Birthday Weekend Highlights

Well, my birthday weekend was a blast! I did everything from having a party at my friend Doug's home to going to the cemetery for Memorial Day to painting ceramics with my nephew!

OK, so the cute blonde is my brother, David. I am so proud! Doug had a Barbie contest and David was the winner - world famous craft designer, Cheryl Ball, and my cubicle mate at work, Gloria, dressed David - they only had 10 minutes and all the contestant and "dressers" did an awesome job! Cheryl EVEN made a purse for David to carry! He kept those bows on his shoes the rest of the evening. Doug, you're a wonderful friend!!! Thanks for making my monumental birthday so memorable!

I always have to do something out of the ordinary - as a thank you, I handed out boxes filled with homemade Snickerdoodle Cookies (OK, and sugar free candies to the Weight Watcher's group). I glued the flower and ribbon on with Aleene's Clear Gel Tacky Glue. I love the fact that the glue dries clear, so if I'm a little messy it won't show!

Then there was my cubicle at work! I was stunned when I walked in and found bead butterflies and dragonflies hanging from the ceiling and balloons EVERYWHERE! AND ice cream bars later in the afternoon.

Thank you EVERYONE who made MAYhem and my birthday so wonderful!!!!!

MAYhem continues!!!

As my birthday month continues, so does the outrageous fun! My friend Lauren and I met in San Francisco for a long weekend and did all the tourist activities and then some!

Friday we rode a historic cable car to a wonderful Italian restaurant in Little Italy where we enjoyed a gourmet fun shaped pizza! Lauren treated me to the play Beach Blanket Babylon - it was such a hoot! Just when I thought it couldn't get any more outrageous, it did! The costumes were fantastic - at the end, one of the characters wore a "hat" that took up a good part of the stage with a San Francisco cityscape and then the cable car on the hat turned on its light and moved up the hill...the premise of the story was Snow White trying to find Prince Charming - she searched far and wide and finally found him - it was Elvis!!! So, you can see, it was a very different play!

Saturday we shopped, shopped and shopped some more! Both of us live in cities where we feel shopping challenged, so to have large department stores at our door step was awesome! The evening included another play called Shopping - it was so appropriate for the day's activities. We enjoyed the Farmer's Market down on the Embarcadero in the morning partaking in samples of everything from cheese, to fresh fruit to candies... yummmmy! I did pick up a little something while I was there - a new puppy - actually, Bab's (named after our theater experience) is an ivy topiary!

Sunday was the Bay to Breakers Race - well, we found out that the true "racers" did their thing early in the morning and then it was crazy time! Thousands upon thousands of people had on outrageous costumes, carried crazy banners - just about anything anyone could image was on the streets of San Francisco. The picture is of a 'float' that was in the parade - they stopped in front of us and hit fake golf balls into the crowd! We walked and walked the streets - we managed to use four types of city transportation while we were there - we were quite proud of navigating around the city.

Some more highlights - cupcakes were everywhere - we had to have a little itty bitty one at a wonderful gourmet grocery store - it was topped with coconut frosting and we admired beautiful cupcakes at Ghiradelli Square - $3 for a cupcake!...Chocolate when in SF you have to have chocolate...and I had to bring back sourdough bread for my coworkers.

I'm sure I've left out many, many fun things we did! What a terrific weekend!

PattieWack!!!!!

Oh my gosh! What an awesome weekend I had visiting Pattie and Scott. They have just moved to California after living in Oklahoma and this was our first get together since the trade show in January.

It was so fun to just kick back, drink Orangetini's from oranges picked in the area, devour chocolate eclairs at midnight and have nowhere to go except enjoy the company of friends.

Saturday, Pattie and I ventured to the lovely town of Santa Barbara - we both had fond memories of the city and we didn't leave one rock or grain of sand unturned.

We met with one of our friends from Aleene's - she was the director of the TV show - it was great fun reminiscing and catching up as we sat near the ocean enjoying beautiful flowers, the smell of the ocean and each others company.

We trended and trended! (OK, so it really was shopping!) We stopped at a cosmetic counter and had our make-up done...then on to more shopping and looking and touching! Santa Barbara has incredible shopping!!!

We met with another friend from Aleene's old days for a very long, terribly enjoyable evening. Kat was one of the camera guys on the tv show and now is a radio personality in Santa Barbara. The evening was incredible fun and I hadn't laughed that much in ages!

I am always amazed when I see where Pattie lives and this time was NO exception! I'm including a couple of her projects and a hint or two...she's so practical, uses things unexpectedly and all this comes naturally to her.

The owl is made from shrink plastic and several hang from the market umbrella in their backyard along with wonderful ribbons - and, here comes the Pattie practical part - she attached the owls and ribbons to the umbrella with paper clips. She said she thought the movement of the ribbons and owls would keep the birds off of the umbrella as an added benefit.

OK, then there was the bathroom...I was amazed to find a little ceramic turtle sitting in the bottom of the shower. Then there was the hanging heart from the shower head...then...she used a magazine rack to hold towels! She's just amazing!!!


I was so happy to see the "man"equin made the move! The decoupage prints are so fun - I had to read EVERY square inch of it AND the black background is painted with chalk paint so as inspiration comes, writing sayings is highly encouraged.

What a wonderfully refreshing weekend...we'll do it again soon, I'm sure!

Joan

Vacation...

In looking back over the last week, many wonderful things came to mind...

1. Seeing tons of whales along the coast spouting and flipping their tails - awesome and perhaps the highlight!

2. Learning how to ballroom dance (and actually liking it!)

3. Doing skits and improv (OK, I'm still a little uncomfortable with this, but I did it)

4. Having two massages and hearing the lull of the ocean just below me

5. Meeting people from all walks of life and leaving as friends

6. Seeing a May Pole Dance (how fun and colorful!)

7. Delicious food that I didn't have to cook!

8. Seeing and 'drinking' in the ocean for 8 days!

9. Doing lots of creative things - collage, painting, etc...

10. Sleeping in and taking naps!

OK, 11. Seeing a totally Snoopyed out car - it was parked next to me at a hotel - amazing! Even the door lock knobs were Snoopy

Oh, yeah! On my way home, something hilarious happened and also signaled that I had had a completely relaxing weekend - I was out in the middle of nowhere and needed gas. I slid my credit card into the machine and it asked me to input my zip code - I COULDN'T REMEMBER WHAT MY ZIP CODE WAS!!! Thank goodness I had some paperwork in my car that had it on it - yikes!