Dec 3, 2015

My Classic Santa Christmas Tree


During the first Christmas in this house almost 4 years ago, it became a little apparent to me that we needed to redo our Christmas tree. The decorations I had done the previous year went with the decorations of our first house. Another factor was that we now had a fireplace in our main living space. In our first house, our family room didn't have a mantel to hang up our stockings.

And why does that matter?

Well I love our stockings. LOVE. Up until moving into this house I had never coordinated them with my Christmas decorations. Now I could. They are very classic, and a bit vintage like. They are in bright classic Christmas colors. They were lovingly knitted by my Grandma. Basically, they are perfect.

So my Christmas tree needed to match. I call it my Classic Santa Christmas Tree.


Every year I add just a few more decorations and switch out old ones. I chose to stay with classic colors. There is a lot of red and white with additions of green and blue.

This year, one of the new sets of ornaments are these plaster trees. I got them after Thanksgiving at Michaels. They were SUPER cheap. All I had to do to make them match the tree is to paint them. So easy.


There are a few things on my tree that I will be really sad the day they are too old to use. This gingham tree topper is one. I adore this. First, it is gingham. So glory be. Second, it coordinates with my tree perfectly and I searched for years to find it. So don't ever die gingham star!


This year I also added these vintage looking candy canes that I found at Target.


Another of my favorite ornament/filler to use is paper party products. Last year I started using these paper medallions.


This year I added these honeycomb balls. These especially are perfect fillers for blank spaces in my tree. I don't even hang them, I just shove them on in. I love the texture and dimension they add to my tree.


By this point, you might be questioning the fact that I call this a Santa tree. I promise there are Santas. These are from Target a few years ago.


I also have some vintage inspired ones.


This year I added these cuties. I found them in the Target dollar spot. They are actually gift card holders, but don't they make amazing ornaments. When I see stuff like this, I just have to grab it.



I love my tree. I don't plan on changing it at all for years and years. I know sometimes it is the "IN" thing to have a new tree every year, but I just can't seem to justify that. I also frankly don't want to. I love my tree. My kids have started telling me though that it might be getting too full of decorations. HA! TOO full?! What's that even mean???



Nov 27, 2015

Photo Magnet Gift & Magnet Board Roundup



The holidays are officially just around the corner. That means that it is time for gift giving. Meaningful and personal gifts are my favorite gifts to give to family members, especially grandmas and grandpas.

I especially love photo gifts. This season my go-to holiday photo gift stop is Walmart Photo. They have a crazy variety of photo products. They have holiday cards, same day canvas, same day calendars, photo books, ornaments, mugs, blankets, totes, and the list just keeps going.

One of my favorite holiday photo gifts are these photo magnets.


I was able to go through and pick some of my favorite moments of the year and some special photos of my kiddos that I know Grandma will appreciate. I ordered half in the 4x6 and the other half in 3x4. I ordered them online and had them shipped to my house. Just like that. The great thing about Walmart's holiday photo gifts is that they are also easy to order and pick up at the store.


They have great quality products. Sometimes photo magnets are super flimsy. Not these. They are sturdy and the photo quality is gorgeous.

They look so great laid out in a mosaic pattern on this cute magnet board.

I thought it would be fun to add a magnet board to this photo gift. That way Nana has a way to display her photos.

I packaged these photo magnets in a simple brown goody paper bag.

The really cool thing is that even in the bag the photos stuck to the magnet board. So all I had to do was tie some ribbon around the board and BAM I had a present all cute and ready to give.

Such cute and high quality photo magnets really should have a cute place to display them. I found my magnet board at Hobby Lobby and it was 50% off, so basically it was a steal. This would be a SUPER easy magnet board to DIY too.

If you are thinking about giving some super cute photo magnets for a holiday gift, then you are probably looking for some cute ideas for magnet boards.

Look no further, here is a roundup of some of my favorite DIY Magnet Boards.














Give memories this holiday season. They really are the best gift to give. Walmart is a great source for giving photo gifts. Check them out. Get creative. 
Be sure to visit Walmart Photo's brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers' posts.

Nov 25, 2015

Thanksgiving Family Table


Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite. I love the turkey. I love the cooking of the turkey. I love gathering together around the table, and I LOVE, love setting that table.

Setting the table is different when there are munchkins around. We very seldom have the need for just a kid's table. So it is a adult/kid combo Thanksgiving table for us. In other words, a family-friendly kids table.

