Our weekend

Our weekend included most of my favorite things-good friends, good food, crafts and most importantly watching our Ava play basketball!

Friday was the Garden Club's annual Greens sale  I am the president and I helped organize the event.  I should say we have many, many dedicated members that help with our annual greens sale.  It is the biggest fundraiser that we have all year.  For the event we made 140 arrangements and 50 wreaths and swags.  Our members started last Monday (the Monday following Thanksgiving) making the arrangements and wreaths.  Since I work full time I popped over on my lunch to help make arrangements.  I also coordinated a Tuesday night session where our members who work could come and help make arrangements.  During the sale I help with the luncheon.  Here I am with the rest of the "lunch ladies."

I made this sign to advertise what we were having for lunch.  We kept it simple (like they've done it for many years) soup and sandwiches. 

The arrangements and wreaths were so beautiful!  Here are some of the ones our members made. 

I loved this quirky wreath.  My friend Wendy bought it and took it home for her front door.  It is perfect for her!

I bought this small Christmas tree in a turquoise pot with turquoise Christmas balls.  Turquoise is my favorite colors so I was happy to buy this one.

Saturday Rachael and I hosted a wreath making and kissing ball classes for our small business Branch and Bloom. I will post pictures about our classes on Crafty Wednesday.

Friday night and Saturday Ava had a basketball tournament.  Since Ava was in the Czech Republic last year she missed the basketball season.  It has been so long since we've seen her play for her school.  It was great to have her back on the court!  My friend Lynn takes amazing action shots so I am going to do a post tomorrow full of pics from the tournament.  

Here are a couple of my favorites :)

My weekend

My weekend can be summed up mostly in one word-crafts!!  

Friday night Rachael and I held our monthly craft night for our craft business Branch and Bloom.  This month we made two crafts.  We made leaf garlands and give thanks signs.  We used chalkboard vinyl for the signs which we have never used before but it worked great  I am going to do a full post on our craft night tomorrow but here is a sneak peak. 

Next weekend is my annual Holiday Market where  Rachael and I invite all of our crafty friends to bring what they make to our friends Stephanie's kitchen design store and we have a one day sale.  We have champagne and cookies and it's such a fun event!  I just love it.  I have been working on a ton of things for this year's Holiday Market.  Here are some of the things I've been working on.

I made a few of these signs to sell.  I've been seeing this sign a lot and actually one of my friends is also selling this sign at our Holiday Market. I actually just bought one of her signs with the saying :)  This is going to be my mantra for 2019.  I just love being cozy and comfortable at home and I want to stay home more in the upcoming year.    

I'm the President of the Garden Club in our town and our biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up the week after Thankgiving.  We have an annual Greens Sale and luncheon  to raise money for events and programs. Garden Club members spend the week after Thanksgiving putting together holiday arrangements, wreaths and swags to sell at our annual sale.  We also have a luncheon and a bake sale to bring in additional money on that day.  It's always a fun day but a ton of work!  We had a bow making workshop on Saturday to make bows for our arrangements and wreaths.  We were able to make 100 bows in about 2 hours.  Here I am with my friends Wendy (the Vice President) and Jenn.  It was a fun and productive morning!

Sunday morning my friends Julia, Sabrina, Vicki and I took our kids and went to Ommegang for brunch and bingo.   Ommegang is a Belgian brewery and they recently remodeled it.  I went to a couple of concerts last summer there but haven't been in their newly renovated space.  It was beautiful! 

Brunch and Bingo were fun.  I had a beermosa (beer with orange juice) which was surprisingly good!

Four people in our group won bingo including me! I won a t-shirt.   We took a picture on our way out.

Here is our big group all together.  It was a fun morning!  

Monday evening was our monthly garden club meeting.  It was my month to help with refreshments and my co-hostesses were the three sisters that we bought our summer house from. I just love these ladies.   We had a ton of Thanksgiving themed snacks. I made my stuffing balls and they were a big hit!

 Our speaker was a florist from Albany and she taught us tips and tricks for making the perfect arrangements.  She suggested that we use containers from around our house and I just love that idea! She also taught us about floral spray paint that you can put on succulents.  I am going to be looking into that.  She made so many beautiful arrangements and when she was done we raffled them off.  It was a a fun night and I learned so much.  

Spray painted succulent in gold.  I really want to use this!  Amazon did not have gold but they do have other colors including pink.  

 I hope you had a fabulous weekend!!

xoxo

Our weekend {gala edition}

My weekend can be summed up in one word-GALA.  I’m on the committee that plans the annual gala for our local hospital.  It’s the biggest fundraiser of the year for the hospital and it’s always a fun night out and it raises money for a good cause.  I am always happy to support this event.

