Holiday Cards are Ordered!

I've been a huge fan of Shutterfly for years. We store all our family photos on a share site and they always produce great product. We decided to go with a New Years card this year...partially because we're a little behind on the whole Christmas Card thing. Shutterfly has some great cards...check them out if you are still in need of ordering some of your own!

Celebrate The Bang New Year's Card

Shutterfly always has unique designs for our holiday cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

S'mores Party Favors

This year I feel like I've been SUCH a slacker for Brad's birthday party. We gave him the option of a birthday party or going up to Dallas to watch an FC Dallas Soccer game. After a few weeks of thinking about it, he figured he wanted the party. UGHHH. I know that sounds so bad. I was secretly hoping to not plan a party and just celebrate his birthday with a little weekend trip up to Dallas. I finally got my butt in gear and invited his friends and family. His birthday weekend just happens to fall on the same weekend where football teams have their first scrimmage games. And for those of you who don't understand what that means...Football is a religion out in TX. So fingers crossed that it goes well!

For his party favors I'm making S'mores in a bag that you can make in a microwave. These favors are super easy to make. I just hope that the kids don't leave them in a car in this hot TX heat!

I made the below instructions for as the toppers for the bags...

 

Then I filled the bag with graham cracker, 4 marshmallows, and mini Hersey bars. Super easy!

Shower in a Box

One of my amigas from work is pregnant. Her due date of mid-December is quickly approaching and is currently attending all her baby showers....in San Diego. I so wish I could have made it to one of her baby showers. I wanted to do something a little different for her. Make a few things...but at the same time give her a few things that she needs. I've been working on these for a few weeks now...and haven't been able to write about it since she occasionally stops my my little blog. She got the box Thursday and so now I'm free to write!

She's decorating the baby's nursery in an underwater type theme. Her hubby's a big fish lover. They've always had some pretty cool aquariums at their place...and I believe they plan on putting a little one in the baby's room. I tried keeping the colors to the theme of the room as much as possible.

I started off with making a few soft flannel burp cloths. One side in a cute argyle with soft blues and greens and the opposite side a chocolate brown.

I also made a door hanger for when the baby is sleeping. The front has a cute, wooden octopus with "shh" on the front. The back is lined with the same soft flannel as the burp cloths. This is so if the door hanger hits the door - it doesn't make a loud noise since the flannel will be there.

The last thing I made was decorative baby blocks with the little guys name spelled out on the blocks. {Decorative being the key word...not to be used as toys or for the baby to chew on. While most sealers are water based and non-toxic, they still should not be ingested.}

The fun part of showers in a box is you can do just about theme for a baby or wedding shower for a friend or loved one who is far away. You can add banners, include items for the mommy as well as the baby, or anything you can imagine!

Party Planning: Simple Favor or Gift Box

This year I've been drawn to simple gift packaging with a unique or personalized touch. This is just a (very) simple and quick idea to creating favors for your holiday party or for a loved one.

 

The boxes are from My Own Labels. They have adorable ideas, great packaging and some cute labels for practically any occasion (or craft). I simply adhered some shells I purchased in bulk. You can put just about anything inside these petite boxes. For my friend's wedding shower many years ago I used these boxes, with a simple rafia bow and purchased some of My Own Labels cute tags. I created home-made soap in one of my friend's natural colors of her wedding for the favors. 

Dress these (or any boxes or bags) you have with Halloween rings tied to a black bow around the box, or add a bright full paper flower to the top with a coordinating bow. Be creative and have fun with it!

Recipe: Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip

This recipe was given to me by my dear friend Stephanie  - I like to call her "Sprouts." It's such a yummy appetizer and everyone always seems to love it. Give it a try!!

Ingredients

• 8 oz block of cream cheese
• 1 cup of cheddar cheese
• 1 small can of green chopped chilies
• 1/2 can of quartered or chopped artichoke hearts in water
• 1 chopped Roma tomato
• 4 oz of frozen spinach
• 1/4 cup of chopped green onion
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar or Italian vinaigrette dressing
• 1 tablespoon of olive or canola oil

Directions

1. Sautee chopped green onion together in oil, after about 2 minutes add tomato. Cook together about another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
2. Next defrost spinach in microwave. Squeeze out all the liquid from the spinach.
3. Remove cream cheese from packing, place in microwave for approximately 1 minute. Take softened cream cheese, block and place in a mixing bowl. Use hand mixer on low setting to blend cream cheese to soften even more.
4. Gradually add cheddar cheese, then milk, then apple cider or Italian dressing. Continue to mix until smooth.
5. Begin to add spinach, then artichokes, then sauteed onions and tomatoes, then chilies. Blend together well.
6. Place dip in baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for approximately 20-30 minutes (depending on the size of the dish) or until the top of the dip is slightly browned.
7. Serve with bread, tortilla chips or celery sticks.

