Simple Family Fun- Part 2

In yesterday's post, I filled you in on all of the fun just the girls had. Since we are an enterprising group and knew we wanted to squeeze in one more family celebration, we invited all of the guys to join us on Sunday to celebrate my oldest grand daughter turning 17!! Since we didn't get to squeeze in a big family celebration for her last year (as some of the family was out of the country), we called this one "Sweet Sixteen plus 1".

The beautiful birthday girl!

The BG and her cousin, Caitlin. Don't tell Caitlin I posted this one. She didn't have her make-up on but I nudged her to still let me take the picture. Further down this post you will see her post-make up but I think she is beautiful either way!

All 3 of the youngest in one spot and still at the same time!

This boy needs his own dog-he loves his dog cousins so much!

Hud was missing from this picture as he had an important date with the Legos!

Don't ask! And yes, this is the BEST one we got. The sun was really bothering Harrison's eyes so we said close them and open on the count of 3-this is what we got!

Hannah's sister and cousins made this for her while the "grown-ups" were off celebrating yesterday. It was gone in a flash!

As the afternoon wore on, Presley wanted to have another tea party. She loves doing this so much and is so careful with our "china" tea set! Even her brother joined us as there were chocolate chip cookies involved!

What a wonderful time we had. My daughter and son-in-law took charge of all of the food and cooking so it was all the more fun for me! My brother and sister-in-law and Hannah's Gramma joined us as well. It was a big, fun filled family day. Lots of laughs and love-what could be better?!

In keeping with our crazy April theme, we have now all turned our attentions to our next big get-together. We will once again have a family site at the Gainesville Relay for Life. This year our site will be "The Wizard of Oz" and our slogan is "We found our courage, brains and heart. Now we need to find a CURE". Our team is named "Caitlin's Crusaders" and we have been doing this every year since Caitlin was diagnosed with liver cancer. Last year my daughter Becky joined Caitlin in the "survivors' lap". They are both doing very well but this terrible disease must be stopped! On nights like this all over the country, it is obvious what an impact this disease has-not only on the patient but on their family and friends as well. So many wonderful advances have been made but there is still much to learn. If you have a chance, please support your local Relays in any way you can. And, stay tuned.

You've come a long way baby!!!

Simple Family Fun!

I have been MIA for a few days as I was preparing for another fabulous family weekend here at our house. I think I have mentioned how "full" the month of April is for our family. Lots of birthdays, filing season (hubby is a CPA), Easter, sports tournaments, spring breaks, etc. So, we do try to squeeze in as many happenings as we can when we can all actually manage to be together-and believe me, all actually managing to be in the same spot at the same time this time of year takes some serious managing!

So, this past weekend the girls gathered to celebrate daughter #3's 40th birthday. We have a tradition of giving 40 gifts-most are small leading up to a special remembrance kind of gift. Our gifts are all meant to spur memories of the past and things that we always think of when we think of the "recipient"-and sometimes they are things the recipient would rather forget-like past hair-dos, fashion choices, boyfriends, etc. I usually have a wrapped gift that is meant to represent my memory and then the pictures to accompany said memory to prove my point just in case there is much denial!

We started the day at the birthday girl's favorite cafe for lunch and our weather co-operated as she loves to be seated on the porch.

After a wonderful, leisurely lunch we walked around the downtown area hitting many of the little boutique shops now popping up and then headed for a glass of wine at another fabulous spot where we could sit outside and watch the world go by. Extra fun today as this daughter and family have recently moved back to her home town and while we were there an old high school friend just happened by.

We hit one more favorite haunt and then headed back to my house which I had tried to make all about the birthday girl-if you can ignore all of the Easter still out!

On entering the house, I brought out her old h.s. graduation picture and adorned it with the lovely #40 crown.

In the family room, I made a banner of photos of as many of her previous birthdays as I could find.

Here are her gifts before she started opening them. We try to space them out so we can all share our thoughts and, quite frankly, since this really does take a lot of time and thought on everyones' part, we like to drag it out as long as we can-kind of like spending 3 hours making a wonderful meal and then having your family sit down and shove it in their mouths in 10 minutes!

Here are a few of our "Jennie" remebrances-yes, lots included junk food-but I took this picture to show you the shopping bag from "Maas Sisters". My girls always loved their "retail therapy" and back then one of their favorite stores was Maas Brothers. When we would go to south Florida to visit my mom, one of their favorite things to play was "Maas Sisters". They would scavenge stuff from all over the house, price and tag it and then merchandise it in the guest room. We were then all invited to come shopping. It was an all day kind of thing as they made signs, etc. and we always marveled at their ingenuity! Is it any wonder that 2 of my girls ended up in retail management? And, that they still love to shop?!

In any case, I made this shopping bag mock-up and then filled it with many, many of my favorite photo memories. It filled a good bit of our evening as we all remembered the photo and then that would spur other "behind the scenes" memories connected with said photo-let's just say even Mom heard some new stories this weekend!

We all changed when we got home and once we were comfy, this is pretty much what things looked like. The 3 older girls that were here made their aunt her favorite kind of birthday cake-a giant chocolate chip cookie cake.When Jennie was young, the cookie stores had just started popping up in malls. It wasn't a successful mall trip for her if it didn't include at least one cookie-and if it was a "double doozy", all the better! The girls joined us later and we sat and gabbed and ate appetizers most of the rest of the night-although we did save time to squeeze in a rousing game of Michigan Rummy before bed.

