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Welcome to the home on the web for “Bee of Service” – a creative consultancy to help you with all your planning, decluttering and organisational needs.

In today’s busy world, hectic lifestyles and many commitments often leave us short of time to focus on intentional design of our own lives. Many can commiserate with coming home from a twelve hour day at work and rummaging through a bathroom cabinet to find some Panadol, knowing that you should really get that cupboard sorted but simply not having the energy (nor the inclination). Others will know the feeling of walking past the calendar, seeing your daughter’s birthday ticking ever closer – she wants a fairy-themed party but you just do not have the time to go and find all that you require.

That’s where we step in! With our “no job too small” philosophy, we aim to make your life easier, giving you time for the things that really matter. We operate in three different lifestyle sectors:

  • Domestic Buzz – decluttering and organisation around the home
  • Blissful Buzz – “Day-Of” Coordination and party planning
  • Digital Buzz – digitising photos, slideshow creation and digital scrapbooking
With transparent cost structures and a willingness to work within your budget, Bee of Service is accessible to almost anyone! Have a browse through our site and see how we can work with you to help you organise your life with intention and create beautiful memories that last a lifetime!
Twitt

Breakdown – Baby B’s Carnival!

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Recently I had the joy of organising a baby shower honouring Mama and Baby B! Mama B is not a huge fan of being the centre-of-attention and wanted an event that would share the focus with her lovely friends. Where’s a fun place to hang out with friends, play games and enjoy each others’ company? The inspiration struck – a circus carnival theme! Lots of bright colours – what a fabulous way to celebrate the upcoming birth of a darling wee boy.

Click images to see larger

Refreshments:

The food was carnival/fair inspired food but kept in convenient small portions – the afternoon timing of the event meant that only light refreshments were necessary. Savoury-lovers ate Mini Hot Dogs (of both NZ – corndog – and American styles), popcorn in vintage-styled containers and a good old-fashioned kiwi favourite, Twisties chips. Sweet teeth were catered for with cupcakes baked in icecream cones, fantastic decorated cookies (from a new-to-the-market vendor named Rosy Cakes) and blue coconut ice!

A welcome drink was provided to all guests in vintage milk bottles – handy for portioning out the items prior to the event and much less likely to spill when knocked!

Games:

There are so many games out there for baby showers! An important part of planning any shower (baby or bridal) is to discuss with your guest-of-honour what will make them comfortable. No balloon babies up tops or melted chocolate in nappies for Mama B. Instead, we had two quiz games (great when you have a lot of guests who don’t know each other, bargaining starts going on for exchanges of answers), Guess Her Size (where guests cut a length of string to fit around the circumference of the mama’s bump) and a game I may have just made up to fit the theme called “Midnight Change” – details of that to come in a future post!

Other Fun Facts:

So often we sign our name to a guestbook and it is just popped on a shelf and never read. All guests at Baby B’s Carnival signed a lovely muslin teddy bear that can now sit on display as a reminder of how many women care for little Baby B! “Floral” centrepieces were made with cupcake cakes and pushpins – easy and fun!

Top Tips:

  • When deciding on food options, bear in mind the needs of your pregnant guests. Have your hot food ready to be tabled slightly after the start time on the invitations as pregnant guests will want to ensure that any meat items are eaten while still at the appropriate temperature.
  • Flowing on from this, do have some food and a welcome drink available at the start of the event. Most showers take place in the afternoon and if guests have had a busy day they may not have had the time for lunch (especially if they are busy mamas themselves!)
  • Don’t be afraid to steer away from typical gender-based themes and have some fun with the party – all the colour was a lovely celebration of a life about to come into being.
Twitt

October Updates

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Well, I’ve certainly been a busy little bee lately! I met with a wonderful couple at Pah Homestead who are getting married next year and I definitely regret not trying the raspberry macarons that were on display – their cute little selves haunt my dreams! I’m also so excited about the baby shower coming up next weekend and can’t wait to show you some photos of the fun “circus carnival” theme on the blog – but I will have to, as the mother-to-be is a blog reader!

I’m also doing some Blissful “Buzz By Request” work for a dear friend who is getting married in December, sourcing some items that she simply doesn’t have time to search for. This is also a service that we can provide, taking that burden of the footwork off you and helping make the lead up to your big event a lot less stressful.

I’ve got plans later this month to do my big seasonal clean – let’s face it, if we did it just once a year in Spring it would not quite be enough – and I look forward to it! If you perhaps are not in the same boat, check out our Domestic Buzz page for further details. Here’s to starting the summer with beautiful homes and fun parties!

Twitt

Budget Breakdown – Engagement “Garden” Party

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First of all, some pics of the night to whet your appetite!

The aim was to create a floral, spring feel, relying heavily on the colour purple as reflected on the invitations of the party with an ideal budget of under $200. The party was held on the mezzanine floor of Celsius restaurants and the area has great “bones” – the decorations focused less on hiding the usual beauty of the space and more on enhancing the area and creating that spring feel!

Some top tips?

  • As you’ll see in the budget breakdown below, we relied heavily on fresh flowers for decoration. This can be pricey if you work with a florist! All flowers for the event were bought from supermarkets, dairies and side-of-the-road vendors the day of the event. For the price of one bouquet, we got eighteen medium posies! These posies also made GREAT favours for the guests remaining at the end of the night.
  • The Wishing Tree was quite the popular guest book and allowed guests to write perhaps more freely than they would have felt otherwise – reading a tag on the tree that said “Ireland 15, Australia 6″ certainly did make me smile .
  • The $2 shops (and those of similar ilk) make fabulous places to pick up discount items – both sets of ribbons and the packs of purple polkadot napkins
  • Many things can be repurposed from items you already had at home!
So how did we do on the budget breakdown?
Not too shabby! If time had not been so constrained we could have definitely reduced the price of pompoms by purchasing the raw materials and constructing them ourselves. This could have reduced the price to just over $2 per pompom. It was sweet to see all the wait staff coming up the stairs to peer at the decorations in the room before the party started – we did have to laugh, however, when one of the chefs’ heads popped around the corner!
A great night of celebration!
Twitt