April's birthday!

Once again we celebrate a birthday, this time it is April's.  Between the 5 of us it seems as though we are always celebrating one birthday or another.  We met at Karen's and had fun watching April open her gifts.

 Sorry April!  this picture doesn't show the delight she takes in receiving these gifts, but she is like a little kid, opening her presents so gleefully.

 Some fun things from Pinky.  We all know how much April enjoys pens, can't have too many!

 Gifts from Jan including a silly card she made without benefit of Photoshop.

 A gorgeous watercolor painting made by Gwen.

 Pinky brought a pie from the pie shop.  It was peanut butter and oh so rich and delicious!  No candles so April had to fake blowing them out.

 These are gifts from Karen.  Lots of paper crafting items.
It was another fun get together.  We were all painfully aware of the absence of Mary, who passed away a year ago.  Next week we plan to meet at Pinky's.

Happy Birthday, Karen and Gwen!

Celebrated several things on February 13th.  It was Karen and Gwen's birthday, plus almost Valentine's Day, plus Karen is living in her new home, plus we hadn't all been together since before Christmas so there were some Christmas gifts to give away.  Plus it was a beautiful sunny day!

It was exciting to see Karen in her new home, this was our first viewing.  The cabin went from this in August 2017:

                                                                          to this:

                                                                          from this:

to this:

and this:

 They got some free old barn boards from April's husband Bob.  The boards are beautiful used as cover boards on the wall.  They call them Bob Boards.

They also used the old rusty tin that was removed from the roof of the cabin, as wall siding as you can see in this picture, just below the barometer.  It is down the hallway too.  The hallway leads to the barn.

 

 Jan gave Gwen a quilt for her birthday.  Laurel Burch horse prints were used because Gwen loves her horses.  She has three of them.

 Karen is happy to be living next door to her daughter Keely, who is so generous to let her parents fix up and move into the little cabin adjacent to her house.  Keely has lots of farm animal pets, like this pig she named Hammy.  He gets to come into Karen's house and hang out.  The flowers were gifts to Karen from April.

 We had a fun day together.  Didn't get much creative work done but who cares?  It was wonderful to all be together again.

Celebrating Mary's Birthday

We celebrated Mary's birthday on June 27th even though her birthday was June 3rd.  We just couldn't find a day earlier where we could all get together until now.  Mary didn't mind as she got to celebrate her birthday all over again without having to turn a year older.  Unfortunately, no one remembered to bring a camera so there are no pictures of the event.  Instead, I am sharing some pictures from the previous week when we got together at Mary's without Karen.

As luck would have it, Mary had received in the mail a birthday gift from Lyla who lives too far away to be able to get together with us, so we talked Mary into opening it.  Lyla gifted Mary with many little paper embellishments, some of which she bought and some of which she created herself by printing out and then labourously cutting out by hand.

Look at this wealth of embellishments!

There is usually a Fox in amongst anything associated with Mary!

Jan had brought these pretty paper napkins to give everyone and they were all inspired to create something from them the same day.  Cards were rolling off the assembly line with blue napkin bits on them!

Sorry I can't remember who was creating these cards.  I think it was April.  Very pretty, I love that print.

More card making.

Pinky was creating something from a large stamp which she was then embellishing with pens.  She is barely started here.

 Above is a page from Karen's journal that I found from a previous get together.  I love these little animal figures!

Jan was decorating matchboxes with collage images from Piddix on Etsy.

Jan also made these bookmarks from some gelli prints.  You can find tutorials for using the gelli plate here.

So sorry I forgot my camera for your birthday outing, Mary!  We had a fun time breakfasting at Stephanie's Cabin restaurant, waited on by our favorite waitress Kelly.  Then headed to Dot's n Doodles art supply, Deja Vu thrift store, JoAnn's craft store,  lunch at Dooger's seafood restaurant, then on to the Goodwill store.  Plenty of laughs and a bonus was we had April's daughter Amber along!  Really sorry I forgot the camera.  Mary had fun opening her gifts during breakfast and all the shopping thereafter.  We all had fun watching Mary open her presents and shopping thereafter!  See you next time!!

