Design: Open House

I was recently asked to make an Open House flyer for my base's Cinderella's Closet. Cinderella's Closet is a dress-borrowing service which is fantastic for those ladies attending the Air Force Ball that is coming up in September.

Fonts Used
Cursif
Perpetua Titling MT
Century
Quicksand

Design: Luau

I am loving being the Publicity chair for my base's Officers' Spouses' Club! It gives me a chance to use my creativity and passion for creating flyers. The first social of the club's calendar year is coming up and it is a luau! I enjoyed creating this one because it reminded me of my trip to Hawaii earlier this year.

When creating a flyer for a luau there are so many beautiful colors you can use. I searched for fun graphics to use and base my color choices off of. I was lucky to find the hibiscus image with all the colors I love. Pink is my all-time favorite color, but I also love yellow, green and aqua. 

Fonts used
Quicksand
Hawaiian Punk

K's Breakfast Casserole

I am a baker. That means I love following recipes...to a T. Cooking, where you make stuff up as you go along, is not my thing. However, I'm finding that the more I cook the more comfortable I am taking some liberties with recipes. Is that a sign of being a grown-up?

I recently hosted a Coffee & Coloring social for some friends. I wanted to offer a food item. At first I was thinking almond poppy seed bread or some other sweet item. But someone else offered to bring banana bread. Then I thought breakfast casserole! So many recipes included hash browns or potatoes which I didn't have in the house. I finally found one that was potato-less. I decided to alter it a little and it came out delicious!

K's Breakfast Casserole

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1/4 cup (ish) salsa
2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
6 large eggs
Splash of milk (it was around 1-2 Tablespoons)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown meat in skillet with salsa. (I used a peach salsa which is yum, yum, yum! I also love salsa with pineapple in it.) Drain fat and let cool.

Mix cheese, eggs,  milk, salt and pepper. Stir in meat mixture. Pour into 9 inch baking dish or pie plate. Bake for 45-55 minutes.

Adult Coloring Party

The other night I attended an Adult Coloring Party. As we all know, adult coloring books have been trending as a great way de-stress. This party featured coloring books from Usborne Books. I do not pay much attention to direct sales businesses, especially those that are kid-oriented. But this was a fun party! You could host one yourself through a Usborne rep or purchase coloring books anywhere they are sold and invite your friends over.

There were a variety of books to choose from and I ended up going with the Clothes and Fashion to Color book. It shows fashion from many time periods.

We each paid $10 which included a book and a set of colored pencils. Now that I've tried out this coloring thing, I want to get a bigger set of colored pencils so I have more colors to choose from. 

After a while of coloring, my hand was starting to cramp up. With all the typing we do nowadays, using actual writing utensils for an extended period of time is tiring.

I can't wait to get to the end of the book for the 50's and 60's fashion!

Design: Book Club

When we first moved to this base, a new book club was started. I have been going since the first meeting where we read Mr. Penumbra's 24- Hour Bookstore. About a year ago I became the admin for the group which allows me to maintain the Facebook page and make sure the group keeps running smoothly. It is a lot of fun and, since we are so casual, it is not a lot of work.

Our base recently had a festival and they invited several base interest groups to have tables to promote themselves. The book club was asked to join and I was happy to do it. Since I have been in charge of the group I have not really promoted the group except in a base spouse Facebook page. But this would be a fun way to reach out to more people.

My friend, Emily, and I hung out at the table and we met some really nice folks. I was surprised that even some guys came up and chatted with us. So far our group has only been females. But having a male member would add a different perspective and maybe open us open to books we might not pick otherwise. 

For the table, I created a sign, a signup sheet and a little take-away flyer. I started my design process by searching other book club flyers on Google and found a really cute one that I could pretty easily replicate. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Fonts I used:
Modern No. 20
Gardenia (one of my favorite fonts right now)
Segoe Script

SNO: Howdy y'all!

