Hawaiian Lei

     With all the excitement of the parties going on I failed to mention my daughter Christine is home from Hawaii for a 3 week visit, yeah!!! One of the reasons for the visit was to attend the party, another is because she was in a wedding this past weekend and has a baby shower to attend in New Jersey this coming week end. As you can tell we are ALWAYS busy, lol.
     One of the things she brought home were 4 lei's.By the time she arrived home they were pretty wilted. It's amazing how they perked up after a few hours in the refrigerator.
     I have to tell you about the wonderful joy they brought to 4 special ladies. First, she gave one to the bride to- be as a birthday/bachelorette gift. Well, one of the brides grandmothers wound up in intensive care for several days.Once she was moved to a regular room, the bride brought her the lei. It caused quite a stir on the hospital floor!
     The second lei my daughter Chris gave to my best friends mom. Yes see, Chris has a VERY special connection with this lady. She is 89 years old, blind and profoundly deaf yet always has the most positive outlook despite overwhelming tragedies in her life. She lives in an assisted living complex. When my friend gave her the lei she was in the community room with about 50 other residents. Not only was she the hit with her friends, the other residents had never seen nor smelled anything so beautiful in all their lives. They could not believe this came all the way from Hawaii. It was passed around the room for everyone to see.
     The third went to the brides mother which, I'm sure she passed on to her 90 year mom, Nana. We all love her!
     The fourth and last one went to my mom. I wore it for a while to show off at the party, but, once my mom arrived, it was all hers. Mom loves anything fragrant, especially Gardenias, but I think this will replace them, lol. Mom is soon to be declared legally blind but she felt she didn't have to see this to know how beautiful it was.
     I have made lei's before, however, we usually only use dendrobium orchids which have no scent. This lei had dendrobs but a beautiful yellow flower which was so sweet smelling. My daughter finally email one of her Hawaiian friends and we were so excited: they are a primrose!
     It was so wonderful to hear how such a simple yet beautiful gift brought so much joy to these exceptional Senior Citizens.

Baking Party

     I promised to show you more about the Baking Party we had for my grand daughters Birthday. On my previous post I showed you the aprons I made for the party favors http://mary-fortheloveofart.blogspot.com/2011/09/party-favors.html now I'll show you why we needed them!

     First of all my daughter Amy made cut out sugar cookies with each child's initial on it. She also purchased some plates with a cupcake on it so she decided to add their name. This way they had a plate to decorate the cookies on and also so they could take their creation home ( That is if they didn't eat it first!).

     The boys were in the kitchen while the girls were in the dining room. They were all too busy either decorating or eating so everyone was well behaved and focused.

     Speaking of focused, it was amazing to see the difference in the 2 groups. They all had the same decorating tubes with frosting, cookies, and sprinkles. Amy put the sprinkles in cupcake liners so the kids could spoon them on the iced cookies. While the boys just squeezed some icing out, threw on some sprinkles and set about eating them, the girls were busy creating, layering and "sharing" their technique!

     Ok, some of the boys really got into it!

     Even the youngest. (Yes they ALL received aprons. Just look at it as an oversized bib!)

Some were extremely proud of their talents and so they should be.

Some were more interested in real food and hanging with the college graduation crowd.

Gotta love this kid!

If you are wondering what the adults were doing here's a peek:

     Remember this is only 3pm BEFORE Tropical Storm Irene hit. She didn't arrive until 11pm. My husband (Fran) and the guys kept sweeping the water away from the tents while everyone was eating in the garage.

