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.