Nana's 90th Birthday Extravaganza!

(Before you read this, know that a lot of the first part is about how rad my Nana is.. and then I get to the craft part. So, feel free to keep scrolling if my Nana's awesomeness doesn't interest you.)

Nana's 90th Birthday was... overwhelming! So many Getchells!!! My Nana is such an amazing woman, and this week made me appreciate who she is and what she does even more. As my mom said, it was not a "typical" 90th birthday party-- there was no little old lady sitting in a wheelchair waiting for everyone to come up to her or anything along those lines-- she walked around the entire time and refused to let us get her a chair/stool. What else makes her so amazing? Well, let me tell you. Here are just three of the many things that make her special:

1. She raised NINE boys.. NINE people! All of the boys, except for Peter who passed away, made it to the party. 

(Photo by Carolyn Green)

2. She was in the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War 2. 

AND, as this article (below) states she was "one of the nation's first female flight-simulation instructors during World War II."

3. She still volunteers every week at the local library, her church, and at an organization called Angel Flight.

Anyway, she simply amazes me! I hope to be even half the woman she is!! Here is the group shot of all of her kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren:

(Photo by Carolyn Green)

And now, the crafts I made at her party... first up, book page jars. I know this idea is not new to blog land.. but, it's so easy and I added a few things at the end.

1. I took a random book from my "collection," crumbled them up, and burned the edges for a worn look. (Side note: doing the burning part outside is a good idea, but be careful not to set your grass on fire. Not that I did that or anything.......) Then, I mixed Elmer's glue and a little bit of water.

2. I put my glue mixture directly on the jar, put a page down, and then put more glue on top. And then I repeated that until the jar was covered. They looked like this while wet:

3. And now for the part I added-- I took red wire that I found a few months ago at Joann's for $0.96 (is it bad that I bought it simply because it was that cheap and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it? please tell me someone else does this?!)

I took the red wire and wrapped it around each jar. I didn't try to make it perfect or anything because I wanted it to be a random look. I didn't even glue it down because I thought I might want to change it out in the future.

Here's the final product:

At the party we used them to hold the silverware:

They held the forks for this AMAZING cake made by Jen Crawford (and yes, the Navy hats are cakes too!) :

I also made serving plates using candle sticks and plates I found at Goodwill. Again, this is not a new idea, but it was so easy and cheap to make! You can find a tutorial here.

One last thing that you all may want to repeat at your grandma/grandpa's birthday party-- my cousin Michelle made this incredible family tree. She put my grandma and grandpa in the middle, and then put each son around the tree along with pictures of their children, and their children's children. As the years go on, we will add more pictures to the tree. It was such a neat idea!

So... I'm kind of thinking this blog post was incredibly too long.. but it was such an action-packed week!   I'll be posting another post soon on crafts I helped my mom with in her elementary school classroom!

Hope you all are having an awesome day!