Tags and Gifts

I am missing my happy place- Oahu.  I miss being there throughout the year, but I miss it most usually during this time when we have just come back.  Since we have come home I have been feeling really lazy.  I have not done much except unpack, play the Tsum Tsum game on my phone, and do some collages on my phone of our pictures from our trip to post on Facebook.  I have only made two cards this week. My swap partners have not received my cards yet so I will hold off for now on posting them.  Today I am going to share the tags that  I made for our gift bags for our friends in Oahu.  I made these for the adults.  The characters say "friend."  The little girl stamps are from Dandelion Designs. I made the tags using cardstock note cards from Daiso.  I was super excited when I saw them.  They are decorated on both sides and is perfect to use to make tags with.

These are the tags for the kids.

I gave our friends some of our favorite snacks from two of our favorite places to visit- Knotts and Disneyland and a few items that they like.

Here are the thoughtful and generous gifts our friends gave to us.

One of my friends gave me this beautiful bag with lots of goodies both crafty and edible.  She also gave me some Hello Kitty products.  When I was taking the items out it felt like Mary Poppin's bag.

Since this post is long enough already without me adding too many additional pictures I will just end with two beautiful pictures from our trip to Oahu.  The first one is of one of the rainbows that we saw.  We saw 8 rainbows in one day.  We never saw such big ones or with colors so vibrant. Seeing them is always a good reminder to me that God will always keep His promises and that He will always take good care of us. 

The second one is of the sunset that we saw at the beach.  We went to beach to hang out in the water and wait for the sun to set.  The sun seemed to take forever to set.  LOL! It of course was worth the wait.

Have a fun and relaxing weekend!  Hope that you have some time to craft.

 

I'm Back

I hope that all of you are doing well and are enjoying the summer.  My family and I are having a blast.  I took a brief break from blogging because my family and I were on our annual vacation to Oahu for 10 beautiful days.  Even though we have only been back for 2 days we miss being there already. At the end of the next few posts or so I will giving you a glimpse of what we did while we were in Oahu.  A week ago today this evening I went out to dinner with my tea swap friends.  We usually go out for tea when we meet up, but this time we met up for dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Look at all the delicious food that we ordered.

I was kidding around and asked that we order bitter melon.  We did order it.  I was surprised that all of them like bitter melon like I do.  All the food was super ono, but my favorite was the stuffed fried egg plant.  Each year when we meet we surprise each other with a handmade gifts.  I purchased a tea pot and with the help of my hubby made tea cup. 

I put two tea bags in the cup, tea cookies, and included a tea bag rest with their gift.

I put everything is a bag and attached a tag with a special message for each of them on the back.

Here is a close up picture of the tag.

This is from Brenda.  She made us each a cute pouch, a pin, and ordered a magnet for us with pictures from our tea gather last year.

This is from Dori. Inside the boxes are yummy goodies and the bag with the tea bags has a beautiful tea bag rest.

This is from Fran.  She gave each of China from her grandma, a beautiful succulent, and a handmade tea pot with mocha inside.

Last but not least this is from Melanie.  Look at all the cool stuff that she put in the box.

I love all the creative and thoughtful gifts from each of them.  I am grateful to each of them for taking time to meet up with me while I was visiting.  We keep in touch during the year, but it is always more fun to chat in person.  As promised here are a few pictures from our vacation.  This is our view from the balcony of our hotel.

We had the opportunity to visit the Iolani Palace.  The tour of the palace was amazing.

We also got to visit the Sentate building which was pretty cool.

The entry was in one of the episodes of Hawaii 5-0, one of my favorite TV shows.

One last picture for today is the onolicious breakfast that I ate twice from McDonalds- spam, eggs, sausage, and rice.  One of the times I had Kona coffee and guava pie too.  It would be nice to be in Oahu once again enjoying my HI style breakfast sitting on our balcony enjoying the beautiful view. 

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful weekend!

My Hubby's Birthday

My hubby celebrated his birthday this week.  My kids and I took him out to eat twice and each of us made a card for him.

As you can see both of my kids like to draw.  They take after my hubby. Last Sunday we took him out to a Hawaiian restaurant.

He ordered a combo plate which included stew, fried chicken, fried rice, and a mac salad.  I ordered oxtail soup.  My son ordered saimin and my son ordered fried noodles.  The best part was the dessert.  We had a piece of Haupia (coconut) Moha cake

and a piece of the Paradise cake.

Before we went home we purchased a few loaves of rainbow bread.  Here is a picture of it with and without the spread. 

Isn't it pretty?  (Sorry I took a bite of the bread before I took a picture of it.)  Unfortunately the bread tastes just like white bread.  We thought it would have tasted like the Paradise cake. This week on Thursday we took my hubby to a local burger place.  It serves gourmet burgers with a  variety of patties- turkey, beef, chicken, chorizo, lamb, salmon, and a few others.

We ordered the party box which included 16 burgers. Yes, you read it right 16 burgers.  :)  We ordered chicken, beef, salmon, turkey, and beef.  They are between the size of a mini burger and a happy meal burger.

We figured that by time each of us ordered two mini burgers, fries, and a drink the bill would have come pretty close to how much we paid for the party box.   Actually the party box is a little cheaper. Just a side note before I end.  I am going to take a brief break from blogging, but I will be back soon.  (Don't worry eveything is okay.) Stay tune for more fun posts soon.  Thanks for stopping by!  Have a good weekend!

Celebrate and Some Cuteness

Hope that everyone is having a wonderful summer so far. Today I will be sharing what I made and received for the May Secret Sister Swap.  Yes I am a little behind in posting about that swap.  The theme of the swap was "Celebrate."  This is the card that I received from Jenn.

Check out all the balloons that she took time to put on the card. For the swap I was asked to make a card for Jayne.  I made her a graduation card.

Before ending this post I wanted to share with you a few pictures of the latest collection of Disney products that my daughter and I collected.  I will have to say that this is the most pricey collection that we have since we bought a whole box of

Out of the box we were able to get two complete sets and one chaser.  We are super excited to have the collection and a chaser.

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great weekend!