My husband and I wanted to host a “Thank You Party” for our friends and family that helped us during my recuperation from my broken wrist this past Spring.

These wonderful people brought us delicious dinners, chauffeured me to doctor’s appointments and physical therapy and so much more!  I was truly blessed with such amazing support.  A party was in order to say thank you!

Designing the Invitation

I still enjoy getting snail mail.  It is much more fun to open an envelope than an email.  Don’t get me wrong though … there is a time and place for an e-vite and I do love the convenience of them.  But when you want your event to be extra special, an invitation sent in the mail is the way to go!

I love personalizing the invitation as much as possible and enjoy creating them on my computer.  Once I have the gist of what I want to say, I just start writing.

When I am stumped for a word that rhymes, I use The Rhyme Zone.  It’s a great site that will give you every word possible that rhymes with your specific word.

It takes awhile to finalize the wording but I always think the effort is worth it  – – It’s as if you are speaking to your guests personally.

Next I like to jazz up the invitation a bit.  For my Thank You Party invitation, I just added the words “Thank You” along the left side of the invitation in English, French and Italian as shown in the picture below.

Floral Arrangement for a Summer Barbecue

Since our party was a barbecue, I wanted the flowers to be informal.  The day of the party I went to Costco and found some pretty sunflowers.  Sunflowers always need some filler in the vase.  They are such a big flower and without additional greenery they look top-heavy and the arrangement just looks unfinished.

I cut some greenery from some shrubs on the side of my house to add to the vase.

Since this was a casual arrangement, I wanted the greenery to just fill in the open spaces and not be formally arranged.  The theme was casual and the flowers needed to follow suit.

Colorful Napkins

Truth be told, I went shopping in my own cabinet for napkins for the event.  Since we entertain often, I pick up napkins when I see them on sale.  We were having 56 people but I did not have enough napkins of one style.   I selected three styles and thought they looked festive together.

Party Menu

This was a rare occasion for us to have our party catered.  Normally I love to do the cooking but since I am still on the mend, we decided to hire our good friend Jonathan with Recipe Express Catering.  Their food is always amazing and their presentation gets rave reviews!

This is where my socializing gets in the way!  I so wanted to take pictures of the gorgeous spread of food but I was too busy mingling with my guests.  Once the cocktail hour was over, the guests were in line filling their plates with a wonderful assortment of grilled vegetables, chicken and hamburger sliders, Schmidt’s famous Bahama Mama Sausages with three different mustards, potato salad and baked beans.

I quickly grabbed my iPhone and took a couple of photos but didn’t want to hold the line up so I didn’t get many.  They certainly weren’t quality photos and don’t do the food justice but here are two pictures.

The following day one of my friends called to thank us for the fun evening.  She summed it up perfectly by saying she felt the love in the air of the wonderful friendships.  I was truly blessed to be surrounded by wonderful people!

A special thank you to my readers for their support and good wishes.  I am so happy to be back to blogging!

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