I geek out about stuff like this. In a big way.

I gather what I have. I find a few really fun special pieces, and then I coordinate everything around that.

This year the big special winner, winner chicken...er uh turkey dinner, were these turkey napkins. I mean really?!?! Everything coordinates with this little gobbler napkin.



Since I have a color coordinating and pattern obsession I always get two different plates. This year I went with a solid and a polka dot.  I also pretty much died when I found these wood orange patterned utensils.


It all went so well with my little nappy napkins.


Good news is that these napkins also had matching paper place mats.



I gathered the little crayon pails from last years Thanksgiving Table filled them new crayons and put them by each kid setting.


One of the things I love about doing this kind of Thanksgiving table is that there is a good mix of disposable and non disposable dishes. For me that is white dishes for the adults and paper products for the kids.

Oh and don't forget the mason jars. I always have to use mason jars. Seriously, they are the best drinking glasses.


I figured the adults probably wouldn't want wooden utensils, so the adults get actual silverware. I had this idea to put them in these bright goody bags. They ended up being the perfect size for a little utensil pocket. I didn't give the adults the turkey napkins. I matured it up a bit by using white cloth napkins. I set the utensils on top of the napkin.


I wrote the kids' names on the craft paper that was running in the middle of the table for their place setting. The paper didn't run by the adult table settings so I came up with this simple name place "card". I bought some simple little vases, filled them with coordinating candy and then tied a tag around it.


I went REALLY simple with a center piece. I spray-painted some pine cones and threw in a pumpkin.



P.S. spray painting pine cones is really, really hard. Worth it, but man it took several coats.


The foundation for my whole table was a simple piece of white fabric. Notice that I didn't say tablecloth. It is literally a piece of fabric I put on top of the table. See that really cute orange fabric? Again, I just laid it right over the top of the table. Then I added in a piece of craft paper.


Nothing could be easier. Trust me.


Now we are all set for Thanksgiving. No joke. This has been set up for days and is just waiting for all that food on Thanksgiving. Good thing we have a kitchen island to eat at.

Supply List:

turkey napkins: Target
turkey place mats: Target
paper plates: Zurchers
wooden utensils: Zurchers
candy cups: Zurchers
paper straws: Zurchers
pails: Zurchers
goody bag: Zurchers
craft paper: Hobby Lobby
fabric: JoAnn Fabric

Happy Thanksgiving friends! Hope your holiday is fabulous.

Nov 18, 2015

UPlifting Evening Invitation: YWIE


I said this post was coming, but I fibbed a little about how soon I was going to have it up. I may have said tomorrow when I meant in a week...hehehe.

I shared my UPlifting YWIE last week. This is the invitation I made to go out for it. Today I am going to show how you can customize this invitation for your own event.

I also am showing how I like to package up my invites. One of my favorite ways to hand out invites is using these sweet patterned goodie bags. I bought mine at Zurchers.


I always have some cute washi tape on hand and I use it to close up the baggy envelopes.


I print out invites on card stock because it holds up better.


Now they are all ready to hand out.


Here is the blank invite image that I made using PicMonkey.


If you liked the idea of an UPlifting YWIE and want to have an UPlifting evening of your own, you can use this image for invites for your event.

You need to right click and save the image onto your computer.

I use PicMonkey for the majority of my photo editing and image creating. I highly recommend using it for all of your projects. The basic edits are free, but the Royale membership is pretty cheap and totally worth it and you have access to even more.

Once you download the jpeg for this invite, you can head over to PicMonkey to customize it. On the main page you choose the edit function and then open your photo.


The photo opened in the program will look like this.


Click on the Tt to open the fonts. I used Lato for the ward name, the "please join us on" and the place, time, and the "for an". I had the font at size 100. I showed below about where I moved all the words to.


Next I used the font Coffeebreak. This font is a Royale font only available if you have the membership. However, there are lots of fun script fonts that are free. I used this font for the year, the title "Young Women in Excellence", the date, and later the "lifting" part of UPlifting. The font size was 213.


Next I used Arial Black for UP. I changed the font color to white and I made the size a lot bigger.


Now I went back to coffeebreak and I added the "lifting" in white. Last I went back to Lato, kept it in all caps and typed out EVENING.


So that is the easy peasy way to customize your own invites using this background and PicMonkey. Using PicMonkey is addicting and can make invites, hand outs, and posters so cute.

Hope this simple how-to was helpful.

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