We’re having a party – Page 4

Fluttery wings and a book full of sweet nothings, two classes two ways- in Florida and Kansas

cottage, holiday decor, Valentine's Day, vintage paper/collage art, We're having a party, Workshops

By Karla Nathan / January 4, 2019

Are you up for some romantic crafting projects? I have two opportunities for you to join me in creating ruffled, lacey, crepe paper wings, adorned with vintage millinery along with a charming autograph book, inspired by a very old and uniquely shaped signature book. The book will be made from the ground up, you will learn how to construct the covers from chip board and paper.

One set of classes is being hosted by the lovely, Karen Hillman, in Deland, Florida. She will serve a luncheon to us in her impressive and gracious style and we will create both the angelic wings and distinctive booklet.

Info on how to sign up is here: Cozy Castle Events

Did I mention it was Reninger’s Antique Extravaganza weekend?!?!

While the flea market adventure isn’t exactly part of the workshop, I highly encourage you to attend it and shop to your heart’s content at one of the South’s top fleas. The classes are on Saturday, and the market is in full swing Friday thru Sunday, just down the road in the delightful town of Mount Dora.

I used to spend some time in the area back when I’d visit my Great Aunt Caroline (who lived til the day before her 102nd birthday!), so I became familiar with the joys of antiquing there, way back then. I fell head over hills for the hidden gem in the heart of Florida, and have filled my suitcase many times with precious goodies from shopping sprees while visiting.

The signature book and angel wings have a romantic feel to them, but are not necessarily Valentine decor. I hung some wings in the cottage for Christmas one year, and decided to leave them up for Valentines', then liked them so much, they stayed up year round. Who doesn’t need a sweet reminder of heavenly blessings nearby?

The book also, can be filled with sweet nothings and love notes, or used as a mini scrapbook, art journal, diary, or simply enjoy as a display piece and reminder of a day of creativity with other talented friends. Here is a page from my inspiration book (a gift from the Guncles that Karen and I both freaked out over and wanted to copy). I will be including a vintage calling card and other pretties for each kit.

Karen’s gathering will take place on February 16th, which makes it even more special to me. It is my mom’s birthday and she adored her Aunt Caroline. I’m excited to be spending her day in an area she loved.

I've been busy hand dying crepe paper and sewing it into yards and yards of ruffles for you.

No two kits will be exactly the same, since vintage materials will be used. I'm supplying roses for each set of wings, in your choice of color. Tiny vintage flowers will top the album also. Crepe paper is available in cream and white or pink.

The classes at my home will be on Saturday, January 26. You can choose to make the wings in the morning, the book in the afternoon, or stay the day and do both. Lunch is included.

Both cottage workshops are $55,

but if you sign up for the set,

you’ll save $5 on each

for a total of $100 for the day.

(I hope you will stay all day, I’m looking forward to spending it with you!)

We will have a Valentine themed luncheon and the Treat Cabinet will be stocked with chocolatey, yummy, sweetness. If you’d like to be part of this party, you can email me at karlanathan@sbcglobal.net for an invoice. And please let me know if you’d like white, pink, or red for your wings.

I could possibly do blue or lavender if you wish also. Ask for your fave and I'll see what I can find for you. My cottage does hold a couple of hats to choose from….

And if you like to go to the Florida and Kansas versions? First of all, I’d be thrilled! Second, I can make you two different colored kits.

A Book Club Christmas party

Books, cottage, holiday decor, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / December 16, 2018

I couldn't remember if it was my 4th or 5th annual holiday book club party, so I looked back at my blog (which is my journal, and the only way I ever know when I did what) and saw that I'd started hosting these in 2011!

Here are some past parties:

This year, I was inspired by a pot of glittered, blue poinsettias to tend toward being a little more colorful than the typical gold and white color scheme of past parties. Our white tree has multiple settings for color choices. On a daily basis, I set it on white and twinkling. But the minute Sugarwings walks in the door, she resets it to rainbow. I thought I'd use her favorite setting for this night too.

Aren't the flowers wonderful? I always buy a pot of poinsettias, and try to purchase the one with the most blooms, and normally choose ones with just white. This year, I saw a glittered, ocean blue plant, and had to go for it. Especially since it had over a dozen flowers on it. (or to be correct, I think you are supposed to say "brackets" for these plants, not flowers, right?)

I always cut the blooms off and put them in vases, instead of leaving the plant as is. They last quite a long time and I can spread them around the house, using them in many spots.

And lately, I"ve been finding crystal wine glasses on sale for pretty cheap and they have been multicolored too. So, heck why not go with it? It ended up being a change that I really enjoyed.

