What is not to love?

I told you the other day about how I try to only touch paper one time. You should know that this is a goal only - rarely achieved by me in real life (like touching each photo of my mother's about 100 times in order to get the scanned and stored properly). Another character flaw is that I am cheap. Why pay for something, that I can make myself? Why pay for perfection, when I can produce an inferior product all by myself?

But today's blog isn't about me - no - it is about my mother and Miguel. I am planning for my mother's 90th birthday party and decided that every party needs a party favour. There has never been a time in my life that my mother didn't keep a full bowl of mints in her home. There was a covered decorative bowl in our living room - and the bowl contained either white Scotch mints, or some other kind of hard mint candy. When I was growing up, friends would stop in just to get a mint. My mother has always carried a little bag of mints in her purse - she offers them to people when she is playing bridge, lawn bowling, golfing - and she is known to offer them to strangers. She is never without mints in her pocket or purse. So - when I was thinking of a party favour, I knew it had to be mints.
Thanks to my best friend Martha (....Martha Stewart - she doesn't know she is my best friend, but I am pretty sure she WOULD be, if she knew me) I found a great party favour idea that requires hours and hours of cutting and assembling and I knew I was hooked. On the favour, I wanted a little gift tag - and in my cheapness I turned to old name tags that have been sitting around my office. What could be easier than printing on old name cards and then cutting each one out individually into perfect circles? And then it hit me.....ask Miguel to help me.
When I was working, Miguel was the "go to guy" for help with design and display patterns and construction. He could always be trusted to take great care in preparing design materials - he is a perfectionist. So - after printing the name tags, I asked him to help me .....and he produced a perfect template once again.

The man knows me - he made a cardboard template that not only will fit over each tag, but if you look carefully, you will see that he even marked "rhc" which means "right hand corner" so that I could place it at the exact right spot. All I need to do, is put the template over each name tag, draw a circle and then cut out carefully. See - I told you I was cheap! Considering I plan to make about 200 of these favours, I have lots of work to do. I will try and cut slowly and carefully (not like the one shown in the photo above). But you must admit, Miguel is a saint....
So - in about 200 hours (approx), I may have the favours completed. I will post a photo if I survive.
But I ask you, who knew that mints and templates could converge in a perfect Martha universe? It takes a village to make a Martha mint party favour.....