Enjoy!

Party Planning: SUPER Easy Treat Bags

It's been a while since I've posted. For the 3 readers of my blog - I do apologize :) Last week I was busy working on a custom order for a bride to be. I created 8 small and 4 large twine wrapped bottles for her nautical themed rehearsal dinner. She promised she'd taken pictures - I cannot wait!

This is a super easy way to dress up some treats for any kind of party. Here's what I did for my son's last birthday.

I bought small baggies at Stables. Bought some sport ball chocolate balls and soccer rub on tatoos to stuff in the bag. I cut card stock and folded it in half. Stapled it on to the bag and added a little soccer ball for decoration. You can get any size bag - like the "snack size" ziplock bags and just cut the cardstock a tad bit wider than the bag. And you can fill it up with just about anything that fits the theme of your party!

Party Planning: Kid's Birthday Invitations

In August my son celebrates is 8th birthday. {I can't tell you where all the time goes...seems like just yesterday he was born} We celebrated his last birthday with a home hosted party vs. going somewhere. I wanted to do as much as possible and have the flexibility to let the kids play outside or spend more time eating instead of going by some hyped up teenager's party agenda timelines. (Don't get me wrong...I do so appreciate going places and having others do all the work!)

I wanted to make his birthday invitations. While I can appreicate and love the creativeness and time it takes for some of my friends like Jenny to make her beautiful and special cards, invitations & announcements - I wanted something cute, unique, fast and inexpensive. (Am I asking for too much?) So here's what happened....

Pretty simple!

Take some Colorful Card Stock...
Cut it to the size you want your largest peice

Then cut another peice of colorful/theme-coordinating paper just a little smaller than your largest peice...

Create your invitation on your computer and print it out. Again, I took advantage of cool free fonts from THIS site. I cut the size just a little bit smaller than the soccer print paper.

Then to finish them off I printed off little soccer balls on standard white circle labels and attached them to silver circle cut outs...then put them on the invitations...

Obviously - my invites did not have the black blocks as seen in the pictures. Gotta protect our privacy...even if it is our old house in AZ!

It's pretty apparent that it was a sports theme. I actually think we've had about 3 sports themes...this one specifically being soccer. But my boy is a sports fiend and loves 'em!

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If you do have the patience to scrapbook or create beautiful & unique cards - check out my friend Jenny's Close to my Heart Blog. She shares some great deals, ideas and some of her beautiful creations.

Party Planning: My Cousin's Wedding Shower {Part 4: Decorations & Details}

Table runners & place mats were hand made vs. store bought. The table runners were created with their initials in old typewriter font & made out of a creamy white burlap. Freezer paper is a heaven sent when you're working with fabric, stenciling and paint. You can use this on most fabrics. Take the freezer paper and create your stencil. Once your stencil is cut, iron the sticky side to the fabric. Don't use wax paper for this type of project. Wax paper has two waxy/sticky sides & can ruin your iron. Freezer Paper has one tacky side vs. two. Once your freezer paper is ironed to your fabric you paint away! You can remove the freezer paper by just pealing it off once your paint is dry. Freezer paper helps to create clean lines and makes the process a lot faster!

We figured that most of the gifts were going to be cards vs. boxes of gifts since the couple were planning on spending 3 months in Europe. For the card collector I reused one of my bird cages. I got these at Save On Crafts for $20 for two. This site has a ton of ideas and supplies for you to create the party of your dreams.

Another little gift I gave my cousin was an 8x10 wrapped canvas photo of the two of them. I took a photo of the couple at Thanksgiving. I used that photo and got a free canvas print (just paid for freight/handling) from Canvas People. (Go to Canvas People and get your free 8x10 photo canvas - I think they're still promoting the offer!)

And as a give away to the guests I made seed packets with flower seeds inside. The packets were made out of cute scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby and a great template I found on Leo on the Loose (Erin Vale Designs). Seeds can be pretty expensive…at Home Depot or Lowe's they run about $1.00-$1.50 for a packet. At Dollar Tree they were several seed packets for a $1. So I scored a bargain there!

The ideas above are only to spark your imagination to come up with unique ways to plan a party that don't drain your pocket book. Happy Creating!

