Angie's Bridal Shower

This is Angie at her bridal shower last weekend. My Aunt Judy let the bridesmaids throw it in her beautiful backyard garden. It was a joint effort with bridesmaid's husbands helping with the tents, Judy making everything look perfect in her yard. Big Boy grilled the chicken skewers, Sunny and Kate set the tables. Andrea made last minute direction signs. Bridesmaid Amber in South Carolina made and sent favors. Uncle Tom helped with the tents, the yard and set us up a huge fan. All of the bridesmaids, one of their moms, my mom and myself made the food. Here are the tables that Sunny and Kate worked so hard on. I thought I would be there to help so I told the other girls they didn't need to all be there. Too bad I forgot I had to do the flowers for the tables the next morning because I kind of left Sunny and Kate scrambling to get things done when they could have had more help. Never assume things won't take long. Everything takes longer than you think it will it seems.
The garden entrance.


Capiz shell wind chime from Celery Street.



The flowers came from my yard and Sam's Club. Judy's hydrangeas looked
so much better than mine. If I'd known she had them I would have used hers. She made some arrangements for the patio that were beautiful.


The napkins are supposed to look like dresses cinched at the
waist with a diamond ring. Angie is not having pink at her wedding
but since Sunny and I wanted some pink she said we could use it at her
shower instead. The green place settings and runners we found at K Mart
on clearance. It made me very happy.



Judy already had this butterfly chair in her garden.We decided it would be the perfect place for Angie to open her gifts. Judy put a rug under it that my great or great great grandmother had made. I never did get that straight.

Angie in her big diamond ring with her wedding wine glass all set to open gifts.
My niece Jenny made this wedding cake out of towels for Angie.

The drinks.
Bridesmaid Kristin and her mom Debbie setting up before the shower.

Bought the Evian at Big Lots.


Kristin and her sister Nicole (also a bridesmaid and the one who took most of these pictures) made and labeled the water bottles.
Bridesmaid Kate made the labels for the food and apothecary decanters
along with this Blushing Bride drink. It was pretty tasty.






This is the view from Judy's patio.Kate and Kristin making Angie's favorite lime sherbet punch for the little ones.

I was working on the chicken skewers and pasta
skewers around 2 in the morning the night before while


making Kate work on these cucumber rounds and toothpick appetizers and everything else that came to my mind. By the end of the weekend Kate had definitely had her fill of me. So had the other girls too I'm sure.


Sunny made the ever popular Oreo truffles. Nicole and Kristin brought coated pretzels and cupcakes and chicken salad croissants and all kinds of food. Andrea brought buffalo chicken dip and a ton of cheese and made an Italian angel hair pasta dish too. There was a lot of food. I lost track of who brought what.

All of the girls helped on the desserts and food.
These are store bought. That's why they look so perfect.
Because Angie loves hydrangeas I tried to copy the hydrangea cupcakes I saw on the Glorious Treats blog. Mine didn't quite compare but most of the ladies at the shower had never seen that blog anyway. I used her cookie recipe too along with her icing recipe. I spent days on her blog.

These are all of the bridesmaids except for Amber who lives in South Carolina.
Yesterday Angie and I had a shower for her. She is also getting married soon. So
is Kate. From left to right, my niece Andrea, Kristin, Kate, Angie, Nicole,
and on the end is my daughter and maid of honor Natalie (aka Sunny.)

My friend Debbie bought Angie this adorable apron with cherries on it.


Angie is with flower girls Emma and Kelsey here and in
the middle is their cousin Kamryn.
Judy is in the white here beside my mom in the green. That's my cousin Pam in the brown who had just come from the airport after an all night trip from Alaska. My niece Allison is between them and she told me that day she is having a baby boy in December. That's matron of honor Andrea beside Judy. Here are some more pictures of Judy's yard.





