Lavender Festival

Fulfilled another dream yesterday and attended The Lavender Festival yesterday! As some of you may know, or may have guessed, I LOVE all things Lavender and have been wanting to make it to this festival since I found out about it a couple of years ago. I had planned on going last year, but between wedding planning and other obstacles, I was unable to go. Turns out, it worked out better for my "see-through"complexion since last year the temperature was in the 100's and this year, it was a breezy and absolutely wonderful 72 degrees! WAY more my style!

So, off we went! As soon as you walk up, you are immersed in the wonderful scent of lavender as you walk past the first of two Lavender fields. I was in heaven!

                            

 Just past the first field was a second field that had several different varieties of Lavender marked with little signs with some details on each plant.

 After walking through these fields, and exploring a bit, while taking deep breaths and inhaling all of the relaxing goodness, we carried on into the festival set up. First things first, the Lavender bar! Yes, this is exactly what is sounds like. A bar filled with all kinds of Lavender yumminess from Lavender champagne, Lavender beer, margaritas and mojitos. They also had non-alcoholic options like Lavender green tea, lemonade and Lavender Lattes! I have a special place for Lavender-mint combinations in my heart, so I started out with a Lavender Mojito!

Every drink had lovely sprigs of fresh Lavender in them! So YUM!!

With our refreshments in hand, we wandered on to the displays of Lavender products, all made with Lavender right from their farms! Oh my goodness! They had everything from arrangements of fresh cut Lavender,massage oil, lip balm ,teas and cooking oils. We window shopped to our hearts content! Can I just tell you how AMAZING this place smells!!

After walking all over, sampling, smelling and trying to stop myself from simply buying one of EVERYTHING, it was time to fill our empty tummies with, you guessed it, Lavender food!!!
First stop was the Sandwich shack! I grabbed myself the chicken sandwich which had a Lavender honey mustard sauce, and then back to the bar for a Lavender green tea! YUM!!

 I mean LOOK at this green tea! I could drink this forever!

We enjoyed sitting in the shade, sipping our beverages and enjoying the live music and Lavender wafting through the air! Talk about a relaxing afternoon! But alas, no day of Lavender indulgence is complete without dessert!! So, we headed off to the dessert cafe,

 How on earth do you choose?? I wanted to try EVERYTHING! However, in an effort to keep myself, mostly, on track I chose a scoop of the Lavender-Honey ice cream.....and a Lemon Lavender bar to go!

 This ice cream was to die for! We took our tasty treats over to the shaded area where they had tables and chairs around the live music stage and drank it all in...or ate it all in rather.

After we ate every last decadent, melted drop of our icy treats, we headed back to the shopping area to make our purchases. It was certainly a tough choice but I settled on Lavender bath salts (the LAST bottle they had btw-woohoo) and.....a Lavender cookbook!!! How cool is that?

I mean LOOK at these bath salts!! I could just explode with admiration! Look how gorgeous this is?!

I am completely excited over the cookbook as well! SO many recipes and I cannot wait to get started trying some out. The recipe for Lavender sugar should come in quite handy with my baking, and I am so excited to try out the Lavender syrup for making my very own Lavender mojitos! This should be a great investment for me.

After throroughly enjoying everything the festival had to offer, we treked back to our car, making one last stop in the jaw droppingly gorgeous Lavender fields for a few more pictures.

The Lavender Festival runs for one more weekend! Be sure to check it out! I promise a wonderful day of relaxing fun and flavor! Check it out this weekend June 17th-19th from 10am to 6pm. If you need a getaway thats not too far from home, check this out!

May the Fourth be with You 2016

This year, The Hubby and I hosted our first annual May the Fourth party! For those of you who don't know yet, I am a Star Wars nerd. The Hubby, he is a good sport. He has seen Star Wars and even let me drag him to opening day of The Force Awakens, but he is not anywhere close to the nerd that I, very proudly, am. I wanted to host our first Star Wars day party last year, but we were busy wedding planning and decided to host the first one this year instead, once things had calmed down a bit. So, I set out to make our first year party a success!

My very talented brother designed special invitations for me and I got them printed on Shutterfly. I used my new calligraphy skills and addressed all of the envelopes.

With the invites mailed off, I started planning the food and games. I tend to be a fan of more passive games versus something where we stop the flow of the party so everyone can watch while someone does something embarrassing. Blame my somewhat introverted nature, but none the less. I grabbed a couple of poster boards and set to work.

The first game was a Star Wars version of "Who said it?". I wrote quotes from characters throughout the series on yellow paper and mounted each onto the board.

With the second poster board a made a Star Wars version of "Guess who?" inspired by my sister. She plays a version of this at her annual Oscar party with outfits famous people wore. I printed out full length versions of various characters in their Star Wars costumes and redacted out the faces. Each character had a number and folks guessed who each costume belonged to.

Each guest grabbed a piece of paper, held down by my Han Solo in carbonite bottle opener, and a pen and set off to guessing.

For decorations, I tried to keep it simple. I found an awesome Etsy shop that sells Star Wars letter print outs, in an instant download, for $5! I printed out the letters I wanted, mounted them to purple card stock and hung them up between our patio cover supports.

I made a quick trip to my local party supply store and grabbed some silver lanterns, white and yellow curly ribbon hangers, white 3D crepe stars and silver cardboard stars and hung them all up.

For the food, I  printed out some freebie food labels and went for it! I decided to keep it pretty simple as well. I took pretzel sticks dipped in colored chocolate to make edible lightsabers.

The hubby cooked up some amazing "Han-burgers" and "Hutt Dogs"!

We had some "Force Fruit" and, my personal favorite, "7 Leia dip" (LOL!!!) along with "Trooper scoopers" for dipping. I was cracking up when I read the "7 Leia dip" one that I just HAD to serve that! Too funny!

The Hubby also helped me set up a bean bag toss game. I whipped up some bean bags with some Star Wars fabric scraps I had and he drilled my plastic bins onto a wood plank. Our guests had so much fun with this one!

We invited over all of the neighbors and their kiddos as well as a bunch of my fellow Star Wars loving friends. Everyone had a total blast! My Grandparents were the stars of the party in their home made Star Wars costumes, complete with lightsabers!

To finish off the day, I made Star Wars sugar cookies. I put them in vellum bags and sealed them with my official Rebel Alliance wax seal, and served them, of course, with Blue milk!

The party was such a blast that I didn't take many pictures during. I did of course wear my Han Solo dress from Halloween and didn't even take any pictures! Instead, I will share the picture of The Hubby and I from Halloween, since I was in the same outfit, and The Hubby will probably never be seen in this outfit again. So, for documentation purposes, here you have it! May the Fourth be with you!!