April's Birthay Bash

Another birthday has rolled around for April.  She is hanging on to her 50's by a thread!  As has become our custom, we met at Stephanie's Cabin in Astoria for a birthday breakfast.  Our waitress was sweet enough to bring April a candle in a paper cup of whipped cream.  

The group went in together and bought her this Zentangle book, she was excited about that!

Pinky included some beautiful batik fabric in her gifts.

She received plenty of card making supplies, including these stickers.  The duck over her shoulder isn't quite sure what to make of all this gift opening.

Sorry I didn't get more photos but believe me, she got enough cool gifts to last her awhile!  It was a fun outing.  We were disappointed that our favorite art supply store, Dot's n Doodles, was closed, so we made do with 3 different thrift stores and JoAnn's craft store.    Next birthday will be Mary's in June.
Hope everyone is enjoying some fine spring weather!

Karen's Birthday!

This is a very late post, because we celebrated Karen's birthday over two weeks ago!  That doesn't take away from the fun we all had.  So much fun in fact that I forgot to take pictures except for these few.  We met in Astoria at Stephanies Cabin restaurant, as usual.  Above you can see Karen with her rootin' tootin' cowboy gift.

I'm not sure but I think this is a journal that Mary created for Karen.  She looks pretty happy about it, we all know how much she likes blank books.  She fills them all up eventually.

April packaged Karen's gifts in this old suitcase, which Karen loved.  

Inside was plenty of goodness and Karen thoroughly enjoyed going through it.

Our waitress photo bombed this shot, as Karen was looking at the gifts from Pinky.
After breakfast we went on to the fine art supply store, Dot's and Doodles.  Scott, one of the owners, gave us an impromptu demonstration on how to use stencils with molding paste and paints.  You will see how much we took to heart his instructions in the next post.  We all bought one or more items there before moving on to JoAnn's craft store, the Goodwill, and Dollar store.  It was an extremely stormy day but finally it cleared off and we decided to linger in town a little longer and took Karen to a late lunch.  We managed to linger until 5pm!  Didn't make it home until after 6pm, exhausted but happy.  We all enjoy these celebrations as much as the person we are celebrating!
Happy Birthday Karen!!

Pinky's Birthday Bash...

We started the Birthday Bash at Stephanie's Cabin in Astoria.

We all made it and ordered our breakfast.  Of course, we do a lot of yacking while eating, so it takes us awhile to get through it.

 Jan must have said something pretty funny...We're probably talking about men's underwear again...

 It's getting serious now...time to open Pinky's presents.  Here, she is opening Jan's present to her.  I am hoping Jan will have taken a picture of it.  It was a beautiful wall hanging...one of her "doolybobbers"...not sure if I spelled that right.  Pinky was thrilled.  There was a little bag that was filled with goodies for card making and a huge pack of glue.

 Here Pinky is opening a card from Karen.  Karen gave her the neatest stamp that had a heart and a "P" on it.  It would be perfect for the back of her cards as Pinky usually puts a "p" on the back of each one.  Karen found her lots of card making supplies too.  I think she won't have to buy anything for quite awhile.  Karen brought Lyla's present, too.  Lyla loves to cut out tiny things from the computer, magazines and where ever she finds them.  She gave Pinky several envelopes of those and some beautiful hand made post cards.

Below is one of the post cards that Lyla made for Pinky.,,very cool.

Next is the sisters, Pinky and Mary, with Pinky holding one of the gifts Mary gave her.

We started our shopping in Dots and Doodles in Astoria.  It is a great art store and non of us got out of there without spending a goodly amount.  It seems like there is always something new to spend money on.

From Dots and Doodles, we headed to Joannes and again...no one came out empty handed...Our last stop was at the Goodwill in Warrenton.  It just seemed to be everyone's day as we all found great things.  We had to step it up a bit at this point as April had to go get her student and return to Jewell.  We had left our cars at Stephanie's Cabin.  April dropped us off there, we all exchanged hugs, wished the birthday girl one more Happy Birthday, and headed for home.  I think that was one of the fastest days I can ever remember!

It is always fun to celebrate birthdays in this group.

We drew names for Christmas earlier at Stephanie's and stashed those away in our memories...good luck with that...

We won't meet next week as it is Thanksgiving, so by the way...Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

See you in two weeks.