Semi Homemade...

courtesy of the Curious Sofa

Yesterday the hubby and I went to a local store that is closing to do bankruptcy, they are selling all of their fixtures to include mannequins and I am on the fence about buying one so I can do pull off a front yard display like the one above next Halloween the idea is from one of my favorite stores The Curious Sofa

I can buy just legs made out of Styrofoam for $15. MY concern is will they hold up during our move?? The hubbys is not getting to excited about this idea...he says he loves what the finished product would be but I think he's not excite about keeping the legs around for a while.

We also made a trip to Wal Mart yesterday and while I was looking for cool recipes for Super Bowl cupcakes I found a new magazine that I'm already in love with! You can check it out here. Sandra Lee makes my life sooo much easier with her simple and elegant ideas!

Ok I am up to make a big breakfast everyone and head out to one of my best friends house to help prepare food for a Christening Reception she's holding today for her daughter, a very sweet baby I just want to give a million smooches to she's so sweet!

Its all Greek to me...

Ok so I must be crazy but I am throwing a "Toga" party for 2 of our good friends Birthday's in February. I'm going to give the whole party a Greek feel to it, so I'm thinking plenty of white and gold!! I'm hoping I can scam a column like these from somewhere or pick it up cheap





Then I will be heading over to Hobby Lobby to score some sweet gold chargers


pic courtesy of Plum Parties

And then a trip to goodwill for some fake greenery and any other crazy thing I can get my hands on amd spray paint white!!!

I will be making all kinds of "family" (part of my genetic makeup...if you couldn't tell by the crazy eyebrows) and hopefully it will all fall into place and we will feel like we're on vacation in the Mediterranean.

I also need to work out the hubs and my Toga possibilities now that he broke down what the colors the royals wore I will be out a hunting for all kinds of "royal" possibilities!

But first this weekend, we have a Christening and a Super Bowl Party to attend so alot of work to do...and god I have to put in a full day at work again tomorrow...I wish I could just stay home and plan parties...

Because friends don't let friends drink friends...

How I threw my favorite 13 year old girl the perfect "Twilight" Birthday party...

Start with awesome after Christmas sale goodies in the colors of the Twilight books...
All of the above was purchased at Hobby Lobby's 80-90% off after Christmas Sale and the Dollar Store, where who knew it but you can get some items for fifty cents...go figure...

Once you have all of the decorating goodies, we to found the "perfect" location for the party...in this case it was a Historic Library that had a very aged feel that for our theme





We were creative...with such a BIG room we new we would not be able to "fill" it with decorations so we concentrated on making sure our table centerpiece's were awesome... I spent a few hours making up super cool label's for empty wine bottles to sit in the middle of the table..I thought they came out good and since I pasted them on empty bottles of Boones Farm the whole project cost me $2.00 per bottle...and no I did not drink the Boones Farm nor did we give it to the kiddos... although I will admit as crappy as Boones is it may have made the whole project much more interesting!


It's hard when they turn 13 to come up with "goody's" for the kids to take home, the usual bag of candy and dollar store items just wouldn't do, so instead M and I made some really cool bookmarks, using a picture from the Twilight movie and quotes from the books written in the different characters handwriting/font





We also made our own Twilight pins, I have seen these on sale EVERYWHERE and of course I wasn't going to buy one for each kid, so making our own seemed the next logical/frugal thing to do..it was pretty cool and we threw silver glitter in each pin to give it an extra special something. You can get the pins here and they are super easy to use... I found a template online and we designed a few different options




To go along with my idea to heavily decorate the tables I wrapped all of the "red" plastic silverware in black napkins and hot glued a red "napkin ring" made from some wired ribbon I picked up at the dollar store, it was a pain in the butt, but it did look decent when we set up the tables at the site...

I also thought it would be cool to have some candle light, but probably not to smart to have actual candles burning so instead we opted to turn down the chandeliers and place "bleeding candles" on each of the tables. This was probably the easiest coolest thing to do! All it took is a pack of dollar store white pillar candles and another small red votive candle that I dripped all over the white tapers...





