We Heart It for Heart Day

Valentine’s Day is next week! And just like I did last year, I thought it would be perfect to have another Galentine’s Day party. This time around though, I combined it with a Favorite Things party. Have you ever been to one? It’s so much fun. You get your friends together and each person brings some of their favorite things to share with the group. If it’s a large group you can either set a lower gift price or just have everyone bring 3 things and attendees can draw names out of a hat to see who gets what. I hadn’t been to one before, but I’ve been seeing them pop up more and more around the holidays. I was dying to throw one and this was the perfect solution.

For my party, I invited six ladies (from left to right) Courtney from Dessert Fiend, Celine from 24 East, (me), Brett from Decorotation, Sara from Stinkerpants and Brittany from Brittany Makes/The Vintage Rug Shop. We each brought 5 gifts to share with the other ladies. I think it worked out really well! The party was in the late afternoon, so I just served sips and sweets. The sweets though, they stole the show! My friend Courtney baked them and they were seriously delicious. You can find the recipes here!

The inspiration for the party decor, started off with this gorgeous black marble print runner from Minted. Most people don’t think of black when it comes to Valentine’s/Galentine’s  so I thought it would be a fun challenge to go that route. I also didn’t want to go too far and too dark. So I thought that doing tiny, black heart decor would be modern and cute without being too overwhelmingly black. I mixed the black and black marble with lighter tones like white and natural materials like jute and wood on the table. I used a standard white tablecloth as the base for the table and then used these woven placemats from IKEA to add some warmth. For plates I used my well-loved black and white enamelware. Next came black napkins folded in heart shapes, so easy and made a such an impact. Oh and the matte black flatware was a huge hit as well! On top of each place setting was gift from Lisa Leonard. Her tiny heart rings were the perfect gift. It was like a little cherry on top!

The sweets made the party, so let’s head over there next. I knew I wanted to lighted up the decor with something modern and whimsical to make it less formal and stuffy. This light box from Uncommon Goods was the perfect touch. Light boxes are all the rage right now so it was great to be able to incorporate it into the decor! I also got these black marble balloons to tie in with the black marble runner on the dining table. I taped up this adorable felt heart garland for a final touch. Courtney and I put our head’s together and came up with the dessert plan. We decided on vegan chocolate bundt cake, chocolate crinkle cookies, vegan tiger cashew bark, heart-shaped chocolate sandwich cookies and cheesecake bites with chocolate hearts. It was SO, so yummy.

Oh and let’s not forget the florals! Flowers are so colorful and romantic, so I wanted to make sure they fit in with the rest of the party decor. So I focused more on using greenery and textures as opposed to colors. The black berry branches came from a tree in my backyard (score!). Then I bought a bunch of greenery and a dozen roses from Safeway. They all came together really well and it was less than $20!

In the living room, we piled the gifts on the coffee table and did the exchange after we filled our tummies with sweets. I kept the decor in here to a minimum and just the gifts do the talking 😉 I added a favorite runner to the table, an adorable new heart throw pillow and a cute little heart-shaped chalkboard on the wall.

The gift exchange was seriously fun. It was great seeing what everyone brought and why they brought it. I gave everyone these mini light boxes and wrapped them in matching black marble wrapping paper to go with the party theme 😉 Courtney brought everyone homemade rich and delicious chocolate sauce. Yum. Celine gave everyone bath salts from a local fave, Atomic Garden. It smelled incredible. Sara brought everyone colored pencils and paired them with these hilarious coloring book Bouffants & Broken Hearts. Brett gave everyone her favorite Korean facial masks as well as homemade granola! (I did the mask that night and it was amazing). And Brittany gave everyone a different one of her favorites. I received a locket that I plan to put my kids’ pictures in asap. Love it.

SOURCES

Have you had a galentine’s day party before? I feel like they’re getting more and more popular these days. I mean, who wouldn’t want to celebrate BOTH Valentine’s Day and Galentine’s Day? Right? Either/or works too 😉

All photos by Hamee Ha. This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Copy Cat Chic!