Monday, November 29, 2010

Spread the Christmas Cheer....

via Shutterfly!  We all get so busy with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it often times becomes a chore challenge to get those Christmas cards out, not to mention print the updated family picture to insert into said cards!  For those of you who know me, you know that I spend day after day designing personal stationery and wedding invitations for others.  Not only do I not have the TIME to design my own Christmas cards, it's too difficult a task!  We are usually our own worst critic and I become so indecisive with the design options that I can hardly make a choice for myself.

So, THIS year I'm delegating.  YAY!  Leaving the work to someone else.  Seriously, I could deliberate and procrastinate 'till the week before Christmas - like last year OR I can cross yet another item off the ever-growing holiday to-do-list!  LOVE LOVE LOVE this one here!


This one would be perfect to insert pics of all 3 of the kids.  With mine it'd be near impossible to get one altogether....without someone crying anyway :)

Some of the other Christmas designs I'm considering are here and here.

The Shutterfly designs are simple, colorful and absolutely fun.  And from previous experience printing my photos with Shutterfly, they will be nothing short of perfect!  Their photo prints are great quality and ship super fast!

Still looking for gift ideas? Make a photo calendar here!  Need invitations for your cookie exchange?  Find the perfect one here.  Need a birthday card like NO other? Find it here!

Make it easy this year and don't let the details bog you down.  Enjoy every moment and check out the great options at Shutterfly!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Fall Leaves

As Thanksgiving draws near, I'm so thankful to be able to be home this week with my kids! I genuinely tried to make the most of our time together baking and doing fun things.

Today Nolan and I made melted crayon leaves! When I saw the idea over at Running with Scissors, I knew this was a toddler friendly craft! What boy doesn't like to destroy things, i.e, shredding up crayons and smashing and melting them?!?
First we got old crayons together in the right colors and went to town grating and shredding. There really wasn't an easy way to accomplish this. We tried the cheese grater, scissors, vegetable peeler and a razor blade.

 Here's all you will need (iron not shown here).
 Take your cut up crayons in a variety of fall colors...
 make a sandwich with them between two sheets of wax paper...
 lay down a towel on your ironing board and a paper towel on top to save your iron and melt away.  The crayon shavings will liquefy so take care not to spread it outside of the wax paper sheets.  Once they are cooled cut into leaf shapes and display in any way you like.
 I chose to make a little slit and string them onto a ribbon. Nolan had tons of fun choosing the colors and sprinkling the shavings onto the wax paper.

While this was originally supposed to hang in my window (as seen here) for all to see as I host Thanksgiving at my house this year,  it will now be travelling with us, along with ALL of the other food, decor, etc. to my parents house.  My dad went 4 wheeling last Friday and ended up breaking his leg.  The festivities are coming to him now!  If you didn't want to drive all the way to my house, Dad, all you had to do was say so! ha ha

Happy Thanksgiving!


Monday, November 22, 2010

Happy Day

Another Silhouette give away at Infarrantly Creative!!!

Turkey finger puppets




Since I found this post for turkey finger puppets over at Skip to My Lou, I figured it'd be fun to join in the Made by You Mondays over there too!

It's SO wonderful to be home with my little guy this week!  Since I work full time he almost wasn't sure what I was doing NOT going to work today :)  But I've got some fun stuff planned for us, so hopefully I can make the most of our precious time together.  Starting with these:

So easy and he's having lots of fun flying them around everywhere.  We even made extras for the kids coming to Thanksgiving dinner :)  Just adds to the excitement of the season.  Thanks to Skip to My Lou for the inspiration!

Speaking of....

Jen at Tatertots & Jello is giving away a Silhouette cutting machine!!!!  {Swoon}  Check it out!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Let it SNOW!

Today it finally snowed.  Well, in enough quantity to stick around for a while anyway :)  YAY!  So this morning, my pancakes....








look much like the yard!

Which also makes for some good indoor creativity.  Since I already had most everything to make this, I decided to copy Jen from Tatertots & Jello and make my version of a holiday burlap wreath.




This was a pretty easy project and was super fun.  The worst part was burning my fingers with the hot glue gun!  I'm the biggest clutz and ALWAYS tend to not be very careful.  The burlap was very inexpensive ($2.99 /yd at JoAnn) and everything else was purely scraps!  I did get the music note ribbon half off at JoAnn also.  When I was trying to figure out what phrase I could use with my left over Scrabble tiles, it seemed as though I was missing ONE letter for all the good ideas...Be Merry - no "m'. Jingle Bells - no "j'!  Then it hit me.  Well, actually I had the Christmas music on (gotta love FM100!!) and the song Silent Night was on - DONE!  So when I saw the music notes, well, that tied it all together.

Thanks Jen for the super idea!  Had I got my rear in gear sooner I would've had a Thanksgiving version too.  But, looking at the bright side, now I've got a jump on my Christmas crafts!

Also linking up at:

Join  us Saturdays at tatertotsandjello.com for the weekend wrap up     party!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Gettin' in the Spirit...

or not.  This has been a tough start to the holidays for me so far.  Not sure I can pinpoint one particular reason...things are just so busy and rushed and now that Halloween is over Thanksgiving is HERE!  It goes so fast anymore.

So, to attempt to get into the holiday swing, Nolan & I decided to try to make some turkey cookies.  The first sheetful were turkeys....the rest were plain ol' drop cookies.  I didn't say they were pretty...just great tasting.  Which is the important part anyway, right?