So anyway here's pictures of the event pretty much put together, thank god for my right hand girlie Liz for being smart enough to take pics of everything put together before the kids got there as I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off ( oh and she helped set up and keep me company along with some other kick butt friends, aren't I lucky!)


This was the gift table...Aren't those candelabras the coolest!! Day after Halloween at Cracker Barrel I swear I had my eye on them all through the Halloween season but $39.99 was waaayyyy to much but on sale for $4 and they were mine!!! They rocked!! ( We did fix the tablecloth after the pic was taken!)


A close up of one of the centerpiece's..there was all kinds of stuff in there...black and red sequined Christmas balls, all kinds of red & black jewel "scatters", sequined red apples, red ribbon, and tufts of red, black and silver tulle all bunched up underneath, I loved it!






This was the original circulation desk from the library and it made an awesome buffet for the party!!!!



And just maybe somehow Maddy got a copy of the movie "Twilight" for Christmas...you know waaayyyy before it came out on DVD and while it was still in theaters...so yeah she was the envy of her friends and we were lucky enough to get ahold of a projector and have the movie playing during the party...a lot of the kiddos were glued to the movie! I guess it pays to know someone who may have been in a far away country for waayyy to long and could get ahold of movies before they were released...


We didn't want to spend money on a DJ...so we went with an IPOD and a IPOD player, a few days ahead of M and I sat down and made up a very cool playlist...I was going to go hokey and include things such as Monster Mash, but I thought that would just be hokie so I stuck with what M and her friends listen to, it did turn out pretty good and we did get the kids moving and dancing!
OH AND DID I MENTION...WE HAD A KNIGHT!!!!!

Our good friend Scott is crazy enough to have a full suit of armor and was cool enough to get dressed in this ridiculously hot (even when it's 23 degrees out) get up and guard/welcome M and her guests! He was really great at keeping the paparazzi away...see....

All in all it was a fantastic night and I was super proud of what a wonderful hostess M is, she mingled well and made sure she spread her time among all of her guests, that's hard to do especially at 13!! Way to go my baby I am so proud of what an amazing young woman you have turned into! I hope you had as much fun as I did... are you ready to start planning your Sweet 16...just kidding I am definitely not in any hurry to do that~





PS- God help me but I am throwing a Double Birthday/Toga Party for some good friends in February...it should be interesting

Why....

Is it sooo damn cold here???

Who's idea was this??

In an effort to keep my family close and my kiddos active and from sleeping their lives away (can anyone tell me why teenage girls sleep so much?) we have decided that every night of the week will be someones "activity" night. Basically each kid plans something for us to do, oh and Mom and Dad, we get our turns also. We started Wednesday night with M's plan for us all to hit the gym, which was a lot of fun even if I am still a little sore, last night was D's turn and his activity had all of us "hitting" up the driving range as a family which was a blast, but did not help my soreness. Now tonight is A's turn and amazingly enough his activity is a secret...nope I can't tell you...no not even if you promise to buy me the new wellies I want sooooo bad... nope not even if you took me back to Harry's for dinner...you're just going to have to wait like everyone else...and not to tease, it's awesome and thoughtful and makes me swell with pride!

In other news, I am thinking about taking up knitting, I keep seeing all of these cool knitting projects all over the blogosphere, am I crazy? I figure I will need to find something to fill in the void that will be left when I am no longer the FRG Leader (oh what a happy day that will be!)

You don't have to relate... it's cool

My life is filled with acronyms.

Almost 14 years ago when I married my husband I quickly found out that I was going to have to learn a whole new language, not because we were moving to a foreign country...well maybe we were because being a Military Spouse I've learned is it's own culture and almost like living on another planet.

Having grown up in a purely "civilian" household and never having been around any type of military I was in complete "culture shock". People threw words at me like, PX, FTX, TDY, PCS, LES, and I had no idea what they were talking about...but I quickly learned. I threw myself into my new role as military spouse because my mother taught me one of the most important lessons I could ever learn and that was to do your homework and know what you're talking about. I hate appearing like an idiot so I jumped in with 2 feet I asked questions and investigated and within 6 months I was the FSG Leader (Family Support Group) and I was helping other spouses learn what services were available and planning get togethers.

