Nostalgia & Getting Down to Business

Yesterday since I couldn't find any pictures here at home of my mom, I thought I'd see if by chance there were any floating out there on the web.  I did a Google image search with her name and a black and white photo popped up of  her, my sister and I.  The link for the photo was on eBay.  I was shocked, why was a photo of us up for sale?  It turns out it is 1991 archive photo from The Seattle Times.  A story had been done on raising a family on $13, 359, which was our family.  My mom had just graduated from college and landed a job after a long struggle and help from public assistance, but still had many more years of tight budgets to come.  The photo must have been one they had taken but not used.  I had never seen the photo before and just thinking how hard my mom worked to get out of poverty and how far she's come made me an emotional mess.  So needless to say I bought that puppy up and I'm going to frame it and give it to her for her Birthday.  Below is the picture of us in our home I grew up in and the article about the struggles of being a single mom of three (it's a tear jerker) can be found here.

Cheryl gets a little help in the kitchen from her two daughters, Tiffany, 8 and Teniel, 10. far right

Okay, so now for getting down to business.  I saw a great use of neon with neutral on +Martha Stewart's website I thought I would use for the color scheme.

I grabbed some supplies at the local discount/party store last night so I can get started on creating the decorations.  I purchased brown craft or shipping paper which I plan on splattering with the neon paint to use as the backdrop for the photo area.  After tracing a cassette tape on the neon paper I glued it onto a brown paper bag for the party favors.  I'm going to shop around for the goods, but I think I'll throw in some mini Slinkys, Rubik's cubes, maybe some cool shades and various notorious 80's candy.

I also saw this great idea for fortune tellers, which are still big with my youngest Ronan.  They make a fortune teller garland, but I think I may just put them on the tables.  You can get the fortune teller tutorial at shakentogetherlife.com