I even added some pink and blue shiny brites to the gold and silver ones on the chandelier for the night and like it so much, I've leaving them for the season. They look nice with Sugarwings' favorite light setting on the tree, too.

Since the party was for the book club, I added some vintage books to the tablescape.

Dinner was a rainbow spiral pie (that suited the colorful room, didn't it?), baked parmesan chicken, greenbeans with potatoes and mushrooms.

And two kinds of homemade bread.

I had such a lovely time with these bright and interesting ladies.

After dinner, we draw names for gift wrapped, used books that everyone brings to swap.

I ended the night, looking around the room, and enjoying how clean and festive the house looked. I adore the holiday decorations and seeing all of the lights, but our cottage isn't always as tidy as it should be.

While decking the halls, I do a deep cleaning and at first everything looks sparkly and spiffy. Since I do the decorating early, messes have a chance to encroach December passes and having a party midway through the month is a great excuse to get a fresh start and bring back that sparkling feeling. It isn't often that the whole place is all cleaned up and shiny at the same time. We have 5 dogs, heat with wood, and have a craftaholic kid who creates clouds of paper flying around her like she is Edward Scisssorhands.

As I said goodnight to my husband, I commented on how happy I was to have had such a pleasant evening and to have clean, pretty surroundings.

Then, I woke up about 1am to a dog crying hysterically to go out. And then to be let right back in. And again a couple of times that night. I drug myself out of bed each time, half awake, not realizing that she had such a tummy ache that she'd made a mess, and paced around, walking through it.

Not so clean anymore….. I didn't even get a full 24 hours of spotlessness.

Mopping and sanitizing after a sick dog isn't nearly as much fun as cleaning and spiffing to get ready for a party.

The King and Queen of Hearts

celebrations, family, paintings, Valentine's Day, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / December 8, 2018

My sister, Bobbie Sue just celebrated her 50th anniversary with her husband and their darling daughters threw them a party, that truly surprised them.

Their last name is Valentine, and my silly sis LOVES goofy photo ops. So, I painted these cut outs for them to pose in as the King and Queen of Hearts.

Other party-ers had some fun with them too.

After measuring my largest suitcase, I cut plastic, corrugated poster board to fit the bag and primed them before painting the royalty with holes cut out for faces. Then, I flipped them over and painted the other side for double the fun.

The fairy and gypsy were done with lots of glitter and metallic paints for a sparkly effect.

The entire evening was a sparkling night of fun! My nieces rented a limo to pick their folks up at their farmhouse, and we all piled in for the ride "out to dinner". But instead of dinner, we went to greet the room full of family and friends ready to jump up and yell, "SURPRISE!!!"

It was all pretty cute, and the kids pulled it off with an amazing skill of twisting the truth around so no one guessed what was coming.

Personally, I was quite impressed with my own ability to spin tales. I possess a super power that until now, has lain dormant. Wow, I am a very, very good liar!!!!! I even had them pull up the online menu of the restaurant we were pretending to go to. And faked plans to visit old friends so I could sneak out and deliver the painted photo op boards.

The twisted untruth about meeting up with old friends, ended up turning around and becoming the real truth, and I got to visit some high school buddies I hadn't seen in years. That was the icing on the cake for this wonderful, but too quick trip to Indiana.

Well, not all of the icing. There was some delectable cake too.

And cousin time, that included seeing a long lost stepsister.

And of course, I never get enough sister time.

Yes, it was a beautiful weekend, and I was thrilled to be a part of the celebration of this love. These two are truly the King and Queen of Hearts.

Elfing around with pinecone pixies

fairies, friends, holiday decor, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / December 5, 2018

My pal, Tami, once again invited a group of local Peeps to her lovely home for a holiday crafting day. She is always generous with supplies and ideas to share with friends. This time, we were elfing around and making pinecone pixies.

Here are a few of the ones that I made. She provided a basket full of pine cones, and plenty of felt, along with the little wooden balls for heads and other tidbits to put together.

I'd brought this chunk of firewood, deer, and tree to make this display.

But this character looks more like a Yorkie than Santa's helper, doesn't he?

See what I mean?

Or maybe more like this?

We had a holly jolly time making these, and soon the room was filled with the fun lil guys.

It was hard to stop, even though all of mine didn't turn out as good as I would've liked. This poor sprite looks like she has smoker's wrinkles around her mouth where the ink ran. I can almost hear her throaty voice saying, Ho HO, Ho, between coughs….

Her sis turned out a little better. She is sitting on a spool.

Tami's halls were decked, her home is always so tastefully and vintagely festive. I do not know why I didn't get more pictures, dang it. But at least I took this pic, look at this unique and fashionable tree.

Between eating a yummy, pitch in lunch and assembling elves, we also worked on a few other projects. There were some butter pat plates available to work with.

