I'm Just "Saying"

We would have a hard time celebrating Valentine's Day in our house without conversation hearts. We don't eat them but be sure love them for decoration! When the kids were over at my house making their conversation heart candies, I threw in another craft project I saw on Pinterest-conversation heart magnets.

Let me preface this by saying that if you head to my Pinterest board to get these instructions you may want to avoid the recipe for air dry dough given and use one you have had success with instead. I went with the recipe given and followed the directions to a T but the "dough" was very gooey and hard to work with. It also "wept" water for quite some time making it more like "slime" instead of "play dough". The kids would cut a perfect heart and the minute they would pull off the cookie cutter it would begin to morph into some unknown shape. They thought it was a hoot and we kind of went with it until we could finally get the dough to hold a "sorta" heart shape.

We then used my metal letter stamps for the sayings. It wasn't until way after the fact that I realized we would have been more successful if I had given them my slightly larger individual letter stamps. I think the words would have been much more visible but then again, maybe little finger muscles couldn't have gotten full words to fit with larger stamps. In any case, it really didn't matter as the end result was no where near as important as the process getting there. They had fun!

After they dried-which quite frankly seemed to take forever-I gave them a quick coat of matte sealer and added the magnets to the back. The kids gave them out this weekend as favors at their Aunt Becky's 40th birthday party and were so proud of themselves-and everyone loved them.

Note to self:clean those finger prints off your refrig! Why don't I ever see these things in real life? It takes a photo on my blog to get me moving-maybe....


Just a few pictures to show from the party. Becky had been whisked away by her husband and children on Saturday morning. It was a total surprise for her as they headed to one of her favorite spots-Palm Coast Resort- and then on to a life-long dream of hers. She got to swim with the dolphins at Marineland. The pictures and video show a smile on her face that I will never forget. She was in heaven on earth and loved every minute of it! What a perfect gift for such a special occasion and for someone who has been through ALOT these last few months. It gave her a much needed opportunity to not think about anything else going on in her life and truly just enjoy the moment-and boy, she sure did!

They got back into town on Sunday afternoon and the rest of the family was all there to surprise her again. We chose to keep this celebration low key so that the guest of honor could just enjoy and not try to jump back into her "hostess with the mostest" mode as we knew she would try to do. We kept the decorations very minimal also. I was going to make a birthday banner but then got the idea to do a photo banner instead. I hustled a bit and found as many of her "blowing out the candles" pictures over the years as I could. One more note to self:this is exactly the reason that you MUST find time to get your photos better organized-although it was fun going back through sooooo many photos to find just the ones I needed. What were we thinking with the clothes and hairdos back then? But, I digress!!


The banner did exactly what I thought it would. It stirred so many memories for everyone and lots of good, family conversation! Especially from the honoree who kept saying "darn I was a cute kid"-ha-ha!


My youngest daughter was the one who thought of the kind of old-world, Tuscan sort of feel for decor. She had a vision for the flowers. I am NOT a flower arranger so my only contribution was the wide choice of containers at my house. Jennie arrived on Saturday evening with a huge armload of flowers and a bottle if wine. Let's just say we needed both! But, some 3 hours later, she had one very large, beautiful arrangement ( and a smaller one too). Just wish I could show you how beautiful they were. Should have taken pictures right then and there. But, alas, I didn't. Let me start by saying it really wasn't my fault! This was a HUGE arrangement and I drive a sedan. I will spare you the the long, sad story. Just know that when I took them out of my car in Becky's driveway, the flowers were no longer an arrangement and were now back to their original state of being armloads of flowers.

Jennie arrived soon after and did her magic for the second time but with the floral foam no longer in a solid piece, it was a difficult challenge. They looked beautiful once again-just not as beautiful as they began- but the party went on as planned. It was a wonderful way to celebrate a wonderful woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, teacher......We love her and hope she felt special on her special day.

And, her celebration isn't over. Later this month we are having "girls' weekend" where we will gather to honor her once again. I guess we have established yet another family tradition. When my oldest daughter hit 40, we were looking for a special gift for her and since we couldn't top the gorgeous ring her husband was giving her we decided to go for memories. We got a suite at the Don Cesar and feted her with 40 gifts-each serving as a memory starter. Some were funny, some were poignant, some were embarrassing, etc. but all were full of love. We doled them out over the course of the weekend so we could have lots of time to reminisce and laugh, cry etc. We all loved it-as did everyone else we came in contact with that weekend as we shared our story with everyone. That was actually how we got the suite upgrade. Never-the-less, we had so much fun we had to do it again. I have some doozies for Becky and will try to keep some of them a bit obtuse so she has to spend some time trying to think of what I may be remembering about her. It will be fun.

Daughter #3 turns 40 next year-guess I better start thinking again! Stay tuned.