My favorite event of the year, Spouses Night Out, has come and gone. I think this was the best one yet! I am so sad that this was the last one I will be participating in, but maybe I will start up something similar at our next base.

Our group for the evening. Everyone did such a great job with their outfits!

Aren't these cows so cute? The planning committee did a great job creating this photo spot.

I had fun putting together my outfit for this year's SNO. I love, love, love this top that I purchased from Modcloth!

I have never in my life wanted to own cowboy boots, but I had to get some for this theme. These came from DSW. I've worn them several times already and have gotten a lot of compliments on them.

One of my friends who had been stationed at Goodfellow said that Ryan Gosling had been there, so I thought I would make a Hey Girl to share with folks at SNO.

Each group had to give a presentation about our base. I shared a lot of fun facts about San Angelo and Goodfellow and even pulled out a little Southern accent while doing it. 

Our Goodfellow side of the table. The sign is modeled after the entry sign at Goodfellow AFB. The table also features pictures of the Wing Commander, Vice Wing Commander and Chief of Goodfellow. I also printed out patches from various squadrons at the base and scattered them on the tablecloth. 

This is the back of the Goodfellow table. It features the Sheep of San Angelo. I love how it turned out!

I am very proud of my Texas table. The centerpiece is an old window frame that I purchased at a local antique store. I accidentally broke the glass and thought it was ruined! But I thought of a plan to redeem it. I strung fishing line across and was able to hang the Texas state outline on it. I received a lot of compliments last night and it made me feel great!

The back of our Texas table. For the table as a whole, I made sure to include some Texas favorite--HEB grocery bag, Whataburger cup and bag, Shiner beer, and more.

This year's event featured a Grog bowl...either a yummy or yucky one. I was lucky enough not to break any of the rules, so I did not get called up to the Grog.

I did partake in a few jell-o shots at our tailgating before SNO.

I was bummed that we did not win any of the awards again, but I did walk away with the door prize that I wanted. It included a free hair cut and style and a great Thirty-One travel toiletry bag.

Spouses Night Out 2016: Home is Where the Air Force Sends You

My favorite base spouse event is here--Spouses Night Out! This has been MY event the past few years and this is my last one; we will be PCSing (moving to all you non-military folks) later this year. My first year the theme was TV shows and we had Mad Men. Last year the theme was board games and we chose The Game of Life.

For 2016, the event theme is Home is Where the Air Force Sends You. Each group was tasked with picking a base to use as the inspiration for their table decorations. As usual, our spouses voted on the bases they wanted on our "Dream Sheet" and Goodfellow AFB was at the top. I thought our chances were pretty high for getting our top choice because Goodfellow is not a very well-liked base. And lo and behold, we got our first choice!

Because Goodfellow AFB is in Texas, I knew I had to go with a Texas theme for at least one of our tables. I have never thought so long and hard about the Lone Star state. I got to work planning out our tables with some sketches.

At the end of SNO 2015, they announced the 2016 theme and a bunch of people immediately thought Texas would be a perfect option for us. Even though we didn't pick our theme until early 2016, I had spent pretty much the whole year with Texas in the back of my mind and I knew I wanted a big Texas state outline on my table. This table was inspired by the little graphic at the top--Things Texans Love. My sister is an adopted Texan (she moved there and doesn't plan on ever leaving). She shared that graphic once and I knew it would be the perfect inspiration for my table.

 

 

This table looks pretty boring from my sketch and I ended up having to re-do the layout anyway. The past two years we have had enough people for 3 tables, but this year we were down to two.

I love sheep. I have several sheep stuffed animals and figurines. San Angelo has fiberglass sheep around town that businesses sponsor and decorate. I knew I had to use sheep in my design. Because we were down to two tables, I could not dedicate a whole table to the sheep. I compromised and combined the Goodfellow and Sheep tables. 

I had a lot of fun designing the place cards for our tables. I made three different designs. Originally I was going to have one design per table, but then decided to just alternate.

These are based on the Whataburger table numbers. This idea was given to me by one of our spouses and I love how they turned out!

