A Summer Party {and where to get Tissue Paper Flowers on the cheap!}

So if you're interested in having your own summer party, you might like to see how I did my Spring birthday party.

I had a color palette I worked from, with a few slight modifications. :D

I added a little lemony yellow and hot pink to the soft peaches and creams and light pink.


Here's my list of party supplies:

Hanging Tissue Paper Flowers and Lanterns

Mason Jars for drinking glasses and lights

(already had those on hand!) 

With lids and pink-and-white striped straws.

And I found those at JustArtifacts.com! 

If I were a proper blogger I'd be getting some kind of compensation for telling you about this website, but nope, I am just sharing a great resource with you because I'm nice like that. :D 

So here's what it looked like!

We decorated our carport with the tissue paper flowers and lanterns and set up tables all around for the guests to sit at and enjoy the party food. Later we cleared them out of the way for the games. :)

The Lemonade Stand! :) My dad helped me make this a cute photo booth! We used scrap wood we already had, a plastic folding table, a plastic tablecloth and chalk from the dollar store. :)

Here's one of the flower bouquets on the tables. I got the silk peonies and roses from Hobby Lobby.

The set-up...

Already having fun serving ourselves some yummy punch and strawberry lemonade!

Here's what the glasses looked like - super adorable.

Since I have a bajillion beads on hand, I made a little game with some that matched the party colors.
Any idea as to how many there are? Oh all right - there were 224 beads! The closest guess was 235 and the guesser won a prize of a big box of starburst candy. :D

The photo booth was really cute. The backdrop is a vintage sheet I found for $5 at a little shop in town, and the photo props I found on sale at Hobby Lobby and customized myself. :)

There's Victoria!! She was invaluable as my set-up assistant, could NOT have done it without her! :)

My cake! The candles are from walmart (as is the dotted tissue paper beneath the cake stand) and the cake I bought from the deli in town - it's strawberry, my favorite! And it was so delicious. Totally worth blowing my THM plan for, just this once. :D

The strawberry lemonade and the fizzy peach-lime-kiwi punch were a big hit! 

Mama and Mark helped light all my two-dozen candles and then I blew them out in one breath. :D

Besides the cake, we also served:

• Mini Quiches
• Lunch Meat & Cheese platter, and bread & sandwich condiments
• Pasta Salad with cherry tomatoes

It was all very tasty! :) I was having so much fun that I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, but the memories will last forever all the same. :)

Hope you enjoyed that little glimpse! Do you have any plans for parties coming up this year?

In Which I Was On TV!

You see, I happen to work at the wonderful Rock Ranch, located in The Rock, Georgia. Every autumn they have Fall Family Fun Days each Saturday from late September all the way through November, and each has a theme - for example, this week is Lumberjack day and there will be college teams from all over the southeast competing at lumberjackesque events like chopping trees, sawing beams, and log "burling" in the lake.

Now, why did that make me get on TV?

This year, the enormous corn maze is celebrating "75 years of Oz" (it's the 75th anniversary of the movie!) and the entire maze is shaped like this:

I know. Complicated-looking! And I have to memorize the whole thing because... I'm working in it! Part of the time I'll be a corn cop, helping folks find their way out of the maze if they need a little aid. But part of the time...

I'm dressing up as Glinda!

That dress must weigh ten pounds, but it's my favorite of all the costumes. :D ANYway, all the characters from the movie (but not the wicked witch) are represented by a great cast of Rock Ranch staff, including me. Kids (and parents!) will be able to meet-n-greet us and get their pictures taken.

It's going to be fun! I couldn't be there last Saturday, as I was in a very special wedding bridesmaid-ing, but this week I am stoked to be gallivanting around as Glinda. :D

Last week, myself and Hannah (Dorothy) and Tyler (The Scarecrow) and our events manager, communications director, AND my awesome mama (super-duper assistant extraordinare) all drove up to Atlanta. Whilst there, we stopped by 104.7 The Fish radio station and did a quick radio spot and got a photo with the DJ!

THEN... we went here.

CBS. As in, an actual TV station. (that's Adam, our awesome events manager, behind me)...

