I Have the Best Friends

Today's post is all about my amazing friends.  I talk a lot about things that happen and things that I'm doing, but I rarely talk about things that just are.  So today I wanted to do just that.  I promise to make this short and not so mushy, but this really does deserve some attention.  I have the best friends in the entire world!  I mean, they are always there for me, no matter how long it's been since we've last talked.  These are the kinds of friends you hope to have 1 or 2 of in your entire life; I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by a large group of friends this amazing!  As you guys read in my last post, I'm planning my cousin's first ever actual birthday party -- something we all take for granted until you realize some people just aren't lucky enough to have birthday parties (for financial reasons or otherwise).  So this weekend while I was attending my 10-year high school reunion (seriously, where did the time go?!?!), I was having lunch with some friends from high school and we were hanging out before the reunion started so they could help me plan the birthday party.

**I feel I should mention here, that one of these friends (my old college roommate) helped me and my mom out of a bind about a month ago when I called her on a Saturday to see if she could come stay with my cousin on Tuesday while my parents were out of town since she didn't have her driver's license yet and still had to go to school and band practice.  Needless to say, even with only a 3-day notice, my friend didn't hesitate to say yes.  That's true friendship right there - helping out on short notice without expecting anything in return!

Anyway, back to this past weekend.  We were all sitting on the porch while I was going through my checklist (I'm mildly obsessive about lists and schedules and really anything to help me keep track of things without having to remember stuff...even though I have a partially photographic memory...), and out of the blue, my friend from high school (who, coincidentally, is dating my old college roommate whom I didn't know until we roomed together in college...small world, right?) yelled, "What are we doing for food?!?!"  Since he was having a nerd moment with my husband talking about movies and nerdy card games and such, I didn't realize that he was referring to the birthday party all of us girls were discussing...so I reminded him that there would be food at the reunion.  At this point in time, he looked confused (probably less so than me, at the time), and said, "No, for the party.  I make a great jerk chicken.  Oh, I know!  I'll grill some pineapple too.  Maybe some mango.  I'll need to marinate the chicken for a day or two, so I'll need a head-count by about Wednesday so I can get everything I need.  And we'll need to come over early that morning so I can set up the grill and we can help decorate until the party starts."  I hadn't even given much thought to food except that it needed to be beachy-type food.  I was going back and forth about pulled pork (Hawaiian Luau style) or cucumber sandwiches on croissants (upscale-beach-resort style) or looking up traditional foods in other beach locales.

**Also worth mentioning here is the fact that I have a HUGE space to decorate - a deck and an attached screened in porch.  So, to save time and money on decorations (and also to give it a more personalized beach feel aside from the tried and true typical "luau party" - you know the one...we've all been to that party where someone forgot to plan ahead of time and ran to get decorations the morning of the party and just let Party City vomit all over their party space...something I refuse to do...) we're going with a more upscale "beach resort" themed party with a tiki bar for food and photo booth stuff (I mean, what beach resort is complete without a tiki bar, right?).  But I digress...

The fact that he just jumped in there and took that off my plate, especially since I didn't have to delegate that duty to anyone (and I'm already swamped with everything else that's going on -- keep in mind I have 2 jobs, I live 2 states away, I'm trying to find my cousin some scholarships for college since no one saved up for it and we don't want her to have huge student loan debts like her mom, and I'm trying to coordinate all of this simultaneously), is phenomenal!  And you know, that's just the kind of person he is.  So now, I have a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders as far as planning this thing, and my friends have all met my cousin (they remember when she lived with us 10 years ago when I was a senior...mostly because she was my 7-year old shadow while she was with us) and they live right up the road if she ever needs anyone.  And they really enjoyed hanging out with her and they even gave her their phone numbers in case she ever needed to call them for anything.  I didn't have to ask.  They just did it.  What can I say?  I have the most wonderful friends anyone could ever ask for!

Mother's Day DIY

This year for Mother's Day, I decided to go all DIY; I was looking around my apartment (while I was spring cleaning...which I've been doing A LOT of lately...I mean, I've filled an entire room *literally* with stuff to sell/donate) and I realized I have tons of old glass vases that I've never used.  I mean, I'm allergic to flowers so I don't really have a need for vases...  So I decided to paint them as part of my Mother's Day gifts this year.  The first one was clear and had a very pretty design, but you couldn't really see it much - you had to feel it to notice the design.  So I painted the inside black and grabbed some white paint for the outside.  Ta-da!