These place cards feature a vintage Goodfellow image and patches from some of the squadrons at Goodfellow.

And these show some of the Sheep of San Angelo. I love these the best, but I am biased towards sheep.

I also wanted something to hand out to people at the event...bribes are OK, right? I created a recipe card for kolaches--a Texas favorite. I found the recipe on Pinterest.

Stay tuned for pictures of the final design!

Design: Alumni Dinner

For the Alpha Omega Alumni weekend, I also created a new email invitation for the Alumni Dinner. Usually I design the invitation with a dinner theme, but I found this beautiful image of necklaces and thought it would make for a nice change. Because I was sharing it alongside the Brunch invitation, I used the same fonts. All I did was change the colors to coordinate with the image.

Design: Brunch Invitation

For the Alpha Omega Alumni weekend, I love creating invitations to share in an email. With so many alumni, it is not cost effective to send paper invitations each year. We reserve mailed invitations for our Reunion every five years. I will often use the same design for several years and then when I get tired of it, I'll create something new. For this year's Alumni Weekend I created a couple new designs. One was for the Alumni Brunch.

The actives usually have a theme for the brunch, but we don't typically find out until the event itself. So I tend to keep the design of the invitation pretty general and brunch-like. I found this great sunrise (or sunset?) image somewhere and thought it would be fun.

Fonts used:
Cursif
Modern No. 20

Design: Favorite Things Party

I enjoy a bit of graphic design (is that the correct term?) by creating flyers for events and parties. A recent flyer I was asked to make is for a Favorite Things Party. Side note: if you have never been to one of these types of parties, they are a lot of fun!

Whenever I make flyers, I search Google images for ideas. Then I have fun re-creating images I find on there. Since all I have to work with is Microsoft Publisher, I am not always able to do all the fun things I could probably do with other programs. But it was free and I am familiar with it.

For the Favorite Things flyer, I saw one very similar on Google, but with different colors and fonts. I love fonts and have downloaded countless ones over the years. It is fun to experiment and try out different options together.

For this flyer, I used the following fonts:
Meganhand
Playdate
Romance Fatal Serif

Gilmore Girls Party: Coffee Punch

Coffee is a must at any Gilmore Girls party. They drink it morning, noon and night on the show! I am not personally a fan of black coffee, so I knew I had to make something a little tastier with a coffee flavor. I came across a recipe for Coffee Punch in a cookbook I purchased around the holidays. It was a cookbook fundraiser for the Officer Spouses Club and it is filled with great beverages, appetizers, entrees and dessert recipes.

The punch is amazingly easy and so delicious. You just need a big container, a coffee maker and the ingredients. So simple a Gilmore Girl could make it.

Coffee Punch

Ingredients
1 pot of brewed coffee
1 gallon of vanilla ice cream
1 pint whipping cream

Directions
Make coffee.

Put ice cream in a punch bowl. Let it soften a bit. Put metal spoon in the bowl to keep punch bowl from cracking as you pour the hot coffee over the ice cream. Stir continuously and slowly add whipping cream to thicken.

Gilmore Girls Party: Burgers from Luke's

I love planning parties. One of my favorite things to pick out is the food that will be served. Pinterest has made this both easy and difficult. Easy in that a myriad of recipes are available at your fingertips. Difficult in that sometimes it is hard to choose because there are just sooooo many options out there!

In planning my Gilmore Girls 30th birthday party, food was a big consideration. The Gilmore Girls ate so much junk food throughout the series. They also had the weekly Friday Night Dinners. Sooke St. James is a chef and made a bunch of delicious dishes. What to choose???

I knew immediately that burgers of some kind would have to be made. They ate countless burgers at Luke's Diner. I saw a recipe for easy cheeseburger sliders and this was the perfect chance to try it out!

