Celebrations
The last three months have been a whirlwind! Blogging had to take a back burner while I planned and held a Scrapbooking/craft retreat, a bridal shower and my husband’s retirement celebrations, prepared for my son’s wedding, and saw a daughter off to her first summer job out of state. We had so many celebrations at our house, even I, who LOVES hosting parties, found it a tad challenging! But I love a challenge, so it was all wonderful!
Festivities
It was suggested to me that I blog about how we handled the constant festivities and perhaps share a few tricks of the trade and recipes for how to host large parties, house guests, and events. So here goes!
Fiesta scrapbooking/Crafting Retreat
The first weekend in May kicked off the busiest party months with a Fiesta scrapbooking/crafting retreat at the Land of Refuge https://www.landofrefuge.com
This was quite the celebration! Since I was also celebrating my birthday and the faithful ladies who have been attending my retreats for the past five years, I decided to kick it up a notch and “Fiesta like there was no mañana”!
Before I go into details of the weekend, let me share a bit about the months prior as I gathered and prepared for this colorful event.
I was inspired by my sweet friend and fellow demonstrator, Amy Combs, as we discussed theme possibilities for my retreat while I was attending hers in Southern California early in March. She brought to my attention that my retreat was happening on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo, so a Fiesta theme would fit perfectly!
And so the planning began! I only had two months to pull it all together, so I began on my flight home to Texas. Without a moment to spare, I started searching Pinterest with a purpose. You can visit my Fiesta Pinterest page to be inspired for your next fiesta.
Amy shared with me some of the purchasing websites that were helpful for her. Among them were discountmugs.com and ClearBags.com .
Other resources I used were orientaltrading.com, https://www.amols.com, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joanne’s, and Etsy. Of course, Stampin’ Up! was my source for all things Stampin’ and scrapping.
I started collecting supplies and making “pillow treats” in between homeschooling tasks, on a road trip to Belton to visit my son for his Bday, on the plane traveling to Connecticut for the OnStage Stampin’ Up! Event, at my mom’s house in CT, and in between normal family activities. Planning projects ahead of time is the trick to getting it all done. I would keep projects in designated totes or plastic shoe boxes ready to grab when heading out the door or when any other opportunity presented itself. Sometimes I keep a mental list while other times I keep a list in Notes on my iPad so I could have the satisfaction of checking them off – it really just depends on what all else is going on. Multi-tasking works for me in certain cases such as listening to my youngest daughter read while cutting out images for a project. I had a plastic shoe box filled with all the images that needed to be fussy cut along with some snips ready to grab and go. Whenever my kids needed to go somewhere or be picked up, I would take this along since inevitably I would spend some time waiting in the car.
I often enjoy listening to podcasts or watching/listening to Netflix while working on projects after the kids have gone to bed. Sitting on the front porch visiting with a friend while putting the finishing touches on projects is a win win. I tend to listen better when my fingers are moving, so crafting while catching up on phone calls is a good duo, too. Thank goodness for speaker phones!
Orders for special gifts needed to be made immediately so that they would arrive on time. I designed with the help of my web designer, Joseph Thompson, a tote bag, t-shirts, and coffee/tea mug from Discount Mugs. I was super pleased with the tote! The image on the mug didn’t work as well as I hoped, but I just rolled with it, and the t-shirts looked great but ran small. I was happy that I had ordered larger than needed sizes. Overall, I was happy working with Discount Mugs and would recommend them. I too plan on using them again. The customer service was exceptional, and the prices were as expected.
All of the “pillow treats” were really not placed on pillows but instead were placed at each crafter’s designated work space or used to decorate the table at meal times.
The Menu
Planning the menu was pretty easy because I used familiar recipes that I knew were favorites of many. In order to maximize my time on the retreat, I did a lot of food preparation ahead of time. More about the menu and the recipes that I used will be featured in my next blog post – Fiesta like there’s no mañana, Part 2.
Check out my next blog post where I will share the menu, recipes, and how the weekend celebration unfolded. Stay tuned! Adios!
