~Our Ladies' Tea/My fall decor...part 1~

~THANK YOU for your prayers for our Ladies Tea.   I could tell y'all were praying because Jesus REALLY helped us to get TONS done this week.  Our LONG TO-DO LIST included: Scrapbooking 62 pages (218 pics of recent Colombian events that we knew our ladies would ENJOY seeing =), doing ALL the running and shopping with no car, cleaning and decorating our house for Fall, and for our menu:
Baking 92 cream cheese 5-grain rolls, making 3 large cheese balls, a double batch of Aunt Nesi's pumpkin bread to make into muffins, a batch of Laura's choc. cut-out cookies, a Lg. crockpot and another pan FULL of BBQ'd sausages, 4 HUGE pots of 4 different flavors of teas (Apple/cinn., Mint, Mandarin, and red berries), some cold Lulo (persimmon) juice that tastes similar to Apple cider, and 3 batches of Mrs. Naomi's gingersnaps. ~

~I had LOTS of help from our sweet Mary.  =) ~

~The morning of the Tea my sweetheart took me to buy some pretty fall-ish flowers. ~

~ I also WANTED some tiny CUTE pumpkins to decorate with.   We walked all over the flower market...and I was PRAYING the whole time...that Jesus would help me find them.  Jesus answered prayer and we finally found some.  YEA!  =)   They can only be found here in Colombia around this time of year.  I LOVE the little white pumpkin on the left. ~

~ I knew that there would never be room for ladies to sit in my SMALL first floor if I left my table in the center of the floor.  So, we divided our 2 plastic tables (that are tapped together underneath to make one larger table =) and I put one where Mary's high chair normally sits, and the other in the cubby hole underneath our stairs.~

~Phillip and I made this welcoming sign to put outside our door.~

~With scrabble letters I spelled out "Autumn" on one side of my china cabinet in English and ...~

~On the other side "Otoño" in Spanish.  (Kimberly added the little  ~  above the N for me.  =) ~

~In the cubby hole under the stairs we have a coat rack where we hang all of our coats (for as you know it's usually chilly here).  So, when I thought about putting one of the serving tables there I knew that I needed to think of something to hang on the coat rack.
So, Kimberly helped me and we made a little fun FALL banner/pennant garland to hang there.~

~We carved out real apples and inserted tea lite candles in them for a touch of light on the table under the stairs.~

~My pretty little hand blown glass pumpkins that I was DELIGHTED to find our 2nd year here in Bogota'. ~

~Some fall berries and leaves and my bow adding a touch of Fall to our mirror in our living room.~

~There are no stores like Bath and Body works here that we've found, so I normally just use the CHEAPEST hand soap I can find at my grocery store.  However, while shopping for my tea party I saw this fun hand soap (for around $3.00), and my sweetheart bought it for me.  He's the BEST!  =D~

~There aren't a lot of yummy scented candles here either.  Most candles here have no smell and are for emergency in case your lights go out, or for religious purposes.
So, we were DELIGHTED to find the ONLY 2 FALL smelling candles that the store had.  Fun smells just GO With Fall! =)
This candle is Cinnamon and Frankincense, and the other one is ~

~Apple.  (I originally only bought one candle...but when our Kimberly and Sarah opened this apple candle in the store to smell it, they both said, "OH, this reminds us of traveling around in the motor home."  =)
(In 2009 some of our friends loaned us their motor home for our deputation.  I got to decorate it for fall, and we all have WONDERFUL memories of those months traveling around in "our home on wheels." =)
It brought back such fun memories and Kimberly and Sarah both fell in LOVE with this apple candle.  =)
So, one day when Phillip and I had to run out for some more supplies, we surprised our girls by buying this candle for them to enjoy...for ALLLLLLLLLLL of their help to Mommy (all the time...but especially with this TEA! =) ~

~ Some Fall decor in the kid's bathroom.  (This candle from my sis-in-law Beth burned out long ago.  So a year ago Phillip took all the left-over small fall-ish type candles he could find in our house and melted them in this same jar...trying to make another fall candle, for they are so HARD to find here.  =)~

~We have never seen the colored dried corn here, but Phillip helped me make this fun arrangement out of the fresh Colombian corn.  We hung it on the stair banister.  Part 2 coming up! ~