Wannabe Beach Party

Tuesday night I invited some sweet ladies over for a "Wannabe Beach Party". 

My intent for this party was:

{1} To bless others using the gifts God has given me.

{2} To thank and encourage women in my life who are constantly serving their families and other people. Women who may find themselves just needing a break from all the ups and downs of life. Or women who have blessed me in a personal way and I simply wanted to say thank you for making such an impact in my life. Basically, I wanted to lavishly love on some women who have so generously loved on me. 

{3} To escape from this LONG cold wintry weather in Michigan. I have a special place in my heart for anything beach-related. I wanted to imitate an outdoor beachy oasis all in the comfort of home. 

{4} To provide a party where absolutely NOTHING was required of my guests, except to show up in a cute nautical/ beachy outfit. It's so refreshing to attend a party where you don't have to bring a dish, or bring a present, or buy something once you get there. (Nothing wrong with any of those things). It's just nice to be totally pampered once in a while for NO reason, ya know?

Anyway, welcome to the beach party!

MENU:

Chicken salad croissant sandwiches

Lemon Orzo pasta salad with asparagus and cherry tomatoes

Stacked Pineapple and grapes on umbrella toothpicks

Chips and salsa

Blue lemonade (one packet of blue Kool-aide mixed with 2 containers of fresh lemonade) and lemon water to drink.

I'm mostly posting this one so you can see my nautical outfit. It's the only pic I have of myself, so please ignore the awkward face.

The party started at 6:30, and after some hilarious stories and lots of laughter, it was close to midnight before the last guest went home. One of the best girl's nights I've had. 

I think for one evening we all forgot that we were moms and wives, and adults with responsibilities, and we definitely forgot how blustery cold it was outside! Which was exactly the point of the party.

I was so blessed to have such a great group of women all together at the same time.

Each guest went home with one of these party favors...

I wrote a personal note to each guest about what I appreciated and loved about them as a person and wrapped it up with twine. And the anchor bracelet fit perfectly around the outside of the bottle!

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We are heading out of town tomorrow morning but I will be back in a week to update you on our trip! Curious where we're headed? Read THIS POST. And then after you read it, say a little prayer for me will ya?

Thanks for staying tuned in my friends!

All to Him I owe...

Happy Good Friday friends.

:)

Ladies Spring Conference

Working with the other ladies on the women's ministry team to pull this event off took a lot of time, meetings and preparations. But I'm so thankful I got to be a part of such a great night! And it was a good chance for me to get to know some other ladies in our church that I don't normally bump shoulders with. Our team leader, Kris, was always so calm and gracefully was able to keep those of us working right on track. 

I brought the chalkboard sign from home...you may recognize it?

The silverware was wrapped in floral napkins, a doily, and some raffia.

I found half of the bird cages from a combination of Hobby Lobby and Michael's (I got them all for 50% off). The other half were borrowed from willing ladies in the area. Most of the bird cages sat on cake stands (all of those were borrowed as well).  The fake greenery was all from Michale's. I bought about 10 bunches and cut them apart to use around the cages and had leftover to use for the stage decorations. The paper birds were cut out of double sided card stock (bought from HL) using a Cricut I borrowed from my MIL. Cutting out all those birds was not my favorite part....very time-consuming but I really wanted a lot of them, so it was worth it. I loved how each centerpiece was completely different from the next!

We had close to 150 ladies sign up for the event, so we set up enough tables to seat 160, but ended up having about 3 empty tables. It's better to over-estimate than under-estimate, and we guessed pretty well!

Greg's brother, Curtis, is one of the best chef's I know, and he and his team made this amazing Carribean themed menu. It was absolutely delish!

Our speaker for the evening is the author of both of these books. She primarily talked out of the book titled, "Shame Lifter".

Don't get me started on how good these desserts were either. You know it's a ladies conference when the line for the dessert table stretches across the whole length of the room!

I found the idea to make potted tree branches HERE. It was a very easy process and I loved that it filled the stage adequately for not a lot of work. The white pillars were sitting in a storage room at church (they mostly use them for weddings) but they were the perfect perch for 2 larger bird cages.

Our speaker, Marilyn Hontz is the pastor's wife of another church in our area. She was so down-to-earth, yet her message was able to reach almost every woman in a different way. Loved everything about what she said.

Kris was our official MC, and gracious women's ministry leader.

We gave away some fun door prizes at the end of the talk including 5 tiny bird necklaces that look like this...

as well as one of the larger bird cages on stage!

drummmrollllll please...........

Our bird cage winner! (Doesn't her outfit go so well with the cage?)

