Summer is winding down. Ski took off for Brown a few weeks ago to begin work on his PhD. Spencer went into the Missionary Training Center on the 17th. He has 12 weeks of language training before he leaves for Russia. Mick started his senior year of high school. Soooo....life keeps clipping along at an alarming pace.
This past week I was in charge of our ward's end of summer party (a ward is a congregation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). It's a tradition to have a big outdoor BBQ-est party at a park up the canyon with yummy food, lots of time for conversation and some games for the kidlings.
I wanted the decorations to be very simple & fresh vintage. Since I didn't have a lot of moola to pull this off, I went with mason jars, which I had and could borrow more of and filled them with fresh mint from my yard & sliced citrus. The citrus gives it a lemonadey feel. If any of you have ever planted mint, you know it multiplies faster than rabbits. So I have a yard-full. A bonus of using mint and citrus is that it smells DIVINE!
The decor:
- tables covered in brown painter's paper from Home Depot.
- mason jars filled with stones or glass pebbles, tied bunches of mint, sliced lemons & limes, numbered flags and tied with white string & a kraft stamped tag. I set them on white paper doilies.
- half size mason jars filled with crayons (for drawing on tables) and tied with twine and a stamped kraft tag.
- vintage sign holders with welcome signs.
- vintage frogs holding vintage letter and number signs.
- "write a missionary" corner with hand stamped envelopes & stationary and a jar of pens & pencils. I put a vintage mail holder to hold the envelopes.
- vintage red crate for the forks and napkins.
One of the teachers loaned us her parachute which kept the kids entertained for hours after dinner.
