"Papa Bear" Father's Day Brunch

Since Daddy has to work this Father's Day we decided to celebrate a little early with a Father's Day brunch. My inspiration for this brunch came from a sweet picture of my hubby walking hand in hand with our girls.  How I got a Papa bear in glasses, tie and bowler hat out of that will require a bit more explaining. 

It all started with this picture.  It's one of my favorites.  I think because it was totally random and it's a tender moment between daddy and daughters outside one of my favorite places Heidelberg castle in Germany. It was spring and the daffodils were in bloom and you can see the remnants of the castle on the right. I've always wanted to do something with this picture.  

I don't enjoy drawing people.  It's one of the hardest things for me.  When I decided to draw something inspired by this I felt like a Papa Bear and little baby bears would be a good fit. Besides Papa Bear and Father's day kind of go hand in hand (no pun intended). I actually drew the back view first and then created the front view to match.  I thought a bowler hat and tie looked much more papa bearish than a baseball hat and khakis.  But I did give papa bear glasses in honor of my hubby. Once I was finished I used my illustrations to design Father's Day gifts for our Papa Bear that can be found in my Zazzle shop. 

Zazzle has a huge collection of wonderful Father's day gifts but I wanted to design something personal for our family.  Zazzle did compensate me with products for this post but as always I would never promote a product I don't believe in and am not happy with. 

I was very happy with how the Papa Bear mug turned out. The colors were bright and the pictures were adorable. My hubby loves coffee and tee and he has no mugs from the kids so he was thrilled to get one.  

My hubby is a little nerdy.  No he's a lot nerdy and that's one of the things I love about him. He watches Discovery channel nature shows and Myth Busters with the kids and they love to play Minecraft with him.  He also loves his computer so I thought a mouse pad would be another great gift since he's in desperate need of one.  His old mouse pad has one of our kids artwork on it from years and years ago. It's very ragged and worn out.  

I wanted a different illustration for the mouse pad so I did a profile of the Papa bear. Our Papa Bear can be a little protective of his computer. We have a few computers in our house because he likes to tinker with them. Then we end up keeping these older computers that he cleans up, but his computer is his computer.  I don't blame him one bit. The other computers all have crumbs on the keyboards and virus's from every which where thanks to the kids. His computer is spotless and runs flawlessly.  So I thought this mouse pad was kind of fitting. 

I also decided to design some cute packaging for his father's day gift.  I had no idea Zazzle sold gift bags and tags. I kind of geeked out over that because I've been designing invitations and thank you cards for years.  To be able to design a custom gift bag to go with a party theme is awesome. The were very good quality paper with flawless printing. 

The gift tags were a heavy card stock, 10 per package along with colored twine to tie them with. I wanted a generic design that we could use for future gifting as well. 

Once we had the Papa Bear gifts assembled we had to have a Papa Bear brunch to honor our Papa Bear.  I wanted it to be simple, something that didn't take forever to set up and  able to enjoy as a family. 

   
I kept the menu super simple with Bear Claws from Panera Bread (one of our favorite lunch or breakfast date places), chocolate dipped bear marshmallows, large and small chocolate dipped bear donuts and straw-bearies.  I designed a simple paper tie banner and tie's for the the marshmallows.      

To help the kids get involved I let them write a letter to Papa Bear. 

  

Don't ask me why Mara wrote her name upside down and backwards I have no clue. 

It was so sweet to see what each child wrote and it made Papa Bear smile. 

If you'd like to throw a Papa Bear brunch of your own, I've got all the things you'll need right here. 

Papa Bear mug

7 inch paper ties

2.5 inch paper ties

Papa Bear Letter