Debi, Sue & Friends Saddle Up!

Debi, Sue & Friends

 Saddle Up!

Welcome to our Horse Themed Debi, Sue & Friends!

Festivities started with the adoption of one of our mailbox horses from the Adoption Corral.

Here is one of our beauties before being primed

Here they are primed and ready for adoption!

Here they are from the back side!

Horses have been chosen and the painting begins!

Color, color, color!!

Our Friends never have issues when choosing colors and designs for their projects.

This mare's head was a beautiful shade of time worn pink by the time her artist was finished designing her.

Aren't they creative? 

More photos to add later!

To keep with our Horse theme, our good friend Denny Kious brought two of her wonderful horses to Painted Trails for us to ride!!!

Both are from the Appaloosa Breed and both are wonderful to ride.  

Meet Maria (Ma-rye-a)

Here is Carma!

  Four of our friends also took rides or at least sat on the horses for a photo op!!

It took some effort but I saddled up on Maria!

Sue on Maria!

Denny on Carma!

Marie on Carma

Debi & Sue are friends!

This is the end of the trail for now!

We were very blessed for this event by the generous parents and friends that donated metal mail boxes for our project, by all the special people that helped with the event, including Denny and her horses and our friend's sister, Jenna, who took photos of the event and by the Lord  who provided the most beautiful fabulous weather we could have ever asked for!!!!

We are looking forward to having Jenna's photos to add to this blog.  Then you will see photos of the lunch and decor following our theme.

Please feel free to comment on what you have seen and contact me if you are interested in attending a class to make your own Horse Mailbox!!

Rehearsal Dinner Decor

Kristen and Francis'

Rehearsal Dinner Decor

May 4, 2012

The rehearsal dinner was held at Ristorante Renato's in Fredericksburg, VA on William Street!

The Rehearsal Dinner theme was about Khaki & Zoey, Francis & Kristen's rescue dogs (and my Grandpups!)

Photos of Khaki and Zoey were printed, backed with colored card stock and displayed on small wooden easel throughout the tables.  

Table runners were made from a loose woven fabric and hand stamped with festive words and prints of paws and bones.

Each place setting, greeted attendees with a theme printed card providing the Dinnner Menu.

The party favors were hand sewn bags drawstring bags made from a houndstooth fabric design, embellished with a round stamped quilted fabric tag and filled with a variety of bone shaped cookies.

Beautiful flower arrangements made by Carolyn Helfrich adorned each table.  The arrangements were set in dog food bowls to go along with the theme! (I was so busy I did not get a good photo of the arrangements, but they were fabulous)

Hope you enjoyed these ideas!  Please feel free to contact me by leaving a comment if you would like further information on any of the projects.  Thanks for visiting my blog!

Debi

Picnic Time!!

 Picnic in a Bucket

by Debi, Sue & Friends 


We gathered at Deborah Gayle Studio
 on Saturday June 9, 2012 for a fun 
Picnic themed gathering.

Our version of the Picnic bucket seen on Pinterest, uses Sap Buckets Debi purchased in PA.  
Being Sap Buckets, they did not have a handle. 
So, the ingenious, Debi and Sue used galvanized wire 
to create a sturdy handle for each bucket.


We like this project because we covered several areas of skills with our Friends.  
The skills we covered were: 
washing & drying, stenciling, proper use & safety of an iron, using a hot glue gun and spelling.

First we washed the buckets with Simple Green and water. 

Here two of our Friends are working together to clean the buckets.

Water on metal buckets can get a musical beat when our Friend is cleaning them!! 

We dried the buckets in the sun. (Making use of the natural resource)

Debi designed the bucket with a universal picnic table sign.  She cut each one time stencil out of heavy cardstock and applied repositionable glue to one side of the stencil.  This allowed the stencil to hold tight to the bucket, while stenciling, and remove easily without leaving a trace of glue on the bucket. 
It worked like a dream! 

Our friends had a choice of one of three Reclaim Paint colours, Licorice, White or Versailles. 
Reclaim paint will bond to almost any surface and metal is one of them.
Debi and Marie assisted with the stenciling skills.

We added a little beach theme into our project using shells for embellishments. 
For the napkins, sewn by Sue, we took large 100% cotton cleaning cloths from Walmart cut them in fourths and hemmed the edges.  Debi printed the shell designs from the Martha Stewart website onto iron-on transfers inkjet for light fabric paper and cut each of them out.  

Rick and Sue took charge of assisting with the ironing skills.

Every picnic bucket needs a Utensil Caddy!  
Putting our minds and skills together, Debi & Sue created 
the most ultimate repurposed caddy ever!  


Using three varied sizes of metal cans, we pierced two wholes in each can. We ran wire through the holes, pulled them together and twisted.  We intentionally used long wire so that we could use the excess to create a tall handle.  

Jute is wrapped around the bottom of the three cans for embellishment and to keep the caddy sturdy.  Hot glue was used to add shells to the jute wrapped around the caddy and to the ends of 3, 18" lengths of jute.  The strings, with shells glued on the ends, were tied onto the bucket for a beachy touch.

Two happy helpers!!

Rick and Marie

Could not do it without all of you!!!

When the buckets were all done we added a stripped tea towel, magnetic can opener, two plastic spoons, S&P shakers and a pair of ice tongs.  Thanks to Sue for gathering all these supplies  Now lets get down to some picnicing.

LUNCH TIME!!!

Our own personal
Grill Master
Frank!!!!!
Hot Digities and Burgers!
We also had all the trimmings, potato salad, baked beans and watermelon

Some ate outside and some ate inside, their choice!

For dessert each made their own banana grilled banana split.  

First you take a sheet of foil, slice a banana and lay it on the foil, add chocolate chips, marshmellows, nuts or whatever you desire.  Wrap it closed and set it over the coals to cook.  

I think it took about 10 minutes over our coals.

Open and add vanilla ice cream for a delicious tasty treat!

Back to the buckets for one last detail!

Since the picnic bucket was intended to be for our Friends and their families. I painted the family name on each bucket.  Before painting each friend had to spell out their last name for me.  Following are the families that will enjoy the buckets for years to come.

Hope you enjoyed our little session!  

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments concerning this post!!!

Thanks for visiting!!