I love waking up with a feeling of satisfaction. That’s how my day has started today. After a wonderful Saturday spent in a full house of family and friends, I feel incredible thankful and blessed for all the amazing people whom God has put into our lives, and to have a home where we can all come to share in life together. This is what it’s all about – community, fellowship, support, and encouragement – for the respective journeys we’re all on. This is the stuff that makes life so good and so rich, and I am honored to have been host to such an occasion.
About a month ago, I planned a joint “My Favorite Things / Thirty-One” party, an idea inspired by my dear friend, Emily, who learned of “My Favorite Things” on Pinterest and who is now also a Thirty-One consultant. I thought this would be a great way to kick off the spring season and just connect with a great group of women. And that’s exactly what we did!
Yesterday was the big day. After a morning of prepping, ladies started arriving around 2:00 and we gathered in the kitchen to share in some of our favorite foods/snacks: Grand Traverse Salad, Banana Pumpkin Muffins, Cake Batter Popcorn, Trifle, and Peanut Butter Cool Whip Cups just to name a few. We chatted, joked, laughed, dreamed, and shared in all the stuff that makes up the busy, sometimes crazy, but good lives we live.
Then we gathered in the living room to share our favorite things. How this works is that everyone brings four of their one favorite thing (in this case, we put a $6 limit on the item brought, so nobody spends more than $24). The favorite thing can be anything from food, drink, book, or craft to household product, health and beauty product, baby product, or kitchen gadget. So, we had a variety of items: Gatorade, Ghirardelli chocolate, hand lotion, Pampered Chef utensils, wine stoppers, journals and pens, Life is Good stickers, Luna bars, travel cups, inspiring and positive wall art, etc. You name the category, we had it covered in some way! Then we each drew four names, and once we drew, the four people whom we picked got our favorite thing. So the beauty of this is that everyone learns about some possibly new things and even better yet, gets to take four new things home with them! Ingenious, right?!?
After this, we then perused the Thirty-One catalogue and products that Emily brought to showcase. I ended up ordering the Punch Bowl Cinch Sac with my name embroidered on it in hot pink, as I think it will be perfect for race days when I need to throw my warm up clothes and camera in there to hand off to the hubby while I’m out running. Of course, it’ll also be good for traveling up to the lake on the weekends too – I can easily through my books and Kindle in there for our short trips!
A couple of the ladies had to take off after this for other obligations, but the rest of us continued to hang out and eat, drink, and talk, eventually making our way down to the man-cave to enjoy music, sports, and laughter, as at this point, we were now in the guys’ territory – so that just added a whole new level of fun to the experience – LOL!
Later we ordered pizza and nachos from our favorite bar and grill up the road and ate that while we watched the Final Four tournament; after which, the food-coma set in and us ladies pretty much ended up passing out before the game was over, the result of a wonderful and full day!
Overall, it was a great day, making for a fabulous weekend! I had been so looking forward to this; being able to catch up with everyone and just do something new and fresh for a change is exactly what I think all of us were in need of after the long winter. It also got me excited for the coming spring and summer months, and makes me want to take more opportunities to host future gatherings and parties here at home. I’m already looking forward to when our next event will be!