Luke's Cheeseburger Sliders

Ingredients
2 lbs ground beef
1/4 cups oatmeal (or seasoned bread crumbs)
3/4 cup chopped onions (I just used dried onions from the spice aisle because I hate chopping onions)
1/2 t garlic or regular salt
1 package Hawaiian sweet dinner rolls
6 slices cheese of your choice

Directions
Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, combine beef, oatmeal, onions and salt. Gently press mixture in a 9x13 inch pan so that it makes one large patty of even thickness. Poke holes throughout the meat using a fork (I forgot to do this and it turned out fine). Bake for 30 minutes. As it bakes, the meat will shrink away from the sides and the liquid will accumulate around the edges of the pan.

When fully cooked, remove pan from the oven (keep oven turned on) and carefully drain off the liquid.

Top the meat with an even layer of sliced cheese; return pan to oven for about 2 minutes or until the cheese melts. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a few minutes. Cut into 2 inch squares (or the size of the buns used).

Gilmore Girls Party: Founder's Day Punch

Every Gilmore Girls fan knows that a beverage staple at any social gathering would be Miss Patty's Founder's Day Punch. The show never mentions what exactly is in this infamous punch, but it is filled with alcohol and is quite powerful.

There is a recipe on Pinterest, but I didn't end up using it. I had rum in the cabinet, so I thought I would make a rum punch instead. I found a great recipe from Hopelessly Ever After.

Caribbean Rum Punch

Ingredients
2 cups orange juice
2 cups pineapple juice
1/4 cup grenadine
1 1/2 to 2 cups rum
1 cup Sprite
1/4 cup triple sec (I omitted this)

Directions
Mix all ingredients, except Sprite, together in large pitcher. Top off pitcher with Sprite. Enjoy!

Where you lead, I will follow

I don't know if you know this about me, but I am a HUGE fan of Gilmore Girls. I have been watching the show pretty much since the beginning. I have seen the whole series at least 7 times since then. I am currently re-watching it on Netflix just for the heck of it. Even though I have watched it sooooo many times, I still laugh and cry. I have so many favorite moments from the show. When it ended, a hole was left in my heart. I am BEYOND excited for the Revival.

One day Charles and I were driving "to town" (we live in the middle of nowhere) and I was thinking about my big 3-0 birthday. Charles had mentioned months before having a party for me. He was thinking we could do an Alice in Wonderland theme (another thing I love, love, love). But all of a sudden, while sitting staring out at almond trees, it hit me! I will have a Gilmore Girls themed 30th birthday party! It was a moment of pure genius.

Thus work began on my party. And what I mean by that is I searched Pinterest for ideas. There were several ideas out there, so I'm not the only super-fan thinking along these lines. Check out my Pinterest board.

Gotta have the Luke's Diner sign

No Cell Phones, of course

Fun graphic with a bunch of Gilmore Girl quotes

 I think I was the ONLY person at my party who got this. Wolf Girl! If you can't remember, Richard & Emily gave this piece of art to Lorelei and Christopher after they got married as a wedding present.

I love this graphic! It shows the numerous jobs Kirk held over the series.

I made Pro/Con lists for each of Rory's boyfriends. Everyone voted on which they liked best. #TeamJess did not win, but he's my favorite!

My photo backdrop. I had to incorporate snow somewhere!

Harvard vs. Yale with life lessons from the show

Not quite 1,000 yellow daisies, but it's the thought that counts.

I feel like if fruit were skewered, the Gilmore Girls would eat more of it.

We enjoyed some mini cheeseburgers. They probably were not as good as Luke's, but on Hawaiian rolls almost anything is amazing.

For our beverages, we enjoyed Founder's Day Punch (aka rum punch) and Coffee Punch. The coffee punch was DELICIOUS! I'll share the recipe soon.

My cake was super chocolately and yummy! In the middle was a layer of straight up chocolate fudge. I think I just gained a few pounds thinking back on the deliciousness of it.

My gal pals and me

Me and my "Luke". I'll have you know he purchased this flannel shirt just because of my party. He's so sweet. And my shirt is pretty awesome, too. I ordered it from the WB shop.