My Friend Lynn

My friend, Lynn has breast cancer. She just finished 16 rounds of chemo, had a mastectomy AND a hysterectomy to remove a benign mass in her pelvis. Recently, she received bad news that there was cancer in all nine of the lymph nodes that they removed. She could certainly use your prayers and well-wishes. Her website is www.caringbridge.org/visit/lynnmckain.

Back in October, Lynn turned 50. To celebrate, over 200 of her friends and family showed up to honor her birthday. The party was held in Lamborn Hall (almost the ugliest space to decorate ever!) at Mcdonogh (where Lynn works and where 3 of my kids go to school) I was lucky enough to be able to help with the decorations for the party.

Lynn's niece designed the invitation with a mermaid on it. Thus, the underwater mermaid theme was born. Lynn's very talented brother-in-law created 4 foot tall mermaids out of foam core. Various people in Lynn's life decorated these mermaids for the party.

I created this mermaid with the help of Allie, Ammy and Tyler. It had over 10,000 beads on the tail and bikini top. I used shredded paper for the hair and small pebbles for the shell. This mermaid was extremely heavy as a result! We hung her on lattice and we stuffed tissue paper into the holes to look like water.

This is the other mermaid that Allie and I created. We used 2 inch pieces of tissue paper and glued them onto the tail. The bikini top is made of small pebbles. I tried to use sand for the sand dollar, but for some reason, the sand would not stick consistantly. I ended up using very small, clear beads over top of the sand. I used reindeer moss for the hair.

One of the teachers made this mermaid. She was absolutely amazing. Her tail was made out of material. Her hair and top were painted and she had seaweed hanging off of her body. This was my absolute favorite of all the mermaids that were created.
This mermaid was created by one of Lynn's swimming buddies. The tail is made up of tiny flowers. The hair is a boa and the starfish has pictures of all of her other swimming buddies on it. There was a swim cap and a pair of goggles hanging off of her arm.

We hung all of the mermaids around the room and from the ceiling. We also made a bunch of Martha Stewart pom-poms.

We hung these from the ceiling along with a bunch of paper lanterns.

We had live centerpieces! We put a beta fish in each fishbowl along with white gravel and a stalk of bamboo. At the end of the party, 15 lucky guests got to take home a new pet! We took home 2 since 5 kids, a husband and a dog are not enough to look after!
We ordered these cookies from http://polkadotsaustin.blogspot.com/ They were a lot smaller than they appear in the picture and they were a bit pricey to ship. If you live in the Austin area though, I highly recommend this bakery.

We also did a scrapbook for the party, but I will save that for another post. The party was a huge success, Lynn looked beautiful and she had a fantastic time.