stripesandrosescottage

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Back To School 2011

The 2011-2012 school year started yesterday for our kids. Inspired by different back to school parties in Blogland, I thought it would be nice to hold a Back To School breakfast for our family and a few of our neighbors and their kids, a couple of days before school started. We had pancakes, bacon, french bread, fruit, and various drinks. It was nothing fancy, but everybody had an enjoyable time.
I decorated with various school inspired items to set the right back to school mood for the kids. Hopefully, we'll do this every year, God willing.

Some of the kids

After breakfast, we took the kids outside for pictures. I used some awesome grade printables from

Iheartnaptime, they are available for grades pre-k to 12th grade. They are just fabulous!. It's awesome when people share their creations with others. I'm thinking about using them for the next few years. Hopefully the kids will cooperate.

It would be so cool to have a kid from each grade represented, I'll keep that in mind for next year!

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Here are the real first day of school pictures:

Best of luck to my munchkins.

Take care,

Rosa

Thursday, August 18, 2011

On This Day

47 years ago...I came into the world to the delight of my loving parents. Oh how the years fly by!. I feel very fortunate and grateful to God, to be able to celebrate another year with my loved ones. Life Is Good!. Don't get me wrong, I have many rough moments, but the good outweigh the bad, and for that I'm thankful. We celebrated my birthday
last Saturday, so that my sister and her boyfriend could be present. We had a small gathering, and we had a great time!

I set up a "Photo Booth" outside, with some props, a backdrop, friends= Good Laughs!

I printed the pictures and hung them on our wall unit for all the guests to enjoy!

We had a BBQ, a "staring contest", we drank, we laughed, I had a wonderful birthday celebration.

And for the favors, I put some of my favorite candies in a bag with a cute tag, for my family and friends to enjoy after the party.

Take care and thanks for visiting,

Rosa

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Graduation Celebration

Hayley and my mom

Our daughter, Hayley, graduated from 8th grade on June 15. I remember her first day of kindergarten as if it was yesterday. I'm sure four years of High School will pass by in a blink of an eye. We are very happy and proud of her. I wanted to celebrate this milestone in her life by having a dinner party with a few family members and close friends.
I knew I wanted to use the color purple, she's been into this color for a while. I thought it would be nice to pair it with green and aqua to change things up a bit. I love this color combo. I wanted to set the color scheme for the party right off the bat. I started with the design for the invite. I knew I wanted to use a gate fold style card. This is what the invite looks like:

outside of invitation

inside

I thought her kindergarten picture ups the cuteness factor! I love it.

I looked for decor inspiration everywhere, just like I do for all the parties. I've always loved the tissue poms that people use in their parties and made so popular by MS. Since I had my color scheme all set, I bought tissue papers in the party's color. At first I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out, but I kept trying, and my first tissue pom ever came to life!

"Ok", I said to myself, "I think I can pull this off!". And so I created six more:

They are gorgeous!

My plan was to hold the party outside, but up to the same day of the party, the threat of thunderstorms kept me from creating other things. I decided to make doily banners. They look so beautiful together.
We got lucky and had no rain, but I didn't want to put too many items outside. I kept it very simple and pretty.

I made a cake topper using a stamp, and made a banner for the cake also. These are very popular and can be seen all over blogland. You can click on the picture below to make it bigger.

My mom cooked most of the food, a few of our friends made some delicious items too.
It turned out to be such a beautiful celebration for our Hayley, I hope she'll remember this day always.

For the favors, I packed store bought mini chocolate chip cookies in plastic bags, and placed those inside purple paper bags. I made a tag with her silhouette and placed them on the bags. They turned out so cute!

We all had a wonderful time. The party continued to about 11pm.

I want to wish my Hayley much success in High School. We'll party again in four years!

Take care and thank you for visiting,

Rosa

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

EASTER 2011

I hope Easter was great for all. We had wonderful weather: sunny and warm for a change. Decorated the house as usual, it makes the house feel cozy and welcoming.
The kiddies had a blast hunting for the eggs. We just had our immediate family over, and we all went out to eat dinner at a restaurant. It's great to spend time with them!