The party's over and it's clean up time. I'm trying to get over my fear of cameras for the wedding so here I am with my some of my BFFs (Barb, me, Gloria, Jeanie & Teri.)
And below is me with my two little girls.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this shower so nice. Sunny and I are so very grateful as is Angie for all of your help and hard work. A special thanks to Nicole and Jeanie for being our photographers. and a very special Thanks to Sunny for organizing the whole thing and finding us such a beautiful setting for the shower. I know she lost a lot of sleep planning this baby. And to my Aunt Judy and Uncle Tom we can't thank you enough for lending us your beautiful home and garden. We should have the wedding there but it's too late for that.

This bridal shower is listed at the Creative Party Place where you can find many great party ideas.

It is also listed at Between Naps on the Porch which has a ton of new tablescapes to view every Thursday. Thank you Susan for letting us post them.

Another MOB Dress

So, it's been awhile since I've posted. I haven't been into the blogging thing lately. I've been a little preoccupied with real life and the hours in a day it doesn't seem to provide enough of. Anyway, I bought another MOB dress when I went to make a payment on the other one. This one is the third one I've bought. Dare I say, I'm becoming like my daughter in this area. I took the second one back when I saw the look on Big Boy's face when he saw me in it and exclaimed "I thought you were wearing the green one. The wedding colors are green and you should wear the green one!" Of course Big Boy had been drinking a few beers prior to his walking in the door to me in this gold/taupe dress. He then went and took a shower as I changed into my jammies. When he came out of the restroom I said "Just so you know, the green dress costs about $200 more than the gold one." He says "Then you should wear the gold one." Of course I took the gold one back. The look on his face when he walked in told me to do that. But I did love the beading on it. And it had a shaw type wrap thing full of beads that I just loved because it covered the fat flaws on my arms and back. I loved the beading on the bottom of it too. The top of the dress didn't do a lot for me but if I covered up with the wrap I really liked it. But, I took it back. So, I went to pay on Debbie's charge because she is the one who bought the green one for me. Of course I had to look and low and behold on the clearance rack was the same dress as the gold dress only in purple. I actually tried it on in the store and walked around in front of strangers in the dressing room in it and got a compliment from one of them. I brought it home. I bought shoes while there at Von Maur to go with both dresses. Now I need to lose 25 pounds and decide which one I am wearing. I'd better do it quick too because Angie said the other day that the wedding is 70 days out. I've had way over a year and only lost 5 lbs so far. Anyway here is the purple dress. It is sleeveless under that wrap.
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These are the shoes I bought to go with this dress.
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These are the shoes I bought to go with the green dress. Needless to say the ones for the purple dress are more comfortable.
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Half of the reason I haven't been blogging lately is because when it comes to adding enclosure links I have been having a very hard time figuring out how to do it on this old Apple computer Angie gave me. Erik is here today and helped me learn something about it that I never knew. Bless his heart. Maybe now blogging will be easier for me. Angie and Erik are getting ready to leave to go to Erik's best friend's wedding which is tomorrow. Congratulations to Kenny and Katelynn! I can't wait to see the pictures from it. After that Erik's parents are taking them to the Dominican Republic so Angie can meet Tita's family. A lot of them won't be able to travel here for the wedding. Angie has sent most of her invitations out and we are already getting RSVPs back in the mail. She still has to find some addresses though so they are not all out. I will soon post pics of them. She made them herself with the help of Kinko's. She's had lots of compliments on them. The people at Kinko's were really impressed. In case you don't want to search for the green one, here it is again.

Kel-Belle's 7th Birthday

This is my great-niece Kelsey. Kelsey is ate up with Harry Potter at the moment. She was turning seven and wanted me to do her tablescape in the Harry Potter theme. I have never seen a Harry Potter film or read a Harry Potter book. Spells and wizards are not my idea of fun. I don't like to mess with that kind of thing, knowing the power of good and evil. I prefer to call on the power of God and I know that wizards aren't of God. Needless to say, my heart was not into designing this table. But I did find it a bit of a challenge so I searched the Internet to see what kind of ideas I could get from other people's Harry Potter parties. Without the Internet, I would be lost. I found some very helpful websites and will try to list the ones I can remember.
I was surprised at how well it turned out, though pictures never seem to capture what it looks like in person. Kelsey's glasses I found at the Dollar Store. They happen to come with a red nose but I didn't tell Kelsey that. The wands I made out of some bamboo I had at home. I just took hot glue and made a handle and designs on them with the glue and then spray painted them. .
The above picture click's bigger.