I'm afraid my finished product is rather plain, but the plate itself was so simply sweet, I wanted to keep it pretty much as is.

I also made a little doggie ornie.

And a bottle brush tree snowflake too.

With all of the laughter, warm conversations, and of course- treat snacking, I don't know how I managed to get so many things made.

What a nice day! Thanks, Tami!!

A North Carolina Birthday Girl

celebrations, Dew Drop, family, Travel, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / November 28, 2018

My husband had a business trip to North Carolina, and while he was there, he offered to snap up Dewdrop from her Asheville home and bring her to KS for Thanksgiving. Since he'd be getting her on her birthday, I couldn't miss the event and had to come along to celebrate with them.

Before we scooped her up, we spent a night in Raleigh and ate a fancy meal at the City Club there.

(That last photo might look as tasty as the others, but is a light fixture, not candy. And the first one? That is candy! Cotton candy pork belly appetizers, wowzers!)

And we had a scenic drive to Boone where we passed through some misty, Christmas tree farms.

We stayed at Banner Elk, with Rich's Mom and brother, at their mountain house with this pretty view.

It changed to this overnight! Even prettier.

After our zig zag trip from Raleigh to Boone to Asheville, we drove to Charlotte and visited a nephew and his sweet baby. They made our Dewdrop feel very special with some birthday surprises.

They even treated us to a night at the trampoline play place. I didn't think I'd be doing any jumping, but once I saw how much fun the rest of the group was having, I had to start hopping around myself, and bounced around for almost an hour and a half, hating to end when it was time to go.

This is my new favorite thing to do!

The next morning, our thoughtful nephew made some Mickey shaped pancakes to keep the party going for the birthday girl before we flew home to deliver her to her family who had been missing her for way too long.

We will be seeing her again at Christmas, and while I'm heartbroken not to have her daily, I'm very happy to be able to visit with our North Carolina relatives when we do the kid-switcheroo. It was a lovely trip.

Our respect for the bird is slipping….

celebrations, Food and Drink, holiday decor, Sugarwings, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / November 19, 2018

Sugarwings and I LOVE decorating for the holidays, but we try to hold back and wait til after Thanksgiving. Our reminder to each other is, "We must respect the bird!"

Last year, our home was on the holiday tour plus I was hosting a holiday workshop (A Snowbird's Song) and I had a great excuse to ignore our rule and toss tinsel everywhere on November 1st.

And this season, we started our holiday fun a bit early by attending the play, "Elf" at the KU Lied Center. We decided to throw a mini dinner party before the show, and simply had to have appropriate decor to serve our meal, right???? Heck, it wasn't our fault that the date of the play was before Thanksgiving.

Sugarwings was in charge of the tablescape and made up this Candy Cane Forest, from the story.

Cocoa parties are a big part of our Christmas celebrations, and Buddy the Elf loves cocoa too. Typically, we do not have our first cup until the tree is up and lit. We made an exception, and served hot chocolate with organic candy canes and marshmallows in both vanilla and peppermint. She made a banner from one of Buddy's quotes.

He does have some of the best quotes.

While she crafted a candy cane forest, I hot glued some felt and feathers into elf hats to wear that night.

I was kind of surprised that we were the only group decked out for the theme, but was proud of my girls for rocking the look.

We served finger foods and things we thought elves would like, although we didn't go whole hog with Buddy's list of elves' favorite food groups:

1- Candy

2-Candy Canes

3- Candy Corn

4- Syrup

We decided to compromise on our respecting the bird rules and leave our tablescape set up. I dodged a bullet on breaking the rule even further by being very busy, and having a couple of trips come up to prevent me from pulling more yule goodies out of the closet.

But I'm twitching with the need to tear into the storage closet and fling lights and ornaments from one end of the house to the other!

A Woodland Fairy Themed Birthday Party

celebrations, family, Food and Drink, Sugarwings, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / September 1, 2018

Sugarwings hosted her 12th birthday party at her family's Kismet Farm. She, her sister, and I set up the cake table, and I brought a few of my things to use, as well as a stack of paper butterflies I'd gotten at an estate sale for a couple of bucks.

(I wish I'd gotten a photo of the cake her mom made, it was really something special! That lady has a magic touch with cake decor)

To go along with the woodland theme, the kids and I walked to the treeline and we gathered grapevine hanging from the trees, to craft fairy crowns and dream catchers from them.

There was a nature walk and scavenger hunt, time to play on a swing, then a picnic.

The kids got to do a circus workshop and learn some tricks.

And of course, we had marshmallows to roast for s'mores!

Our Hippy Chick brought a pile of hula hoops too.

But in my opinion, the best part of a party is to just let the kids play outside and have all the fun they can make for themselves.

