Two Mystery Packages

Just in time for my birthday, I found two large and heavy packages on my porch.  Packages shipped from Kentucky!

See, my MIL is moving to an assisted living facility and she is getting rid of a lot of her items.  She asked if I wanted anything and of course I mentioned my vintage linen and dish addiction.  She was happy to oblige!

Box #1

Box #2

Now I haven't carefully gone through the boxes yet, but here's sneak peek!

It's going to be a bit overwhelming, but a fun overwhelming!

Perfect for entertaining or maybe (when I do start sewing) some fun projects.

She also sent this gorgeous flow blue bowl.  It's very interesting because it has feet on it.  Plus three pieces of silver.  These look very specialized so I'll have to determine what their original purpose was.

 Plus she sent some vintage purses too!  I just love the beaded ones, don't you?

Feels like a vintage birthday!

Thanks for buzzing along with me! 

 So nice to now you popped in for a little visit.

P.S.  Did I mention today is my birthday?
Well it sure is!

Photo of gorgeous cake from  Melissa at The Good Apple blog!

A Baby Bee Beach Bash

Edited to add:  Started this post the night of the slumber party and didn't finish it for a few days.

What a world of difference a 4th grade sleepover is vs. a 6th grade sleepover!  The 6th grade is much easier!

Right now we have 8 girls just hanging out in the sunroom after we brought them in from playing with beach balls in 44º weather in our backyard.  (8 girls screaming in the backyard at 10:30 at night hopefully won't upset our neighbors too much.)

One of the best ideas I borrowed from....well all over the place.....was a photo booth!

I bought some of those $2 tablecloths at the party supply store and we taped them up to the bookcases in the library.

I set up my laptop on a table and they took TONS of pictures.  I picked up a few props from Dollar Tree and the dollar bins at Target and had them handy in a basket in the booth.  

Our living room wicker chairs fit the theme perfectly and they even have apple green pillows on them now to go with the colors.

 We served cherry limeade and lemon-lime soda.  I couldn't resist getting some striped paper straws from Michaels in ------aqua of course.

All the colors were lime green, aqua, and turquoise!

I even found cute little beach pails in lime green at the party store that we filled with treats.

 Decorations were pretty simple this year - just some fun curly cues hanging from the ceiling and I drew a sandy beach on the giant chalkboard.  Pulled together a last minute bunting by adding the phrase Happy Birthday to the adirondack chair tags we made for the invitations.  

Only one craft this year!  YEAH!

We painted those great $1 wooden frames from Michaels with Martha's Beachglass paint and the girls glued shells on them.  

They turned out great!  Sent the photobooth pictures to Walgreens and they were ready in the morning for them.

I have video of the girls all singing along to Adele's Rolling in the Deep as they glued the shells on but I am not allowed to share that with you.  Just trust me when I say it was so sweet and charming.  

Of course we had delicious treats!

My friend SHE-Bee (long story as to her name, but let's just say Baby Bee will get a kick out of it) came over and helped us make cake pops!  

 A veritable forest of cake pops!

 The red ones?  Yeah, those are especially made for me!  (You know how I'm lovin' that red and aqua combo right now!)

Kind of reminds me of The Lorax trees.

 Nighttime beachball volleyball!  Hope the neighbors didn't mind too much!

And now for the morning after.....

It was a wonderful party and a great way to end her elementary school years.  

Next year she is off to middle school with new friends and new interests and I'm so glad we made time for this party to happen.  

My Baby Bee is growing up! (She says both proudly and sadly.)

So glad you're buzzing along with us!

It's a delight to see you.

Miss Baby Bee's Latest Birthday Party Ideas

Well my little Miss Baby Bee is turning 12 this year. 

(Informal poll here:  Do you think I should quit calling an almost 12 year old Baby Bee?) 

Can you believe it?  When I first started blogging she just started third grade and now she's in sixth grade and almost in middle school.

Well, right after last year's Nancy Drew party, Baby Bee said she wanted to have a tea party.  Well, we have entered the Land of I Don't Know What I Want, so that idea died (although I did collect a few teacups for this party, but no worries, I'll use them for something else) and my girl is a beach girl which brings me to this year's theme. 

 (Weren't we supposed to be done with theme parties? And there I go again, rambling all over the place.)

We are having a Beachy Slumber Party!

Today I'm sharing the invitations with you because they are soooo fun!

Do you believe in serendipity?  (Is serendipity really something you can believe in?) As the whole Sweet Bee family drove to the big city to head to Michaels we came up with this theme and as we walked in to Michaels there were all kinds of beachy toys on display and there were the perfect beach balls with turquoise AND lime green!

Serendipity, right?

(Oh yes, I do believe Worker Bee might have sat in the car listening to some sports stuff.  Just keeping it real here.)

I wrote all the details on beach balls!

The girls will hopefully remember to bring them with them to the party for some backyard fun.

I included some salt water taffy with the beach ball. (and of course, I had to sample a few - got these at Target and they were pretty good)

I popped all of these in some lime green bags and made some fun little tags.

