I went to a garden party..

These first few pictures are of Nataleas garden, which rivals any of the gardens we saw on the garden walk.

Her yard is beautiful and relaxing, and the perfect little size to take care of!

Thanks for sharing such a nice weekend with us Natalea!

I must have deleted a couple of her garden pics, because I know I had more.. but you can see more of it on the other girls blogs I'm sure!

Sunday morning we headed out early into a beautiful buffalo neighborhood right off of elmwood ave and whole streets were involved it the "garden walk". I think thats pretty amazing really, that so many of the residents in one area had these beautiful gardens.

and not only gardens, but the houses...omg! sweet! we all agreed that we would have loved to take house tours along with the garden tours. I can only imagine what they look like on the inside too!

I was so overwhelmed by all the beautiful gardens, that i had no clue what to take pictures of!

so I just clicked away in all directions.. every where! really, natalea has some much more artistic shots!

I LOVE this old chippy porch. but as I think about it now, even though I LOVE it, if it were mine, I'd probably be thinking that I needed to paint it.. however, that doesnt mean it would get painted, because there are so many things that need to be done around here, painted and otherwise that just never seem to get done... regardless, I LOVEd this porch!

pink and purple are my favorite garden colors!

Love these old doors!

just sweet!

I think this was nataleas favorite garden. Me? I could never be able to pick a favorite.. but I can say that i think I prefer the woodsier and more shaded ones.

Check out this monster! I thought it might try to eat us if we walked under it. no idea what it is, but it certainly is interesting!

One ladies garden was perfect for her grandchildren to play in.. (again, nat has some really neat pics from this yard.)

wave Hi to tammy!!

a bunch of the gardens had little ponds with big fish in them! hard to see, but there is a pond in this picture.

fairy houses!

thats all folks! I cant remember how many houses were in this garden tour, seems like it was over a hundred.. we only saw a smidgeon of them.. On a cooler day i think we would have seen a whole lot more.. but it was a bit of a scorcher out there that day.. but whats a little sweat between friends!

we had a great weekend! thanks to miss Natalea, the hostess with the mostess!

woohoo.. I like pink!

we interupt this blog to bring you some breaking news!

we went to dinner tonight with tiffany and robert and a bunch of our family members and Tiffanys family members so that they could announce the sex of their baby...

and the verdict iss.......

a girl!!

I'm getting a little granddear! (torrys my grandbuddy.. she will be my granddear.. unless you can think of something better...! I'm open here for suggestions!)

I am excited!! woohoo.. dolls and pink! pink pink pink!!

sweet! I'm happy..

and tomorrow I'm off from work and headed to the beach bright and early.. Im so looking forward to a beach day!

see yas later!

pink pink pink

woohoo!

creating and gifting at Nats garden party!

a few more pictures here! At nats, sandy showed us how to make resin rings.. she brought the sweetest little tiny frozen charlottes along that we used. my pictures are not so great, so be sure to hop over to nats to check hers out!

Love this picture of sandy pouring resin!

And this one, getting bubbles out with a flame! shes soooo smart!

We also did another craft with Natalea, we made these little books. I wish I had pics of everyones. I didnt get mine finished there, but have worked on it a little more here. It needs more.. which I will get to at some point.. but til then, heres some pics. these oh so cute little packages were supply bags made up for us by our awesome hostess!

heres how mine looks so far...

Then there were the gifts! Gifts actually happened on friday night, but I dont feel like moving them all to the top of this post!

Check out all the awesome wrapping!

We drooled for a few hours while waiting to open them all!

Everyone put their heart and soul into making these special for each other!

These were from Heather! sweet supplies!

From Tabitha! more sweet supplies!

From Natalea! the sweetest little sewn journals!

From Tammy, sweet packaging and ...

beautiful cuff bracelets!

From Sandy! (stole this pic from nat, mine didnt come out well!) cute stuffies!

this is what i made for everyone! (no, I did not make these bears!)

And we all got a surprise as one of my dearest blogger bugs, Barb Burkard, sent each of us one of these sweet little hangings!