Click Here to watch the segment. Unfortunately there's also a bit about a haunted house, but it's over rather quickly. :P I had no idea what to expect when we went in, but it ended up that we didn't have to say anything at all, just smile and wave. There was another short bit where we stood at another table with pumpkins on it and waved goodbye at the very end of the hour and Parker surprised us by asking "So where is the tin man?" And I told her "He rusted over." XD Haha! We didn't have microphones on though.

Being at a real TV station was fascinating. The actual broadcast room was a lot smaller than I had thought, with different desks and areas in one room with several HUGE cameras in the middle that swiveled. One of the behind-the-scenes gals told me that my hair was fantastic and asked if I had any hair secrets to share on how to get it so long and gorgeous. :D (short answer: I don't. Don't blow-dry, don't dye, and don't flat-iron. I curl it once in a great while though.)

 Us waving goodbye. :D

And a scarecrow selfie! :)

After the live TV bit was over, Sue from Field Trips with Sue interviewed Adam more about the Rock Ranch, for her own website.

Then after that we got lost about four times on our way to a certain chick-fil-a (actually walked into the wrong one fully decked out in costume - that was hilariously awkward) we finally made it, ate some tasty salads that the staff served us on the house, and then took our picture with all the customers and handed out coupons in the drive-through. Most of those customers had never even heard of the Rock Ranch.

Just me that day, in a top I found on ThredUP.com. More on that amazing website later. :D

Mama and I made it back home at around 8:00 that night, worn out! But it was so much fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat. :D Maybe I will, we'll have to see! :)

Until then, if you live in Georgia and are looking for some great family fun this fall, come by the Rock Ranch (www.therockranch.com) and see me at the Corn Maze! :)

Still Alive! {GHEA Convention 2014}

My lovely readers! Wish I could give you all a big hug and tell you how sorry I am for abandoning you (without notice, shame on me!) for the past few months!

{I would have blogged this post sooner, but we've had intermittent internet outages in the past week - very irksome, indeed! :P}

But I had an awfully good reason for my lack of blogging. I was swimming in beads, making hundreds of jewelry pieces to sell in my 10-foot-by-10-foot booth in the exhibit hall at the 2014 GHEA (Georgia Home Educators Association) in Atlanta.

So, because I've got lots of pictures, here's a blog post full of them! :)

We all arrived midafternoon in Atlanta and set up our booths in the vendor hall, working like a well-oiled machine. Practice makes perfect! I think this is the 5th year I've done it. :)

We checked into our hotel and crashed for about an hour - I took a catnap, knowing I would appreciate the extra rest, as I never sleep very well in hotel beds. I'm too used to my own. :)

Then we hit the mall! The boys went to the LEGO store - stunning the employees when they picked up the LEGO club magazine lying there and showed them their interview, having competed in the prestigious by-invitation-only Iron Builder contest. Pretty cool. I's extremely proud of 'em. :)

I went to Bath and Body works......... and they had just released some delectable summery scents, so I grabbed a few in travel-size bottles, which were on a special sale, and some Europe-inspired fragrances that were 50% off. :) I love that place too much. :D

Then all five of our family went to Bass Pro shop, and I ended up finding a pair of running shoes on sale in a brand that I know fits my feet best. (Yay! Motivation to exercise! I've already run nearly 4 miles in them and they're great!) :) I also had a crazy desire to get some of this pirate-themed hot sauce, but resisted. Confession: I love spicy food, and these were too hilarious. Look...

While we were there, I noticed that a scuba diver was cleaning the fish tank! They are in the center of the picture, that shiny tube is their air tank.

