felt a bit of a void growing up… admiring women who had a great group of girlfriends to confide in and rely on, and wishing there was a way to build that for myself too.

Over the past year, something has started to shift. Maybe it’s my newfound comfort and confidence with who I am, or the fact that I’ve been forcing myself out into new social situations, but the fact is these days I find myself with the most incredibly smart, talented, kind group of girlfriends imaginable! I have no idea how I got so lucky, but I do know I’m really feeling the Taylor Swift “hanging out with my girls” vibes right now, and there’s nothing I love to do more than host little girl’s night get-togethers in my yard!

There were a few extra special touches that made this soiree a night to remember (other than the tasty drinks of course!) I blew up some of my favourite pool toys (including a giant swan) and left them around the yard to provide ample photo opportunities, and hung a tapestry by Bouffants and Broken Hearts from Society6 over the fence to make a photo booth- complete with an Instax Mini of course. Colourful treats could be found on almost every surface, and I asked everyone to don their most tropical attire so that we could really pretend we were all on vacation together.

We may have been missing the palm trees and the sound of waves crashing on the beach, but with the help of Palm Bay Spritz it really did taste and feel like we’d escaped the city to our own little tropical island for the night, and I couldn’t have asked for better company!

Party Supplies via Meri Meri

This post was sponsored, but all opinions are my own. To inquire about sponsored posts, please send me an email at alyssa@randomactsofpastel.com

Dear Diary

A Birthday To Remember

August 27, 2014June 22, 2015 by Alyssa Garrison

In case you weren’t already aware, I had one of my best birthdays ever last week.

My amazing partner put so much work into making my day special, and he planned out everything from delicious breakfast in bed supplied by Kitten and the Bear, to my perfect For Love and Lemons birthday dress, and at the end of it all, an amazing “tropical paradise” surprise party in the yard with all of my closest friends. In the afternoon I went on rides and won a unicorn plushie at the CNE (all in a tulle skirt of course) and for dinner I probably drank my weight in champagne. My best friend Sarah even bought me a package to go horse riding with a friend at sunset on the beach, which you’ll surely see tons of photos of when I go with Paige from Bicyclette tomorrow evening!

The result was truly a magical day to remember, and I wanted to share some of my favourite moments with all of you here!

Morning photos by me, evening photos by Brianne Burnell