So it is official. Our beautiful "baby" is now 40-yikes! Where DOES the time go? But, like I said, we are a family good at squeezing in more than one momentous occasion when we are together, so tomorrow promises to be another busy day-stay tuned!

It's All About "Curb Appeal"

I am always looking for simple projects that are also inexpensive. Boy does this one fill the bill!

Several months ago, I saw a pin on Pinterest about adding decorative hardware to garage doors to jazz them up a bit. I fell instantly in love with the idea and even though the lady in the post said she found hers at Home Depot, I ran to my much closer Lowes. I find it hard to believe that Lowes doesn't carry this product, but the guy I asked said they do not. I was sad but buying stuff for several other projects that day, so I put it in the back of my mind with full intentions of heading to HD at a future date.

Fast forward to more recent times and daughter #3 is faux finishing her garage door with a wood grain look. It turned out just beautifully. It gives the whole house a richness. She mentioned that she would like to find some wrought iron hardware to bring it all up even another notch and I told her about my obsession with the same idea.

Then, while I was in the middle of all of my Easter preparations, I get a text with a photo and the words "look what I found". And there, on my screen were my much coveted faux hinges. Since I was vacuuming, I did not get it in enough time to get right back to her and tell her to pick up a set for me. Right about then, daughter #1 responded to the same text and expressed her desire for several sets (she has 2 garage doors) as well. She too was too late. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. On Friday afternoon-with bags of mulch left to spread, plants to be potted and rooms to be cleaned-I hop in my car and drive to the total other side of Ocala and search down 3 sets of these babies.

I was pretty sure they would turn out to be faux iron but I was wrong. And I'm saving the best for last-they were clearanced out for $8.30 a set. So here's what I'm talking about...

This is how my garage door started out looking. Really blah and a corner full of algae to boot.

Here it is half way done and still half wet from its recent scrub down-wonder why I never think of cleaning this door when I wash windows or the eaves?!

And here it is finished. And, I have to say, it is one of those silly little things that can make me so happy! I love it. I love it so much in fact that I think I am going to go back to my Pinterest "Curb Appeal" board and find some pictures of trellises that run over the top of a garage door. Why stop now? Stay tuned.  Oh, I forgot the really best part of this project! It really was soooo simple. Just mark spots, pre-drill small hole and install screws with a hand screw driver. The whole project only took about 30 minutes!

So Much Fun!

Our day started off with the traditional egg hunt. The kids each have a color so the eggs can be hidden appropriately for each age. Some of the eggs have candy or money and others have numbers corresponding to gifts. When all is said and done, they have each received the same number of things but somehow they never put two and two together. We have been doing it this way forever and none of the kids have ever questioned it-they just love to hunt. Many years, they will hide those pesky eggs over and over but this year the bunny did a pretty good job of hiding them, so one hunt seemed to be enough!

One egg is still not present or accounted for. Everyone joined in the search and then decided to just leave it where it is and see if "the gardener" finds it some day. Hope it is the one with the $100 bill-haha!


After the hunt and then lots of food, we headed over to dye our 4 dozen eggs. The kids love doing this so much, that I always want to have plenty of eggs ready and then this way, each family can take home a bunch as well. This year we were pretty laid back-whatever the kids wanted was fine-including eating eggs as they were dying.

I guess we had pretty much the same Easter that other families were having all over the country. Not sure if all of our traditions are "traditional" but, they are ours and it wouldn't be the same without them. We had a lovely, laid back kind of day. Lots of smiles and laughter. Hope yours was the same!

I am now switching gears and using this week to get ready for next weekend. My girls and sister-in-law will all be here to celebrate our "baby's" 40th birthday. We have a tradition of doing 40 gifts for this special day. Usually each gift will bring forth a special memory. We space them out and have lots of fun sharing all of the things others of us may have forgotten. I spent all day yesterday going through old pictures and printing up old slides. In a normal household this wouldn't be the monumental task it turned out to be for me. You see, when each of my girls turned 30, I made them a scrapbook of their first 30 years. Those things took forever-literally stated a year out-as I had to hunt down, scan and print mostly slides. Poor daughter #3 ended up only getting her "first year" with the promise of the next 29 still to come-and they are still to come. I guess I had pulled a lot of the slides I might want to use as well as pictures, so NOTHING was where it was supposed to be and I couldn't remember where they were! Just one more reason why my summer project is going to be to turn ALL of the slides and loose photos into digital files! In any case, I am hoping to get all of my ideas together today so I can head out to shop tomorrow.

We will spend most of Saturday eating out and walking through so many of the cute shops in and around downtown before we return home for our "memory fest".

And then on Sunday, the guys are all going to show up and we are going to do Hannah's family birthday celebration. We are calling it her sweet sixteen plus 1! Can't believe she is that old! Well, it's more that I can't believe that I am old enough  to have a GRAND daughter that old! Yikes!!!

I was going to give you a hint as to what my next post would be, but when I think of all I still have to do to be ready for not one but two big celebrations at my house this weekend-not to mention dinner and gabbing out with a few of my friends from teaching days on Thursday-I am really not sure I will get to it. Think curb appeal...and stay tuned.