lakeside...

In about a month, we'll join my family here for a relaxing week at Deep Creek Lake, a beautiful mountain lake in Maryland. Here's the house we rented. Isn't it lovely?

I can't wait...

 The average temperature in mid-July there is about 80 degrees...perfect. And the nights are just chilly enough to warrant firing up that lovely fireplace. (We're keeping our fingers crossed, anyway. The record highs in July are mid-90s so it might be a different story)

We've come to this lake many times with Rich's family, mostly camping. But this will be the first time my sisters and brother and their families, and my parents, have traveled here. I'm hoping they love it.

Since this is my first time planning our family vacation, I wanted to do something special. I made swag bags for each family...

I found these great striped bags at PaperMart.com...a steal at just over $6 each. I used Pam's doodle bundle to whip up fabulous tags identifying each bag. (These doodles are my go-to art when I need to make tags, labels, etc.! I use them all the time!)

It's always tricky filling multiple bags like this. Everything adds up quickly when it's multiplied by 8, but you don't want to make it all junk either, right? So I found this great great puzzle book and picked up one per family. I also had t-shirts and ball caps printed (cafepress) with a fun graphic. Oriental Trading is a great place to score cheap multiples, like water guns, fun pens, tiny flashlights, and flip-flop notepads. The dollar store had trial sizes of Colgate Optic White, so I threw those in too.

I picked up an assortment of peg games (a dozen for $14.50) there too...and put each one in a little muslin bag.

And since everyone in our family is a fabulous cook, I knew recipe cards would come in handy.

That way, when you want the recipe of some wonderful thing we had for dinner, you can just jot it down. (These super cute ones are from the dollar spot at Target, designed by Mary)

Alfredo helped me pack these up and we can't wait until it's time to go.