Aren't those adirondack chairs adorable?  

I'm thinking I'll have to come up with some sort of decoration for the party using those.

I'm looking forward to our simple (please let me keep it simple, I know how I am) birthday party!

I'll keep you posted on the details

and

if you have any ideas for a beachy birthday slumber party

I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for buzzing by!

Best! Birthday! Party! Ever!

Can I just say I LOVE theme birthday parties?

And I think this one was the most fun ever!!!

Nancy Drew?  You rock!  Pinterest?  You rock too!

So let me tell you all about it!  And by all about it, I do mean alllllll about it. (yes - go get your tea or coffee now)

Invitations:

I scanned in one of my vintage Nancy Drew (ahhh man.....these were the books from my childhood.....I guess I must be vintage myself) books, inserted it into a Pages document, decreased the opacity to 30%, and put the invitation details in a text box.  I used a very tiny font size.  

We made the envelopes with the wonderful Cricut and I found cute little magnifying glasses at the party store that we included with the invitations.

Decor:

We used plastic tablecloths I cut in half as streamers.  

(Oh my!  You are seeing pictures of the room in our house I haven't ever really done much with it.  It's on the list of projects on my sidebar.  I have so many dreams for this room!) 

Cute printables I found online helped tie it all together.

Crafts:

I found an etsy seller that sells kits to make your own bottlecap necklaces.  So again, I scanned in more vintage Nancy Drew book covers, used a 1" hole punch to get Nancy's faces.  

I also typed up some words that made me think of Nancy, such as "amateur sleuth, girl detective, mystery, a clue, and intrigue."  I made the font quite small and I cut these up too.

I wish I got pictures of all of the cute ones the girls made.  They were adorable and so easy to do.

Activities:

While I helped the girls make their necklaces, I had several bags set up around the room with numbers stapled to them.  I put items I picked up from the dollar store in each bag.  

The girls could touch it, squeeze it (gently), and smell it.  Then they wrote down their guesses.  We then checked their guesses and the one who guessed the most correctly (or close) got to choose the bag they wanted.  We went from the most correct guesses to the least correct and each girl got one of the bags as a prize.

I also had the girls pretend to be sketch artists.  I described a picture of Nancy Drew I printed and the girls drew their sketches from my description.  They worked on this a long time.

And of course, we had to watch the Nancy Drew movie with Emma Roberts.  Such a cute movie, but not quite the same as the books.

Food:

Since we had the party in the afternoon, we decided to have baked treats (like Hannah the Housekeeper from the books).  

We made Neiman Marcus bars, buttermilk devil's food cupcakes with white chocolate frosting, and - of course - lemon bars.

And for the Big Mystery:

You didn't think I'd forget to have a mystery for the girls to solve did you?

It started with the girls out in the sunroom and I said, "Did you hear that?  What was it?  We better go check it out!" Meanwhile, Worker Bee was banging on windows, trying to open locked doors, and just making scary noises.  He rang the doorbell and left a box on the steps.  It was wrapped in brown paper and said, "There is a mystery.  Will you help?"

Inside the box were notebooks and pencils for all of the detectives.

The first clue said - Within the dishes of green, a second clue remains unseen.

It was hiding in the kitchen with all my jadeite dishes.

The second clue said - By the beds of three, a second clue waits for thee.

I hid this one on the bench we have in our kitchen garden (where there are three flower beds).

The third clue I wrote in code with A as 1, B as 2, C as 3, and so on.  It said  - A three corner cabinet of black will surely give you the answer you lack.

This clue was hiding in our hallway corner cabinet (which I still haven't painted, but that's for another day).  

I made a mirror image of this clue so they would have to read it in the mirror.

The fourth clue said - Many a relaxing time has been spent at this table, find this clue if you are able.

This clue sent them all over the yard.  But the clue was really hiding in a drawer we have in our living room coffee table.  I had to hint quite a bit to get them to realize where this one was hiding.

This fifth clue said - You are such clever girls, but can you find where the flag unfurls?

I sent them outside again for this one.  I had pinned the last clue to a small garden flag we have in our picket fence garden.

This last clue said - One last clue to find your stuff, go the water colored room with the friendly fluff.

The girls got this one right away, but I made it a bit harder by hiding it on the top shelf of Baby Bee's closet in a basket filled with all her stuffed animals she still loves and can't quite let go of.  Inside was a picture frame that Baby Bee can paint and put a picture of her friends in.

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I have to give credit to the sources of several of these ideas.  Several ideas were inspired by this post on The Decorologist.  Another blog that helped inspire this party is Me and My Insanity.  And the best of all was this recent post from Paging Supermom that included great printables.  If you want to see more, please visit my Nancy Drew board on Pinterest.

Now you deserve a reward for sticking through this entire post.

How about a lemon bar, just for you?

Thanks so much for buzzing by!  Your visits and comments are always such a treat (sort of like a lemon bar)!