Short and sweet here, because now I have 15 minutes left to get ready for work!! and I have to feed the bird and water plants too... so gotta run.. but hope you enjoyed the pics.. part three to come later.. the gardens!

chow for now!

(hi aunt Lynne!! I havent gotten back to you yet.. but I love you!)

nats garden party weekend!

check out the sweet little sign that Natalea had made to greet us with!!
We had a great weekend at Nats! The girls were all great. I of course already know Natalea and Sandy. But I had the great opportunity to meet Heather from speckled egg, Tammy from the other side of me and Tabitha from creative wings! what awesome women they all are. Tammy is beautiful and creative, intelligent and a great conversationalist. Heather is adorable and sweet and charming and also Very Creative! Shes a bit quieter then the rest of us and probably better mannered too! lol! Tabitha was our talker! she is friendly and full of energy and loves to share herself with others! Also another very creative girl! What a treat to spend the weekend with so many like minded girls,

WE had a great time from start to finish. My weekend actually started when Sandy got to my place on Thursday. We ended up leaving to go shopping right away. We picked up my Jennifer and headed to rochester where we pretty much shopped til we dropped at paneras! then went home, put our jammies on, had ice cream and watched a little tv while we chit chatted! We left my house friday morning, tried to see my torry pie, but he was still sleeping and beth didnt want to wake him.. (of all the nerve! didnt she know that grammy wanted to show torry pie off!) anyways, we stopped at buffalo stamps on our way to nataleas. I think Sandy liked it there!
Friday we spent the day and night at Nats hanging out together. Nat had made some really yummy salads and goodies, so we sat around talking and eating. And, opening really awesome gifties from everyone! We ordered chinese in and Sandy showed us how to make resin rings which all turned out so cute.. (will show you next post!) and then we stayed up late talking and laughing.

(tabitha and Nat)
Saturday we got up and out of the house early, to go on a garden walk tour in buffalo.
all I can say about that is, omg.. those sweet little yards were beautiful! such inspiration! though mostly they made me feel ashamed of my own yard!! (I really am not much of a gardener). we walked through gardens, took lots of pictures and went for a great lunch. Then we did some shopping on Elmwood, walked through a few more gardens and ended up at a choc shop where we had some goodies and relaxed in the air conditioning for a while.

(tammy and nat)

Then we went back to Nats worked on another craft.. (will show you in another post), ate left over yummies and then walked to the the beach on lake Erie for some really awesome fireworks and lots of laughs! I kid you not when I say that Natalea and Sandy are freaken NUTS!

(sandy)
The fireworks were great and the walk was invigorating and when we got back to the house we sat out on the patio drinking wine, talking and laughing some more!


(tabitha and heather)

(Heather)

All too soon, it was sunday morning and time for everyone to go. Natalea and I dropped Heather, Tammy and Tabitha off at the airport and ended up going for breakfast while waiting for my husband to come pick me up. We had a nice time just unwinding from the weekend.

Heres a few pics of the food that natalea had prepared for us when we arrived on fRiday. the water was so refreshing filled with fresh spearmint, honeydew and cucumber! I could go for some of that right now!

The salads were amazing! one of them was a chicken pasta salad with goat cheese. another was a bowtie pasta salad with fresh cooked shrimp and she made a great bean salad with cilantro in it. I brought a chicken salad with grapes and almonds in it and also another pasta salad, as well as a strawberry pretzel dessert.

Nat had made up these cute cups of cut up veggies with the dip already in the bottoms of the cups! AWESome idea! so good and so pretty!

and besides that , she made this awesome dessert below, water melon with lime mojito sorbet and toasted coconut... OMG!! sooooo freaken good!

Anyways, I have so many more pictures to share. I took tons, Its hard to decide which to post here.

I might not post the rest for a few days, I think the next couple days I need to spend some time getting caught back up with all of my little bloggy pals! But for now.. its off to bed I go! Be sure to stop at the other girls blogs to see what they have to say about the weekend too!

sweet dreams girlfriends!