After the kids were done decorating, the ladies enjoyed a watermelon Daiquiri

Party Favors

     Sorry I haven't been posting much lately but I have a good excuse. It has nothing to do with the Hurricane Irene but rather with preparing for a baking themed birthday party. So, without further adieu:

     Yup, it's aprons, all 25 of them!!! You read that right, 12 girls and 13 boys. I made my own pattern and the the boys are the chef apron out of character fabric. Some are Batman, some Star Wars, and some are Spiderman. How flippin' cute is that! The girls' aprons are girlie prints with a ruffle around the bottom and side edges. The waistband and neck tie have velcro enclosures making it easy for the little ones to put on themselves.
     The kids range in age from 7 months to 9 years old which meant I had to make several sizes. It may seem like an overwhelming task but not really. I have been sewing for more years than I care to count so I have a serger which helped a lot plus gives it a real professional look. It actually takes more time to cut them out than to actually construct them, lol. Start to finish it took me 2 weeks. Not bad for a power sewer!
     Here's a closer look:

Star Wars Apron

Spiderman Apron

     Here are all the boys including 2 Batman versions. They are all reversible. The straps and waist tie are also from the co ordinating fabric.Now for the girls:

        Such girlie girls!

     Now that's one happy little 5 year old! Happy Birthday Mia Sofia!

     I'll be back tomorrow to share with you what a baking Birthday Party looks like. I'll also have a few pics of the tropical downpour in Massachusetts prior to Irene's arrival. You just can't picture this with approximately 60 people gathered for several celebrations!

Hurricane Irene

     Well we survived but had been without power for 2 days. Unfortunately one of my daughters, her husband and their 3 children, just had their power restored this morning. Just a few pointers: make sure everything is turned off when the power goes out. They had been making pancakes when they lost power and left the pan on the burner to keep the last few pancakes warm while they finished eating. The last 5 days they have been in and out at our house or the in laws so never gave the stove a second thought.
     Well, you guessed it, the power came back on (my daughter was home at the time, Thank God) when she smelled something burning. It was the oily fry pan! Can you imagine what would have happened if she had not gone home? I shutter to think.
     I swear I must have ADD because I just can not sit without something to do, hurricane or not! We are so used to losing our power that I had planned ahead to do projects that did not require electricity. My husband was making sure the generator was working, My daughter is home from Hawaii for a three week visit, so she was catching up on some much needed sleep, so I pulled out some ribbon, scissors and pipe cleaners and made:

     There are 20 of them for a wedding we attending this week end. It's one of those projects that are time consuming but a great job to do when you have no place to go and nothing else to do, lol.
     We had a huge celebration the day before Irene paid a visit. It was Mia's 5th birthday and our last child Steve graduated from college so we also celebrated this milestone. Aside from the tropical downpours proceeding the hurricane, we had a great time. I'll show you pics of a MAJOR project I did as party favors for the 25 kids attending the party. Here's a hint: it involves sewing!!!

Bind It All Mistake

Well  now that the grand kids will be starting back to school I figured it was time to finish the Harry Potter Book we started when they first got out of school. Note to self: don't attempt this when there is an 18 month old running around!
     All was going nicely . We picked out the paper for the cover, glued it on corrugated card board and the paper for the inside cover. Then I began to punch the holes. Oh no! I didn't have the cover firmly in the punching channel and this is what happened.
    

 

       Since I had ordered the paper on line from Two Peas In A Bucket I couldn't just run right out and replace the 2 pieces of paper I had just managed to ruin. My grand son was very consoling yet I knew we were both pretty distraught since it was to be a special project for the 2 of us to do together. So I searched my memory bank and remembered all the classes I had taken at My Creative Classroom and the proverbial light bulb came on!
     I save all my scraps so I managed to find some chip board that was the perfect size. The first thing I did was to punch the holes. (I wasn't taking any chances, lol). Next I grabbed some of Tim Holtz crackle paint for the cover and some brown paint for the inside piece. After the crackle paint was dry I used some Vintage Photo and Walnut Ranger Ink for the cover strip.

     My grand son thought the crackle paint was really cool. I grabbed Beacon's 3 in 1 glue to adhere the strips to the pages. I didn't want this reinforcement to go anywhere!

       Here is the finished book. As you can tell from the smile on his face he is pretty pleased with out it came out. Now we are the only ones who know about the mistake. By the way, you can see why we had trouble finishing this project. That's Cece trying to escape!