Handmade Birthday Gift

I was just reminded that I promised to share what I made my Mom for her birthday! Remember we hosted a surprise party for her? Well, here's what I made her...

All it required was embroidering, some stapling and then gift wrapping! As you probably know by now, I love embroidering and find it relaxing and easy to do, but now I've also decided that canvas is one of the easiest and most useful things in the world to use!! I will for sure be using it again for crafts and gifts!

I enjoyed working with this design and picking the colors to use and such! My Mom loves VW vans and I had had this idea for some time now and had a lot of fun  making these (in between secretly creating things for the party)! I am so glad they were done in time too!

Sorry about the blurry picture...phone's fault!!

What is a craft you've been working on lately??

Surprise visitor!

Hey all :) Guess what?! My sister Harmony flew in to town today to spend today and part of tomorrow with the family as a surprise visit (I knew ahead of time, haha)!
Everyone was surprised and we have been having great fun having her back here for a day or so!!

A surprise birthday Party!

My Mom had been mentioning how she wanted a birthday party this year, so we decided to throw a surprise one for her! And we did it!! If you know my Mother you understand my enthusiasm! My Mom is one of those people that is very hard to keep a secret from...she always finds something out :) But not this time, we had nearly a house full of people hidden when she and Dad walked in from their day in Anchorage, she was greeted with a loud "Happy Birthday" which was replied to with a scream of delight!!
It was a lot of fun to put this together for her, and I thought I'd share some of the pictures with you all...

{Setting up...the dinning room table was such a mess there for a while!}

{These silly balloon bouquets that caused some laughter and lots of fingers ;)}

{Still setting up and preparing the food, but this is the only real good picture of those scalloped streamer!}

{Happy birthday!}

{The drink table!}

{The dessert counter...favors, ice cream, cake, punch and mints!! And for this counter I cut several 6x6 in. pieces of paper and used as a runner, and Hopey came behind me and sprinkled the whole thing with green sugar sprinkle which made it all look so festive!}

{A bowl of small thank you favor pouches! I made these and filled them with a few chocolate covered pretzels each! I don't have a tutorial, but may be making another on for that purpose!}

{A delicious cake made by my sister Heather (thanks Heather!) and the punch bowl/glasses and mints!}

{I wrapped re-fried bean cans with wrapping paper and a strip of paper and stuck a pretty sticker on the front...these we used for our silverware! Note: I did tape all the way around the top ledge to avoid anyone getting cut, just a suggestion!}

Dad and I sneaked off to town a few times the last few weeks while Mom was at the shop, and bought supplies, groceries ect. Hosanna and I had fun shopping for the groceries!! We served a taco bar with cornbread muffins, chips and cheese dip, fruit, and of course our delicious dessert counter! I didn't get a picture of the table all set up unfortunately but it all went together wonderfully and sure was good!!

We had a wonderful night visiting and playing apples to apples...we never did finish before everyone had to leave, it lasts a while with that big of a group playing! We had so much fun and had people at our home till 12:30 that night!
Happy Birthday Mom :)

Next time I'll share with you what I made Mom for her present!