Now as we get ready for another hectic and almost last moves and a slight change from what I can tell from our "normal" duty stations, I've realized that we are institutionalized. I can't imagine what our life's will be like when we are no longer an "Army" family, I mean how do you make friends in the real world if Uncle Sam is not there to provide them? What do you mean my husband will be around all day everyday and never ever go to the field ( a chance for us both to have a break), we won't be attending balls every time we turn around?? What a strange strange life it will be, and as crazy as it sounds, at least to other military wives, I don't think I will like it.

Delurking is Delightful!

I am a lurker...especially lately, I go from blog to blog, rarely leaving a comment, but thoroughly enjoying every minute of my lurking! There are sooo many blogs I love and visit everyday, and now I have started checking out their favorite blogs, I mean if I like the original blog then surely I will like their favorite blogs as well..does that make sense? I am currently finding myself drawn to entertaining blogs...I love to entertain and I would throw a party a week if I had the budget... that reminds me I should blog the efforts of my "Twilight" party it was a ton of fun!

Ok so is there an intervention for lurking?? How do you stop lurking and become a de-lurker, it feels awkward and unnatural to me at this point...

With the best of intentions...

So I am right around the corner from another move, thanks to Uncle Sam. As always I start out with a "plan", typically this plan involves me eliminating half of the crap from my house. Nobody wants to take "junk" with them to their next house, and I also happen to live with a man who thinks I "collect" crap, so if I don't want to hear him complain I think it's smart to rid myself of much of my belongings.

So far my plan to rid myself of "crap" has gone pretty well...that is if you pay no attention to the additional "crap" I have brought into the house in the last month or so. I mean come on we were having a great sale, and there were things I just had to have. Apparently V does not share my need to completely re-decorate my house every time we move, but he sure does enjoy having the nice things around!

The next part of my plan usually involves following one of the many handy dandy "countdown to moving" time lines you can find online. Of course a majority of these time lines usually start 6 weeks out from a move and I like to start as early as possible and in this case 6 months ahead of time, so I have to modify the time lines to fit my craziness. I am still searching and hoping I can find a time line more in line with what I think a time line should look like if you had 6 months to plan. Maybe I should just create my own... what a thought...

I'm pretty anal about moving, I have friends who are relaxed about their moves and do not freak out if the movers put bathroom towels in with their kitchen stuff, but not me this would send me into a complete panic. I make sure everything that goes in a box is in the same "category" and there are multiple categories in our house, it makes life sooo much easier when you arrive at your new home. I have unpacked our household and had all boxes removed from the house and everything set up in 1 hour in past moves, and we have a lot of "stuff". I'm good at this I've had a lot of practice.

I am not however even with all my anal retentive tendencies mean to our movers. We always have doughnuts, drinks, lunch and good attitudes with our movers. I've learned that this has ensured that more of our stuff arrives in one piece than some of the horror stories I have heard other military families go through. We are particularly sure to let the movers know what pieces we be devastated if we lost... for me it would be my art work and my zebra mirror, for the hubby it would be his TV and electronics, and all of these things have been packed with love and care on multiple moves overseas and here in the US without a scratch due to the careful packing of some amazing movers!

So I will be filled in these next few months with thoughts of moving and getting everything ready, we need to prepare our current home to leave behind and our belongings to be moved forward, I will need to get the kids school finished up and all of their records transferred not to mention prepare them mentally for the move and saying farewell to another set of friends. I will be dreaming of decorating a new and hopefully bigger home, I will be panicked in finding the "perfect" date to say goodbye to my job, and sending the hubby off to school while we do all of this and he can just fly back to drive across the country with us (lucky guy).

It should be fun times...here's to hoping I still have a full head of hair (with no more grey) when this is over...

Playing Catch up!

The last few months have been nuts so to sum it up quickly...

We had a homecoming....

We had a Fabulous Christmas....

Awesome New Years...


We did some bowling...

Traveled to our future home and hung with historical figures...

Watched our favorite team bring home a Trophy...again!...

Threw my favorite girl a party that included a 200 year old building and a knight!

I think that pretty much sums it all up, I hope that I can be much more on top of my blogging game from now on...