Friends

Sometimes in life you get those little "A-ha!" moments where your brain (or your heart) gives you a little nudge and right in the middle of whatever is going on, you realize just how lucky you are.  I've had a lot of those reminders lately and I feel very blessed.

 I have a lot of fantastic friends and family in my life - always have and I am so very lucky to have them.  But I wanted to acknowledge this particular group of ladies as they mean a lot in my daily life - right here, right now.  You see, I live in what I like to refer to as a "high drama" neighborhood and it's been quite a roller coaster ride finding true friends nearby since I moved here almost three years ago.  About four months ago it suddenly gelled for all of us and it's been amazing.  These ladies are my loyal supports, my social network, my reminders that life can always be fun, my crafty partners in crime (most don't claim to be truly crafty yet, but the enthusiasm is sure there lol), my safe place when I need to vent, our family while we're away from home.  They give me things to look forward to in life and sometimes I even let them "corrupt" me a little bit (you know I can be a little to firmly rooted in the serious).  ;)
Well all too quickly our little group is being shaken up.  All of the husbands are in the military and sure enough one of us is moving across the country.  So we threw her a surprise Going Away brunch yesterday.  She thought she was coming over to craft (and we did, eventually) but we had other plans.  And I have to say I'm pretty proud of us for pulling it off - especially since I'm a horrible liar and don't do well with that kind of thing.  We spent a fun couple of hours eating and chatting (and forcing my husband to play photographer for a while) while the husbands took care of the kiddos and it was awesome.

 Of course we couldn't let her go without a little parting gift.  A couple of them actually.  It's kind of our running joke that we are Real Housewives and we've tossed out the idea more than once that we needed to have wine glasses made up and we couldn't let her leave without following through on that.

 Fun, right?  I used outdoor vinyl and my trusty Silhouette and according to Pinterest these should hold up to hand washing and even the top rack of the dishwasher.  We shall see.
I did put our names on the bottom of each, but that didn't photograph well.
And our second super-sneaky project:

We took the group photo at her daughter's 1st birthday party the day before and my husband was nice enough to run to pick up the one hour print while we got the party started yesterday.  I literally snuck into the garage to put together the finishing touches while she was here and before she realized it was a party LOL.

The quote says it all.  Love these ladies!