I truly have the most wonderful hostesses EVER! For the past several years (I'm thinking it is 5 or 6 now) I hold a hostess appreciation event the first Saturday in December. I know that I look forward to holding this event and planning projects that are just for them. My event was yesterday and between the two times (I hold it in the morning and the afternoon) I had 31 of my hostesses able to attend. Thank you all so much for coming! My dear friends Jackie and Jo each spent part of their day helping me out.

HA

I'm not going to give directions for making these because it would depend on you being able to get the same items that I used and that just might not happen. I will give some general ideas though. I decided I wanted a coordinated set of projects so I started with some designer paper I liked, the "In the Spotlight" hostess sets (which quite a number of my hostesses picked as their set at their parties) and the colors Purely Pomegranate/Rose Red, So Saffron/More Mustard, Brocade Blue/Blue Bayou and Wild Wasabi/Garden Green. Everyone started by stamping and punch the flowers and circles and the letters.

The cork board I picked up at the $1 store several years ago. I bought a bunch planning on using them for either a camp for a hostess appreciation. I took a piece of designer paper and layered it on one side and added 1/2 of a post-it note pad. Now on the one, I had printed off some calendars that I created and then used brads to add them to it. Since I was able to get to Stamp Fanci in Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving, I bought some of the calendars Margi had for sale and just used them. Saved some time for me. The ribbon is put down with Sticky Strip. The rest is just punched and taped down. Oh they also stuck a piece of the designer paper in a RSVP pen to decorate that. When I took this picture, I hadn't thought of doing this!

The little notebook I got at Walmart. They were $.39 a piece - what a bargain! (and they had enough of the one color I wanted - always a plus!). It really uses all the same components as the corkboard. They stamped 'with joy' from Fundamental Phrases and punched out with the small oval punch and used some Linen Thread to attach it to the Wild Wasabi double-stitched ribbon.

The little buckets I got on the clearance rack at Target but you can also get these in the Wedding section at Michael's. This was probably the most difficult projects for several of the folks because of trying to get that ribbon to wrap around there. HINT: you have to use tape to stick it on there! They punch out a piece of Wild Wasabi using the Designer Label punch. The Celery ribbon was put through that.

Finally is the giant paperclip which you see EVERYWHERE! I got mine at Office Depot. I think they were like 5 for $1.49. Not bad. I took and put a circle base on the front and back top so that it would be dry ahead of time and everyone could just do the scallops and flowers. I also punched out the little blue flowers ahead of time. My MIL had a GREAT idea about these that I shared with folks. She said add a magnet to the back and put it on your refrigerator to hold a grocery list or coupons! What a wonderful idea.

So that's my hostess appreciation projects this year! A can't thank my wonderful hostesses (and my friends) enough for making this event so delightful! Hmmm...what will I do next year???? So...the only way you'll find out is to hostess a party in the next year!

Happy Stampin'! (Oh...I did get some batteries for my camera so now I will work on some more projects to post!