Party Planning: My Cousin's Wedding Shower {Part 3: Menus}

To dress up the lunch I made some menus. But to go along with the book/library theme I made them out of this template found on THIS Site. (I do encourage you to check out this site. Heather Nichols, the blog's author, is very creative and has a ton of cute ideas and projects.) Thanks to my little knowledge of Photoshop I was able to add in the menu items in a cute font. I mounted them on the purple card stock left over pieces and put them on each person's plate.

Party Planning: My Cousin's Wedding Shower {Part 2: Group Gift}

So back to the party planning of my cousin's wedding shower. In a previous post I showed my simple invitation. Here's where her interests really came in to play. I played off of her love of libraries and books...

I'm sure you've all seen wish trees at weddings and showers. I considered doing that. But then I found this! It's a card catalog creator - created on a blog by a guy who loves libraries! {It can be used for so many different purposes!} How perfect is that?! Do you guys (maybe not you youngins') the dewey decimal system cards that you had to use to find where a book was located in a library? Well you can create your own! So I had everyone email me a wish or memory (short of course) and I'd make little card catalogs and put it in a box. 

I got the box at Hobby Lobby for around $3.99. The paper I printed everything out on was my white card stock that I already had on hand. The cards, when printed out, already look somewhat vintage-like. I just distressed the edges of the cards with some ink and punched a hole in the bottom.  I also purchased a roll of some purple crossgrain ribbon for around $1.99. I printed up all the cards, cut them to size and put a small ribbon at the bottom with a small knot. Then put all of them in the little box for her to open. The box was painted purple first, then black. I distressed the edges so that the purple could be seen a little here and there. Since the group gift was going to be created and funded by yours truly I needed it to stay in my budget. It turned out to be a unique and much appreciated (by the bride) tribute to the young couple.

Party Planning: My Cousin's Wedding Shower {Part 1 - Invitations}

Hosting a shower for a friend or loved one before a wedding or a new baby's arrival can be a tad bit on the overwhelming side. Do you cook or have it catered? Use disposable plates & utensils or the real deal? Do you buy decorations? Or attempt the DIY trend - even if you aren't the craftiest individual in the world?

Earlier this year I was struck with some of those same questions. My cousin was getting married to her long time boyfriend in March. I hosted the shower at the end of February. Her only request was that it was a "high tea" type theme.

When I heard her desired "theme" my first thoughts…."Ummmm. OK."  I'm not a big tea drinker. I don't go to steeping rooms or teas. I'm a good ol' fashion coffee drinker (maybe a latte from time to time). So I did some heavy duty googling for tea themed showers. Here's the images that popped up as a result of my search….pink, pink roses, big hats, doilies….and did I mention PINK? That's not exactly what I had in mind…nor does it really fit my cousin's personality. She really didn't have any set colors of her wedding. But a deep purple and hints of red were to be used so I went with those colors as a starting point (vs. the pepto pink splashed all over my search results). I had to do some thinking of what other ideas could be incorporated in to this "tea" that would highlight my cousin's loves. Here's what I came up with:

1. Library & Reading: She's always had a love of reading and in particular libraries. She received her masters in Library Science & Academic Libraries.
2. Flowers/Nature/Gardening: She has a love for all three of those things. In fact, she's going to be doing organic gardening on her honeymoon throughout Europe this summer.
3. Her Colors: Deep Purple & hints of red
4. Her honeymoon destination: Europe

And I was determined to do as much DIY as possible. Part 1 of this Party Planning Series will be on the {simple} invitations:

INVITATIONS: 

I went to Hobby Lobby and got some toile-English countryside looking paper that had a natural brown print as well as a deep purple and made my own invitations. I downloaded some cute fonts from Fonts for Peas to use. (LOVE THAT WEBSITE). It was pretty simple - I printed the invitations on white card stock, distressed the edges with brown ink after I cut them to size, then attached it to the toile. Inside I also inserted a request for each person to contribute to a group gift for the bride using the same brown toile paper and added hints of a deep purple card stock. (More on that later). 

The invitations were simple…but made with love and turned out pretty good. I made about 20 invitations…I got the paper for the invites at Hobby Lobby in the scrapbook section. 12x12 sheets at $.59 a sheet. They were 1/2 off. I could fit about 2-3 invites per sheet of paper. I already had a ton of white card stock, printer ink and the font download was free. So the invitations for 20 people were less than $10! (The address & contact info has been shaded out for privacy reasons.)