The Birthday Party! Photo-heavy post!

I've eluded to a secret project that I had been working on for a little while, but now that the party is over, I can share the details!

My stepdaughter turned 15 on October 2nd and we decided to throw her a surprise party! She had been talking about wanting to do an Alice in Wonderland themed "something" for a while, so I recommended we try to do a Mad Hatter theme Tea Party for her birthday. Everyone thought it was a great idea! I volunteered to do the invitations and other crafty things since her mom will freely admit that she doesn't have a creative bone in her body. I poked around on some online message boards for some ideas and suggestions and came up with a plan for the invites and we sent them out to family and passed the word around to her friends via word-of-mouth. We were going with the surprise planning for almost a month.

Unfortunately, the surprise lasted until the night before her party. We had planned to have her come spend the night at our house on Friday night so her mother could set everything up at her house for the Saturday morning party. Well.... Kelly (being the good ROTC girl that she is), volunteered to work a double shift at her school's football game, which would make it impossible for her to come to our house (as she wouldn't get here until around midnight). So, we had to tell her what was going on. She was thrilled!

Friday night, dearest husband and I were up until almost 2am getting our stuff together to take over to her mother's house in the morning. When we arrived, I found that their neighbor (with all good intentions) had taken over essentially. Instead of the mish-mashed teacups, mish-mashed chairs, and whimsical decorations and food.... I found a very beautiful and elegant tea setup. Not what I had pictured, but beautiful nonetheless. My invitations, drinks, and snacks didn't fit in anymore. :-( I was a little disappointed, but Kelly loved it anyway!!!

We had tea-party foods (egg salad sandwiches, sans crusts; deviled eggs; banana bread; TastyCake cupcakes; breakfast casserole; fruit; etc), hot tea, cold tea, and mocktails (orange juice and gingerale).

I had also made whoopie pies as take away snacks...with the Alice in Wonderland theme mixed in!

And continued the theme on the drinks....

These are the invitations that I made (using A Child's Year for that hat image and the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder for the inside; I changed the typical "10/6" that's on the Mad Hatter's hat to "10/2" for her birthday and found an Alice in Wonderland-type font for the inside wording).

I made the tags for the drinks and whoopie pies with Sentimentals and some stamps.

Overall, I was quite happy with how everything turned out... not a pro yet, but not bad for a beginner! :-)

Oh where have I been!?!

I started this blog and then... I disappeared for over a month! What happened?!

Well, at the end of June, my husband realized that he had some vacation time that he had to use up, so he, my stepdaugther, my Yorkie Princess and I loaded up the car and headed to my home state of Pennsylvania to visit my family and to help celebrate my niece's 2nd birthday!

My stepdaughter had never been to PA when there wasn't snow on the ground (we've only been able to take her at Christmas time) so I thought she needed to experience the northern part of the country during the summer time to be able to fully appreciate it! So, off we went!

We were in PA for almost 10 days and there is very limited internet access there, so obviously I wasn't posting then. Instead, I was out enjoying my time with my family! We had my niece's Nemo theme birthday party, took her to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time, visited Hersheypark and Hershey's Chocolate World one day, Knoebels another day, went to the best Farmer's Market that I've ever been to, had a 4th of July BBQ and fireworks with the family, and ate at delicious restaurants such as: Country Cupboard, Grotto Pizza, OIP, Red Robin, The Brass Pelican, and Nino's! (I know that Red Robin is a chain restaurant, but we don't have one near us here in Florida so we always eat there when we go "home" to PA!) Of course, I was playing paparazzi and I took over 2,000 photos while we were on vacation, so there will be lots of photos to share!

Once we got back, I have been busy applying for jobs and tweaking my resume. I have been out of work for over a year now and am desperately trying to find a position. This didn't leave much time for me to scrapbook or craft.

Then, my DH had his 35th birthday on July 27th, so we spent that week celebrating HIM! Had a small family party at our house the day of his birthday, complete with his favorite dinner foods! Then that weekend we went to celebrate with his family by having dinner at a great Mediterranean restaurant here in Jacksonville called Istanbul Mediterranean & Italian Cuisine. YUMMY!!!!

Last weekend, I begged my DH to help me get my scrapbooking stuff out of the dining room and into our spare bedroom (which is never used). We'd already downsized from a full-sized bed to a twin daybed, so we just needed some tables and organizing stuff. We went to Lowe's and got some shelves and a folding 6' table (that can multipurpose come the holidays when we will be hosting dinner this year), and then visited Michael's and got some craft room organizers that were on sale for 40% off!! I can't tell you how excited I am to have an actual ROOM to craft in! We hooked up a little iPod radio and the TV and put a lamp in there for me so I can sit in there for HOURS now!

So that's where I've been and what I've been up to! I did finally get to do some scrapbooking this week, so I will return soon to post photos of our vacation, my room, and other neat stuff!!! Stay tuned!