my buddies

These are my friends, Genesis and Lovely. They've been living on the streets for about 6 months, and I met them through my church back in January. Here we are last month after a clothes-shopping trip to Target:)

Here they are yesterday with our pastor, Jim:) I hosted a surprise party for them yesterday, because it was their last day of homeless-ness! 

Sadly BOTH of our nice cameras are currently broken, so these are iPhone pictures and don't really do my little banner justice. I made it out of sparkly pink, green and silver sheets of card stock, with tissue paper poufs behind each letter.

I put Martha Stewart pompoms on the corners ...

And over the buffet. Unfortunately I didn't snap a picture of my buffet set-up until after the guests had already eaten, but you can get the general idea!

I also bought two albums and put their names on the front, and then set out card stock that was cut to size  so that guests could write a personal note to each girl for their albums:) My friend Becca helped put together gift bags for the girls full of things for the girls to take to their programs with them like toiletries, stationary and gift cards.

Here we are this morning, dropping Genesis (in the middle) off at her residential program! I felt like I was dropping my child off at college, LOL. Lovely starts her program on Wednesday. It's a little bittersweet ... these girls have become true friends to me and I've gotten used to seeing them several times a week! Their programs last about 2 years, and I can't wait to see where life takes them after that!