Sunday, May 29, 2011

Celebrating my 17th (for the 40th time) with My Fairy Friends

So you know that poem about when you get old and wear purple with red when you know better?  Well, that is sort of how this party began.  When you are 50 something your respect for convention is not what it was ... so that is how I excused my personal breach of etiquette in throwing myself a birthday party.

I really wanted to have an outdoor party in my fairyland garden, along with tiny fairy statuary, fairy lanterns, a frog prince and a fairy door on my wishing well.  A month of working on the garden getting it ready for the fairies to arrive unfortunately came to naught, as Maleficent, that evil fairy worked her magic on the weather.
But we frustrated the plans of the evil fairy and gathered indoors, which, with our wings and 19 of us, made for a rather tight fit, but since we are all such polite fairies, we were able to make do!!  Here we see my fairy friend RaeLene.  She is a rather talented fairy, and I just wish you could see in detail the amazing crown she made for herself, in a lovely woodland style.  It included a frame work of twigs and branches complete with a bird and a nest ... oh I have amazingly talented friends!!

Here we see Wendy, Carolyn, Suzanne, Debbie, RaeLene and Terri.

 In this picture fairy friends include Stacy (in her tiny rhinestone tiara), Cathie is wearing an amazing crown designed by our artistic mutual friend Jennifer, who sits next to her wearing another of her own amazing celebration crowns.

I luckily received a crown as a Christmas gift from Jennifer as well, and I loved having the opportunity to actually wear it. (It normally resides in my room on a life size bust.)
Here are more friends in 'Fairy Queen' Regalia.  RaeLee wears wings, that are not visible in this picture (though she is the model for my 'guess your fairy game' later, if you were curious about her wings), while Sandy and LaVern wear both a crown and wings ...

A Crown and/or wings were required for admittance, you know, sort of like those signs that say 'shirt and shoes required'?



 Barb and Jenn lived in my neighborhood in Orem, before we moved to Payson.  I now realize that no-one lives in Orem anymore, they have all moved north or south, all four of my 'Orem' friends, who attended, now live in Highland or American Fork.



Robin and Kim are the other two Orem expatriots, it was a fun reunion for the five of us and could only have been nicer if Ann had not been out of town doing Cub Scout Stuff ... Really, Ann, where are your priorities? I bet you didn't even get to wear a crown at your scout water safety training, did you?!




 Wendy and Carolyn get a chance to get better acquainted.  They met last summer when I convinced Wendy to come along with our Book Club to the Shakespearean Festival.

Please note the name tag that Wendy wears, everyone got to decipher their very own fairy name, using their own initials as a guide! I was Pixliam, in case you were wondering. Other names that my fairy friends discovered were Ariliumneum, Silvaria and Bellea.

These two cute fairies with their fairy children are my daughter Becca with Titan and my daughter-in-law Nell with Eleanor.  What sweet fairies my grandbabies made!!  I also thought it was fun when Nell said that she never thought she would ever get to wear the crown she won as Prom Queen again.


 

 In this picture of RaeLee, we see a fairy name on her back.  We played the game where you ask others yes and no questions and try to deduce from their answers the famous fairy whose name you are wearing.

In this picture we see the charming rose clad cup cakes that my dear friend LaVern made for decoration and dessert.  They were just as delicious as they were beautiful.  Thank you LaVern!!
LaVern also brought along bouquets made from the branches of flowering almonds for our center pieces and Wendy wrapped the jars in coordinating ribbons.



And this is me playing make believe, I had declared myself to be the 'Queen of the Fairies' for the day for my birthday celebration, and I was so tickled to see how my friends got into the spirit of the day!!

One thing that happened that could have been mortifying, if I did not have such amazing friends, was that I unintentionally wrote an ambiguous instruction on my invitations.  Because I didn't want people to feel obligated to bring gifts, I thought to ask them to bring the prefect gift for a fairy, a button. I did want the buttons to be gift wrapped, to make the party festive, but evidently chose the wrong words:

"Please bring a gift wrapped and lovely button."

Which was read by more than half of my guests as "Please bring a Gift, wrapped, and a lovely button."

Most of my dear guests thought I was commanding them to bring a gift AND a button.  When one friend who knows me oh, so well, called to ask for clarification I figured I might just be in trouble.

But thankfully, my sweet friends softened my embarrassment, as the realization hit me ... you can see that in the picture to the left, I am blushing and laughing with tears in my eyes.  My funny, funny, friend Jenn W. said that it was the most entertaining moment of the entire event ... I guess I was glad to know that it served
 a purpose.  After the prize drawing was done, and the fairies were captured (see a previous post on captured fairies),
 the party wound down, and several fairies had to fly off to other commitments while still others made short work of the fairy generated maheim.  I found myself marveling at the gracious kindness and artistic talents of so many of my friends.  Their fairy attire, sweet notes, lovely gift presentations and generosity of spirit all filled me with amazement as to the quality of women (fairies) that I have the opportunity to rub shoulders with from day to day.  I am grateful to them all for the many things they do to make me a better person.

The only thing that could have made the day more perfect would have been the presence of those dear friends and daughters who were unable to attend, as several of them were out of town, or had other commitments. I know they were there in spirit.

And just a note, all of the fun charms, buttons and fairy jewels I received that day will be gathered together on a necklace that will be a reminder to me of just how blessed I am to have such wonderful and talented friends to enrich my life.  Thanks Girls with or without wings.

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