The second vase I painted started as a plain white vase.  It took a while to figure out what I was going to do, so I just grabbed some paint and started laying down some abstract lines here and there.  Once I got the green on the bottom, I decided to do a spring-y flower-y kinda design.  Sooooo..........ta-da!

Next, I wanted to make some cute holders for everyone's stuff.  I found this pin (don't look so surprised...you all know I love Pinterest!) and instantly I knew that would be a PERFECT way to package everything up.  I do want to say that my little baskets did not turn out nearly as pretty, but they're not as bad as I thought they would be.  Of course, they might have turned out mildly better had I not asked my husband to help me (he's not that crafty, but I enjoyed the help).  So these are the little baskets:

I have to admit, it took longer to sew the buttons on than it took to glue the baskets together and to glue the ribbon on, but I still like how they turned out.

I have to admit, I think the purple one was my favorite!

This is what they all looked like, packaged up and everything.  ENJOY!!!

Planning a Beach Themed Birthday Party

Apparently, according to my mom, I'm the "party planning diva" of the family.  And according to my cousin, I'm the "cool cousin."  So I'm in charge of planning the first birthday party my cousin has ever had in her life.  She turns 17 this year.  And you know it has to be EPIC!  So no pressure...  That being said, I've got about a month to whip up a beachy themed party for her that any 17 year old would be excited about.  So I've gotta make it fun and sophisticated enough for high schoolers.  Since I'm in the beginning stages, I don't really have any photos - but I'll be sure to post them once I start making stuff and definitely once we have the party!  Therefore, for this post, I'll just lay out my thought processes as far as what I'm thinking of planning, so let me know if some of this stuff just doesn't sound cool for a teenager.

Everyone knows the first impression of a party comes well in advance, with the invitations. So I've been running through some ideas.  Obviously my first stop in the planning process was Pinterest (was there a doubt?).  So when I came upon this post, I said to myself, "Self, how cute would it be to do an invitation as a message in a bottle with a sugar scrub for the 'sand' so the invitations are fun and functional!?!?"  But after talking it out with a few people, I realized that that's just not feasable...I mean, it would cost about $5 per invitation just to mail them!  (But I'm still doing a message in a bottle type thing....probably as part of the party favors for all her friends to take home.  I mean, I am the "cool cousin," after all, so I've gotta do some over-the-top EPIC stuff, right?)  So now I'm back at square one as far as invitations go....  I'm sure I'll figure it out, so I'm just gonna set that on the back burner for now.  Not to mention I'm hanging out with my most artsy of friends and family this weekend, so I'll just have to recruit them to help me design the most awesome party invitations of all time!  Again, no pressure...

So moving on from invitations, I was thinking of doing a tiki hut or a tiki bar.  I mean, what kind of beach party would it be without a tiki hut/bar, am I right?  So thinking of my parents' house (where we're having the party), I think we're doing it on the back deck.  Well, there's a screened in porch on the back deck and, I mean, what better place for a tiki hut?  I don't have to build anything because it's already there!  Now I just have to turn a screened in porch into a tiki hut.  I'm thinking that would be the optimal place for a photo booth as well.  Yes, I'm jumping on that bandwagon, but I mean, she's a teenager and it is a popular thing among the younger generation, so why not?  It'll be fun!  The only problem I have now is that there are french doors leading onto the screened in porch and there's a giant piano right inside the doors (which you can see because its all windows right there)...not very beachy if you ask me.  But no worries.  After searching Pinterest (you all should really not be very surprised when I say that now...), I came across this pin and a lightbulb went off in my head.  Since the windows look like that, why not just put a beach scene behind the window so it's like you're looking out the window of the tiki hut onto the sun and the sand?  So I'm working on that.  And I've gotta try to build an actual bar (or at least figure out how to cover a table so it looks like it belongs)...and I've gotta put some bar stools together...and figure out the tiki torches...and decide on what to do with the rest of the porch...and I've got a lot more to do than I started!  I guess I'm off to Pinterest again!  I'll post more updates as I get 'em!