Friday night we did set up for the gala. This year our theme was Copacabana  It took all night and I was so tired when I got home but it was a lot of fun.  We spent about 6 hours setting up.  I had 20 of my college students help out and they were a huge help.  The students set up all the tables, chairs and tablecloths.  Here is a picture of the tables and chairs when they were done.  I just love all of the bright colors that we used. 

While they were working on that I worked on creating a water station. I loved the beautiful bright colors and the greens that we used along with the bright colors.  

When people walked in they walked past our beautiful Havana backdrops and three old fashioned cars that we had set up.

Here is our committee after set up on Friday night.  We were tired but so happy with the way everything turned out.

Saturday I got some stuff done around the house and then it was gala time!  My friend Jaclyn did my make up and Rachael helped me with my hair.  I got my dress on Amazon.  Jaclyn is so talented at doing makeup!  She did my makeup along with Sabrina's and Stephanies.  It was fun getting ready together.  Here we all are at the gala (Sabrina in maroon, me blue, Jaclyn yellow and Stephanie black)

It was such a fun night.  There was good food and a great band and I spent the night chatting, eating and dancing-three of my favorite things!

I always take a picture with all of my friends every year from the gala.  This is the one from this year.  I love this picture of us.  You can see pics from last years gala here.  

Sunday I helped with gala clean up and then I ran errands and got ready for the week ahead.

I hope you had a great weekend!!!

Xoxo

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday friends!  We had a fun, and busy week.   My bff Sara and her family visited from Florida.  It was so great to see them and hang out with them last  weekend.  I had the best time catching up with them.  Friday we went to the Cider Mill to get some apples and have lunch.

Last weekend G and I went to the movies to see A Star is Born with some friends. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper (btw-who knew he could sing?!?!)  are phenomenal in this movie.  They have incredible chemistry together.  I laughed and cried and I hope they both win academy awards for their performances.  

I’m the president of the Garden Club and on Saturday we did a community outreach project and gave away daffodil bulbs at the Farmers Market.  We gave away 95 bags of bulbs in two hours.  We gave people some instructions when they picked up the bags and included instructions and our meeting schedule inside the bags.  It was a cold, rainy morning but I’m glad it was successful and we got rid of all our our bulbs.  

Saturday afternoon I worked around the house and worked on some crafts for the upcoming holiday market.  I’ve been trying to do a few here and there when I have the time so I have enough for our Holiday  Market on 11/17.

Sara and Sabrina got up bright and early Monday morning and came to my 6 am class at the Y.  It’s a core/cardio/weight class called Total Body Blast.  It was fun to have them there!

Another favorite from this week was Tuesday night when I had some friends over to sample some drinks I’m making for Halloween.   I’m going to be a guest bartender at a Halloween event at a bar/restaurant in our town next Saturday night  and I have to come up with my own signature drink for the event.  My friends and I sampled 5 drinks Tuesday night and their favorite was the autumn inspired Moscow mule I  made. I also made nachos that were delicious!

 Funny story it turned so cold on Tuesday and we didn’t have our heat on so my friends covered themselves up with blankets and we texted this pic to G.  

That’s it for me this week.  I hope you have the best weekend!!! 

Xoxo

Weekend top 5

I never got around to posting this last Monday-ooops!  But we had a fun weekend and I want to remember it so I am going to post it now!

We had a fun weekend-Ava got her drivers license so she spent the weekend driving anywhere and everywhere-G is working hard painting our rental house (he loves working on it), and I spent the weekend doing a few fun things and I got some things done around the house.

Here’s our weekend top 5

1-Ava got her license!  She has been driving her Grandma Jan's car to school and she drives Grace our exchange student every day.    She drove to visit her bff at College and they went together to shop Ava’s homecoming dress. They had such a fun weekend together.

2.  I started the weekend with a birthday  happy hour for my friend Lori.  It was held at a little restaurant/bar downtown.  I had so much fun catching up with everyone.  I made pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting and took those to the party for Lori.  They were a big hit!

3.  After the happy hour I raced to work to attend a dinner in honor of a former who was being honored as one of the distinguished alumni from the College where I work.   It was a great night for my former student Evan and his wife and I’m so happy I was there to celebrate with them. 

4.  Saturday  my friend Sabrina and I took my  exchange student Grace to a fall festival and to do a little shopping.  We always have so much fun together so I’m glad we were able to coordinate our schedules to make this day work.  We had such a fun day together. 

5.  I started making a few things  for our sixth annual holiday market which is 6 weeks away.  You can read about last year’s holiday market here.  This year I’m trying to make a few things a couple of times a week so I’m not so stressed out the week of the Market this year.

That’s it for me this week.  I hope you had a fabulous weekend.

Xoxo