Celebrate! Taste: Family Dinners Made Fun!

Celebrate! Taste focuses on not just how the food tastes at your event, but how it adds to the overall celebration.

I’ve had the opportunity to see my brothers and close friends become parents. It’s been a great learning experience to sit back and watch how they do what they do! Being a parent looks like no easy task…but I’ve been inspired by watching them create new traditions with their little ones and can see the memories being made.

I loved the idea that one Celebrate! fan, Tina Sanborn, did for her family. Both Tina and her husband work, and are raising two beautiful little girls. Tina decided to celebrate family one evening by creating a ‘Kung Fu Panda’ themed dinner party. The menu consisted of Chinese Noodles, Kung Pao Chicken, Chinese Chicken Salad and “Jack Black” Punch! She finished the dinner with a Panda cake (pictured below). Simply adorable!

I guarantee that this is something Tina’s little girls will always remember…the day their mommy decided to turn a regular dinner into a special family celebration!

Have you done something special to celebrate your family? Or, do you have some ideas, but need some further inspiration on how to put the final touches on a family fun dinner? Feel free to contact CelebrateByG@gmail.com or leave a comment below!

For recipe and instruction on how Tina made her Panda cake, go to Betty Crocker at http://ow.ly/1q0IN

Celebrate! You: Is there really ALWAYS a reason to Celebrate?

I have to admit…the last two weeks that question came to mind on several occasions. Having bad news come in the form of a terminal cancer diagnosis of a close family friend followed by another cancer diagnosis of an immediate family member had me asking that question. Seeing people on my Facebook page posting that they had lost their loved ones recently to cancer had me asking that question. Visiting my Great Uncle in the nursing home and not only seeing him, but also seeing the other residents who don’t have visitors, had me asking that question. And then, to have the Haiti earthquake followed by the Chile earthquake…it just seems like some days it is harder to believe that there is always a reason to Celebrate!

But its in those times, the times that our worlds seem most dark, that a ray of light comes in the form of a random act of kindness from a stranger, a call from a friend at just the right moment, the exuberance of a child who is just happy to see you, or a survivor being pulled from the rubble after they say all hope is gone. Those are the daily celebrations that if we aren’t paying attention to, we could miss out on.

Celebrate! is, of course, about those extra special life moments that we come together to acknowledge like a birthday, wedding or new baby. But it’s also about those daily celebrations we choose to have in the midst of those days that we don’t feel much like celebrating.

So how will you Celebrate! today?

photo from: http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content/pdf/eyevine-haiti-rescue.jpg