Merry Christmas from our Family to Yours!

May you have blessed Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

Thank you to my FABULOUS Aunt Debbie and her colleague Ashley for our Christmas card!

(Imagine that the card is cut out around the yellow and is shaped like an ornament :)

www.debbiedaanen.com

Christmas Paint Can Gift Holders

When I looked at the calendar today, I could hardly believe that Christmas is less than 2 weeks away!  Not a single gift wrapped thanks to prepping and holding our Gingerbread House Party, but all in due time! 

Tomorrow we are having our Holiday Potluck at work and I know it will shock you that I volunteered to take care of the gifts for our administrative assistants.  It was too much fun and they are such great people that I wanted to do something special.

I found adorable snowflake pins and placed them in the Christmas paint can tins I found at Target in the $1 aisle.  First, I filled the tins with holiday kisses (who doesn't love a little chocolate), added the pins and then, using my Silhouette machine, cut out of red vinyl, "Ho Ho Ho."  I adhered that to the front of the tin.  I then cut out snowflakes out of the white vinyl, added that to the top of the tins and then added a coordinating ribbon.  All in all, I thought it turned out cute.  I am excited to give them out tomorrow!

 

Happy Holidays!

Gingerbread House Making Party {with a special visitor}

We hosted a gingerbread house making party this past weekend for a few family and friends.  What fun we had!  If the sugar didn't make us happy enough, we were lucky enough to have a special visitor join us - yes, that special guy from the North Pole!  The kids were so excited!  If you have never had Santa visit your home, I highly recommend it.  It will make your holiday season.

A lot of the props for this party served double duty.  I kept the same blue and red color scheme as I had for Ethan's carnival party.  Last year, I found the printables from Frog Prince Paperie and fell in love with them!  Yes, I've been saving them for a year!

Here are few a lot of pictures of our fun.  I apologize for the quality - it was quite dark in our house with not a lot of natural light.  Keeping it real - no professional photographer for a friends and family gingerbread party.  By now if you've followed this blog, you know I can't narrow the pictures down so once again, this post is a picture overload.  Vendors and credits at the end of the post.  Thank you for looking and have a great holiday season!

The Sweets Table

 

Gingerbread House Making

  

  

Decorations

Pictures!

 

Printables - Frog Prince Paperie
Foam Gingerbread Men - Hobby Lobby
Striped Paper Fans - Party City
Gingerbread People Cookies - Happy Cookie Lady

Holiday Decorating - DIY

We are in full holiday decorating mode here!  Yes, I am one of those who skips over Thanksgiving and goes right to Christmas.  Sorry Tom Turkey :)  Here are two of the DIY decorations I put together.

Front Door Decor

Here was the inspiration:

 

Source

Here was my version:

To make mine, I found the frame at Joann.  I spray painted it red.  I purchased the ornaments from Target for $5.  They are plastic so they won't break.  I tied ribbon that I had to each ornament and then tied all the ornaments together. 

I first hung the greens on the wreath hanger, then I hung the ornaments, tied the bow to cover the loop of ribbon and then hung the red frame over the top of it all.  I think it turned out cute.

"JOY" silver hanging letters



This project was inspired by Grace.  I was hoping to use my gold "O" from Hobby Lobby that I had for Halloween for "BOO" hanging on my IKEA frames, and spell "JOY" for the holidays. Unfortunately, Hobby Lobby was all out of "Y's."  Being the crafter at 7 years old that she is, Grace saw the chipboard letters hanging in the wood aisle and told me I should make my own.  So that's what we did.

I purchased the letters for $.99 each, bought a silver can of spray paint for $5 and found the snowflake decals in the holiday section for $2.00.  I put about three layers of spray paint on each letter.  Don't look too closely at the "Y."  The sticker didn't come off too well and the spray paint didn't hide it like I thought it would.

 

 

After I had the letters all painted, I then hot glued the snowflake decals and then hot glued a strip of ribbon to the back.  I tied the strip of ribbon to the bow.  After doing this project, I'm not sure the gold letters would have worked with the "J" and the "Y" without hot-gluing the ribbon on the back.  So, in the end, Grace's problem solving worked :)

 

 We are in full holiday crafting mode here!  So excited for the holidays!