I had this old birdcage at home and also already had a stained glass owl light for some reason. I just painted it's head white and when you tuned it on his eyes light up red. I bought the stuffed owl puppet before I realized I actually already had an owl at home. The star quilt belonged to Angie when she was in college. I hung it over the big window in Kelsey's kitchen to make it darker and more of a wizard wonderland. The sheet I hung on the ceiling along with some webs and spiders I found at Good-Will.

I found this snake at a local party store who had their Halloween decor half-off. Costumes weren't half-off so I never got a witch or wizard hat bought. I had planned on making a sorting hat but ended up with having Kelsey visit the night before her birthday so there were a few things I didn't get made that were supposed to go on the table. Such as the hat, some scrolls and a feather ink pen and ink well. This tie I found at The Salvation Army store along with some black robes that I covered the chairs with. I then took twine and hung brooms on the back of the kid's chairs that I had picked up at The Dollar Store.
The above picture click's bigger.

To find these love potion labels copy and paste this link if it doesn't work
http://rottenyouth.deviantart.com/art/Veritaserum-potion-label-157495029
I found other labels here & just mod-podged them onto old bottles and jars. The two brown bottles are actually Dad's Root-Beer from The Dollar Store.
http://ivillage.com/ Of course I can't find them now but if you Google search Harry Potter Parties or labels you'll find some.
I found some here too.
www.mommyblessings.com



I found some great labels here on this website too.
http://madebymarcie.blogspot.com/2008/10/spooky-labels-from-love-manor.html
The swamp fog was really water mixed with a tad bit of milk.

The Golden Snitch





Bat Skeletons are really Ramen Noodles.



This is a great website for ideas and labels. I'm not sure where I copied these book covers from but I probably found them through this website. http://parenting.ivillage.com/slideshow/parenting/12_easy_ideas_for_a_wizardworthy_harry_potter_birthday_party/official_hogwarts_invitations.html





This is Kelsey's sister Emma. Emma is a girl of few words. When she talks, you listen. Emma paid me my highest compliment when she walked in from school, looked at the table, looked at me and said "That's impressive." Isaac walked in behind her and said "Whoa, That is impressive." Sigh, my mission was complete. Kel-Belle just kept smiling and saying "Cool"

Turkey Pepperoni Dip

Turkey Pepperoni Dip

I don't know where this recipe originated from so I hope I'm not infringing on anybody's copyrights or breaking some kind of blogger's law but I could live off of this stuff. Of course I'd gain three pounds a day like I did yesterday after eating it at a shower we threw for Angie's friend Amber. My friend Debbie always makes this and I always have to ask her for the recipe when I want to take it somewhere. I thought if I wrote it on my blog I wouldn't have to bother her again for it. Plus it should be shared because it is so easy and so yummy. Here it is.......

Pepperoni Dip 2 /8oz blocks of cream cheese 1 cup sour cream 1 can Rotel tomatoes w/chilis (drained) 1 pkg of pepperoni (I use the turkey pepperoni) Chop the cream cheese into pieces along with the pepperoni slices, throw it into a small crock pot or slow cooker and heat until creamy. Serve with Pita Bites or chips, Better Chedders, Hawaiian Bread, pretzels, veggies or whatever floats your boat. If you are responsible for this recipe Thank You! and please let me know so I can give you the credit.

Luggage & It's Tags

So evidently I have a reader who looks forward to my posts. It's when I am not posting, you can bet I have a lot to say but am busy and am trying to filter my thoughts which probably makes them less fun to read but makes me less vulnerable and less likely to tick anyone off.. Anyway without saying much I will show you these luggage tags I thought were adorable. These are for you Kate. :)
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