Lisa (on the left), brought her awesome camera and took all the pics for the event. Thanks to her I have a documented blog as well. :)

We made a craft at the end of the night. People brought photos from home (or we provided scrapbook paper if people forgot or wanted a different option) and were used to make a set of 4 tile coasters. They simply mod podged the photos to the tiles and then we set them in the sanctuary to dry for a week.

I'm telling you, those were the yummiest cookies ever!

And just when we thought the night couldn't get any better, Lisa and her camera made her way over to some commotion down the hall only to discover a young couple in our church had just gotten engaged! They stopped by church to tell both of their mothers (since they knew they were at the conference together). There was shock, and laughter, and crying and praising God. 

I'm partial to this story b/c the gentleman you see pictured above on the left  is Greg's cousin. So we are excited to welcome Lindsey into the Mulder family soon! (There are a LOT of us Mulder's that attend the same church).

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Thanks for making it to the bottom of this post. Geesh! But that's what the blog is for right? To record and remember :)

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I'll be posting my beach party tomorrow, so come back okie dokie?

Finding my stride...

I've been pretty busy lately. Not like "stay-at-home-mom" busy. Those days are always pretty full as they are...I'm just assuming you know that's a given at this point. Teaching. Disciplining. Directing. Encouraging. Repenting. Loving the sweet kids God has entrusted to us. Tiring days...but full of blessings too.

I have grown to love and appreciate my present life of being a mother and a wife. I have learned to trek through the week without seeing my husband a whole lot, while maintaining a fairly positive attitude. I often send him texts of what's for dinner and then save leftovers for him night after night b/c he is unable to eat dinner with us. Don't get me wrong, everyone has a breaking point, and I can definitely break. But in general, my goal is to make the most of the family time we DO get together, and to be diligent about not complaining when Greg is just not able to be home as much as I'd like. But there has been a gentle whisper to start using some of my non-mom abilities to bless those around me. It's easy to just focus on what's happening right here at home without looking beyond the walls of our little house. Not saying it's bad to focus on your family. We all need to be less busy in this world. I love being a stay-at-home mom, but I also have found that it's okay to not feel bad when I just want to get away from my kids for a while. And by "getting away", I mean finding time to do what I love outside of just being a mom. Finding time to use my creative outlets in a positive way. Know what I mean?


Nevertheless, decorating and party planning have always been passions of mine. And lately I've been feeling called to start blessing others with this ability. It took some time of experimenting at home and building my self-confidence before I thought, "Wow, okay, people kinda like what I do...maybe I should start sharing this gift, if it's something that can be used for God's glory".

So, last week I helped decorate for a Ladies Spring Conference we had at our church. (I'll do another post on that tomorrow). It was a little crazy leading up to the event. Okay, it was a LOT of crazy. Taking numerous trips to Hobby Lobby and Michael's with my kids, spending nearly every morning at church preparing the decorations and cutting out hundreds of tiny paper birds while my kids ran around like wild bandits getting into all kinds of trouble. I don't know the last time I put my heart and soul into something like that (maybe my wedding day?). I was so exhausted by the end of the week. But it's been so cool to see how God can give us a passion and run ourselves into the ground, only to do it all over again! I was so blessed to see so many of the other women who helped with the event come together with their different talents. Truly an example of what the church is designed for. God uses MANY different hands to get his work done.

Then last night, I hosted a "Wannabe Beach Party" at my house for some women in my life who I really respect and appreciate. All of them are women of faith who I admire for different reasons. Mostly they are just such "givers", constantly serving their families and those around them. I wanted to simply provide an evening where they didn't have do anything but relax and laugh and enjoy an evening of NOT serving someone or something for once in their lives. Again, I ran myself into the ground all week trying to get preparations done. But totally worth it. (I'll do a separate post on that too).

So yeah, I feel like I'm finally finding my stride. This is a wonderful season in my life right now, and I'm so incredibly thankful for it.

Birthday "twins"

I've always dreamed of having boy/ girl twins. I know it would be a TON of work. I would most likely complain every single day for the first 2 years, and you would not see me very often. And if you did, I would look like a hot mess. I'm not naive to the fact that twins are no easy feat. After watching a friend of mine have boy/girl twins around the same time Kensie was born, I was in total awe as she nursed them, bathed them, changed their diapers, and got them in and out of the car. They sucked every minute of her day.

But I kinda like challenges, and I just think it would be SO much fun down the road! 

You can call me crazy now. It's okay.

Anyway, Mason has a birthday buddy. They were born on the same day, in the same hospital, just a few rooms apart from each other.

Since then, we've been able to get together the past couple years to celebrate with a picture.

The funny part is they have always been off-the-charts when it comes to size, so they really DO look like twins. Gracie's mommy and I laugh about it all the time...

If these little guys stay friends down the road, it will be so fun to pull out these pics for them!!

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Anyone else out there dream of having twins someday?