Birthday Blessings!

I had a wonderful Birthday Saturday! Mom and I went shopping all day and out to lunch at Olive Garden. I hadn't been there before but completely enjoyed it ;) I found several nice treasures from shopping at all the cute little stores that we went to!

We came home to several people at our house for a little dinner party Hope put together for me! It was a lot of fun, I am so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.

So to all who made my birthday very special...THANK YOU!! I had an amazing day :)

Oh, and as a side note...I have a few more teacups to pose as TFTT pictures in the future! So excited my teacup collection is growing!

Spring Tea

We had a lovely lunch at the CPC Spring tea last Saturday, Hope and I served our guests a large salad with a few toppings, dinner rolls and pound cake with strawberries for dessert! It's called making a lovely (+filling) lunch on a budget ;)

It was so much fun to work with Hope and plan what to serve, how to present our table, and of course, doing the shopping which is always fun!

The dishes also helped save us some money and time, they are from a huge collection I have in my hope-chest! We dug out 8 of each piece and washed them up, I enjoyed being able to share them with everyone!

Here are some of us...

 left to right: Megan (a good friend), Helayna, Hope and Myself...looking funky in the hat I know!

Needless to say, as you could probably gather from my blog is that I LOVE tea and all that goes along with it, and this Spring tea fit right in the mix of it all!!

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!