Tuesday, May 21

Welcoming a Missionary Home & Sending One Out

I've talked about my friend, Drexel before . . . 
so you already know she's "all that in a bag of chips". Drexel & her hubby have raised five wonderful children {four boys & one girl}. One son has just returned from a church mission and their daughter is leaving shortly.  {These two siblings only saw each other for a week before separating again!} 
Drexel recently hosted an open house to welcome one missionary home & to send the other out. I just loved her great decorations!





For refreshments, she served crepes {which she prepared ahead of time} with fruit & all sorts of delicious sweet toppings. Even the toppings & the water bottles "wore" cute missionary tags.
One of my favorite things to look at was the display of the family's {parent's & children's!} missionary tags all lined up. Wow - this family has been all over the world serving the Lord & each one has served.
I love the rest of Drexel's home too - including this cool chalkboard {bi-fold} pantry door. {Which she obviously uses as a teaching tool for her children.}
My hat is off to an awesome mom & friend!
- Drexel with her friend, Cindy in the kitchen -


PS - I've gotten a lot of questions about how Drexel made her labels & signs. Here's what she said: " I made the name tags for the bottles & toppings on the computer with fonts as close to the real missionary name tags as possible. I tweeked the sizes & fonts until they were a close match & printed several on one 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Then, I took my master to a copy store & asked for a reverse print. {That is how you make the letters white & the background black.} I cut the labels using my paper cutter & affixed them to the water bottles, etc. on top of the wrapping paper labels. FOR THE POSTER: I just enlarged the same name tags from the reverse print. Make sure to ask for an "engineer's print" {only available in black & white} because it is very inexpensive. The black will be grainy & the letters pixilated, but from a distance it still looks good. Then I trimmed & rounded the corners of the edges to make them look like name tags & glued them on foam poster boards which I'd also covered with wrapping paper." Thanks so much Drexel!

A note from Michelle - You can avoid some of the "pixilated poster" woes by creating your poster in PicMonkey {CLICK HERE for a tutorial}. I know there is a way you can reverse the colors {for white letters on a black background} in Microsoft Word, because I did it for a project years ago. CLICK HERE for a tutorial that might work. 


11 comments:

  1. Those decorations and cute water bottles are SO CUTE! What a celebration for something so so good! Thanks for blogging about this. Missionaries inspire me for their faith, strength and courage and I love reading about homecomings and farewells.

    xo,
    Ashley

    www.ashleyfrederickson.blogspot.com

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    1. Hi Ashley, so glad you liked this post. I love reading about this kind of thing too! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment.

      Warmly, Michelle

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  2. Adorable party! I'm always so in awe of women who can pull together these things - it must be a tremendous amount of work - but oh the results are just amazing!

    gena

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    1. Me too, Gena. Thanks so much for your comment!

      Warmly, Michelle

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  3. I just saw this post! What a wonderful way to honor someone that has served well!!! xoxo jules

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    1. Darling Jules, I just saw your comment! Ha ha. Thank you so much for leaving it. You're the best!

      Warmly, Michelle

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  4. Replies
    1. Thank you so much for stopping by & taking the time to leave a comment. It means a lot!

      Warmly, Michelle

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  5. So Cute!! How do you print the tags for all the bottles??

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  6. How did you make the missionary tags for all the things on the table? How did you make the posters so perfect? Please share. My daughter comes home the second week of December and we moved so I want her to feel really welcome. NEED HELP.
    Julia

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    1. Hi Julia, Thank you for stopping by! My creative friend Drexel was the master mind behind this wonderful gathering. I forwarded your question to her & this is her reply: "I made the name tags for the bottles and toppings on the computer with fonts as close to real missionary name tags as possible. I tweeked the sizes and fonts 'til they looked as close as possible and printed several on the same 8.5x11 paper. Then I took my masters to a copy store like Kinkos and asked for a 'reverse print'. That's how you make the letters white and the background black. I cut all the labels on my paper cutter and taped them to the water bottles, etc. that I'd covered in wrapping paper.

      For the big poster I just enlarged the same name tags from the reverse print. Ask Kinkos for an 'engineer's print'. Because it's black and white it will be really inexpensive for them to print it that large. The black will be kind of grainy and the letters pretty pixelated, but from a distance it looks pretty good. Then I trimmed and rounded the corners of the edges to make them look like name tags and glued them on to foam poster boards I'd also covered with wrapping paper." Thanks Drexel and Julia!

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