NYC Here We Come!

Tomorrow Courteney and I head down to Detroit to hit up Home Goods and Ikea before we fly out on Saturday morning. We will be meeting up with Vicky in Dearborn and staying there for the night. The three of us head out early in the morning and are in the city by 10:30 am. We will stay until Tuesday and have much planned. You will have to wait for all of that, but I did whip up some wristlets for us last night.
I did 3 large floral patterns with ruffles and vintage buttons. Did I mention that 2 button shops are on my must see while in NYC?
I didn't have a pattern, but they went together very easily. I did get some help from here on how to sew the zipper to both the outside and lining at the same time. It worked great.These would be a great gift for bridesmaids or maybe coordinate for a prom or homecoming.
I will not be sewing for about a week and then I have a couple of promised things to finish first. I am also getting ready for the Legacy Christian School Craft fair on November 5. I figure if I do a little all summer I will not stress out the end of October. Good plan, right?

Claire and Lilly's Birthday Party

Time to celebrate the girls' birthdays! This year they settled on a butterfly birthday party. We used all of the china I have been collecting as well as my grandma's silver. It was HOT! So, we added a sprinkler for cooling down and the craft was moved inside.
We requested that in lieu of gifts, each girl bring what she would have spent on a gift and we would collect money to buy a water filtration system for a village in Haiti. Boy did they come through. All told, we collected enough for 2 filtration systems! My girls are still running around the house collecting change to see if they can get to 3.
The invitations were teal and orange so those colors spilled out onto the tables. I rented the tablecloths and napkins and it was more than worth it. I borrowed the tables from work and the chairs from my wonderful neighbor.
I cut fabric strips and ribbon for the back of the chairs. The chairs did not all match so this tied them all together. The tissue paper flowers were the pop of color.
Lunch was sandwich and fruit kabobs and jello. The girls made their own sandwiches using whatever they liked from the skewer. The rest they left behind.
We arranged the fruit on the kabob in the order of the rainbow. Each girl received a bag of goodies and a pair of wings. The bags had tattoos, rubber bracelets, rings, suckers and more. All in some form of butterfly. The girls strung bracelets and colored their backpacks with fabric markers. All of this was from Oriental Trading.The cake was made by Deb Penning. After sitting out in 90 degree heat, it started to lean a bit. However, it was delicious! We have so much we will be sharing for awhile.I bought face paint off of Amazon.com. It was GREAT! It went on very easy and washed off with little effort. The girls loved getting made up like butterflies.Another successful party. The girls all had a great time and I think that my girls learned that it is not the gifts that make the party, but the friends that you surround yourself with.