There was camping for those who wanted to sleep overnight in tents, so the party favors were LED glow sticks and flashlights to play with after dark.

Walmart has these mini lights for $1 each.

We also gave out necklaces that Sugarwings and I made, using paint pours.

The cake table was outside against the covered patio wall, and we hung odds and ends of fabric remnants and curtains behind it, then layered old tablecloths and burlap onto it. The butterflies were pinned to the fabric and it was a pretty simple set up to create and to take down. I brought serving pieces that I already had, along with the $2 pack of butterflies, so we didn't put any money into the decor at all.

I didn't get a photo of the table with the cake or punch on it, but the cake was so cute. And the punch was berry juice mixed with lemonade. Sugarwings and I sliced up fruit and froze it into bowls of lemonade to make pretty ice that wouldn't dilute the punch as it melted.

What a nice evening!!

A Woodland Scavenger Hunt for a Birthday Party

celebrations, family, flowers, games, Sugarwings, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / August 31, 2018

My son and his family now have a 13 acre home in the woods, and I think Sugarwings loves it out there more than anyone. So, when it was time to plan a party for her 12th birthday, this is where she wanted to have it. She suggested a nature walk as part of the activities and I made up a scavenger hunt list (spelling her name) for the kids to take on the walk.

Her dad mowed the trails ahead of time, and we walked along them to explore the woods.

It is a pretty time of year and there was a lot to see along the way.

Sugarwings stapled the list to sandwich bags for the participants to fill with their finds.

I was struck by how beautiful the trails were, and what a wonderful piece of property he'd found. He has been working on cleaning it up and making it a retreat for yoga, permaculture, and other workshops in the future and I'm looking forward to seeing this land become a growing business as well as a home.

And to watch the grand fairies grow up in the woods.

Even more so, after seeing how some of the "city kids" who came to the party reacted to being there. Many seemed unsure of how to handle themselves walking along a trail and few were able to find the items on the list.

All of my family spends so much time connecting to nature that it didn't occur to me that some kids were uncomfortable in it and happier on their iPhones than running through the trees.

One thing I noticed that made me happy, was that every kid did find a "TREASURE" from the list on the bags. They might not be used to woodland walks and seeing the details in nature, but they could still connect enough to know that an acorn, a rock with sparkles on it, or an empty snail shell was truly a treasure to find and keep.

And it made me so happy to know that our grand fairies, while they love screens and devices, like most of us in this world, still love being in the woods and the magic of finding a leaf with a hole in it and peeking through that peephole.

Once Upon An Easter

We're having a party, Workshops

By Karla Nathan / July 20, 2018

Jenn Hayslip is having another of her wonderful events! And guess what? I've been invited to teach a class!

And not only does it involve so many of my favorite things, like vintage, eye candy, sweetness… a gathering of creative friends… and a getaway filled with art…

ITS AT THE BEACH!!!

I don't know if I've mentioned it…... but I'm slightly obsessed with beaches.

Which is why I've been painting them so much this year. Jenn is hostessing this party on Jekyll Island, a place I've always wanted to go. I hear it is just gorgeous there. Of course, when Jennifer plans something, every tiny detail is pure gorgeousness even without the back drop of something like this.

I hope I'll see you there? I can promise you that it will be quite special. Everything she does is. My talented buddies, Andrea Singarella and Karen Hillman are also teaching. This will be a confection of pastel prettiness!

My husband had a birthday too.

celebrations, family, paintings, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / June 18, 2018

While I have been celebrating my 60th from early April to mid June, my poor husband only got one day of partying for his.

He made up for it by mentioning his age (57) from the time I turned 60, until he turned 58 a month later. Hmm, yes, I heard that, Rich!!

I wanted to do something special for him, since he put up with all of my celebrating of my own holiday.

We spend a lot of time out on Lake Clinton, near our home. And we have a favorite area, a quiet cove that is ideal for swimming and picnicking. So, I took dozens of photos the last time we were there, and did this painting from them.

At first, I framed it. Then, took a look at it on the wall and thought it looked like a little old lady painted it. (which I realized that I am)

Once I popped it out of the frame, I liked it better.

Here is our cove from another angle. We are often the only people there when we go. Lake Clinton is a beautiful spot and I am always surprised at how quiet it is.

Although, we do our best to liven up that cove!

We have even convinced our son, Ryan to come out on the lake with us this season. He hasn't been as fond of the place as the rest of us, over the years.

For Rich's birthday, we packed a picnic and headed out to our cove to have dinner. It was only one party for him, as opposed to the 7 or so I had…. But I think he liked it. And I hope that he will enjoy the painting.

Around here, there are a lot of paintings, but I tried to make this one special for him.