Back at the hotel, laden with our goods from the mall, we crashed again and ate dinner - tacos with all the fixin's that we packed in the cooler. We always bring a cooler on trips, and it saves so much time and money, plus we get to eat our favorite fresh foods, which are better for you anyway! :)

These are the lamps in the hotel lobby. It was a pretty place, which made up for the fact that they didn't serve breakfast. *sigh* If they'd had free breakfast, that would have been one of the best hotel stays EVER. :)

 (The next evening we were there, we'd packed venison burgers and had them with all their fixin's. Mine was so good I did that silly thing where you take a picture of your food that nobody wants to see anyway... so here it is)

So! Bright and early the next morning, we started selling stuff. Many of my customers from years before came by early, saying they'd come to me first to make sure they didn't miss out! It was very gratifying. :) And I was glad they did that, because it's true, pieces start moving and by the end of the 2nd day my selection is much more limited as the amount of jewelry decreases. Even though I bring a TON. :)

Hello! :) I really loved the outfit I put together for the first day. Aqua summery-print top with mint shrug, white flowy skirt, and white jewelry. :)

My booth! I was thrilled with how it looked this year. The addition of a chevron tablecloth (and finding my favorite tie-dye knit hot pink tablecloths) really made it POP. :) 

This is the necklace table, holding mostly pendants on chains and some pretty necklace and earring sets, as well as the floral cuff bracelets and the flower rings. I had to keep refilling the busts as they emptied when necklaces sold! 

GAHHHH I love these. MMM! I delight in making each one unique and perfect with tiny, special detail. 

The headbands were popular again this year! And I actually met a few girls who were wearing headbands they had bought from me LAST year! Too awesome. I get such a kick out of seeing people wearing my creations and loving them. :)

Half of the necklace racks... It's funny to look at these now and think "Oh, yep, that one sold, and that one, and that one....etc." :) 

The other half. All so pretty, all so different! :) I try to come up with something for every lady's style. NOT an easy task.

The beaded wire bracelets. A whole bunch of these sold too! 

 I tried to keep my prices ridiculously low this year to just get the jewelry to move... and it went! Things flew off the displays at a wild pace and I had many people telling me I should be charging more... I simply smiled, knowing that the more pieces I sold at a lower price, the better profit I was making. :)

My strategy worked, by the way. I topped last year's total by about a hundred dollars. YAY! Thank you, Lord!!! :)

I had some super-cute gift bags this year to give people when they purchased jewelry from me, which many of the women found absolutely charming. :D Hey, I'm all about shoppers having a delightful experience. :) I found them here on etsy. :)

Meeting fantastic people is seriously the best thing about these conventions. I made sure to get a photo with the amazing Mirriam, who is a fellow writer! Mirriam snagged some Celtic Knot-style chandelier earrings while she was at my booth. :) I also got to meet Katelyn S, one of my most faithful blog commenters!! It was so much fun socializing with her and her two sisters, who all bought lots of jewelry from me. Katelyn, if you're reading this, drop me a comment with your email address! We should get together sometime! :D

My poor feets. They got so sore and tired by the end of the convention! I don't know why, but standing in one small space all day long is torture on the soles of my feet. 

This is the chandelier earring rack. (On day 2, see the missing gaps?) There were 96 pairs of these, alone. I think I had around 500 pairs of earrings, total. 

 It was so cozy to get home and remember that I'd cleaned my room before I left, and hung twinkle-lights just because... which I quickly plugged in and smiled at.

 Yup. Definitely adds much-needed glimmer and sparkle. :) All the better to play chess (my brothers, not me) and to crochet, while gazing at.

I love my room. :)

Ohhh! Before I forget, here's a shout-out to the Virginia Soaps and Scents company, whose home-crafted soap I buy annually in great quantities so as to last all year long. It smells AMAZING, and is gently cleansing. And I've heard it's great for skin issues like acne and eczema! 

 The last great effort once I got home was to ship off a few custom-altered pieces of jewelry, and to put the remaining fresh stock into my stand in the shop on the square, the Rescue Me Marketplace. It looks smashing now! :D

I looooove it. Praying for great sales there this month and all summer.

Honestly, I thought that necklace was surely going to be snapped up by some book-loving homeschooler. I may end up just keeping it myself yet... Let me know if you want to buy it for $23.00 plus shipping. :D

And how fun is this "Chile-Pepper" necklace in bold, zesty shades of cherry, cayenne, olive, lime, and pink? 

I'm gearing up to sell my jewelry online (Don't all faint at once, now) so stay tuned for updates on that and more blog posts throughout this summer!