Christmas Decorating

I had such great intentions of getting this posted a few weeks before Christmas but well now that things have slowed down and it's almost time to take it all down I have time to post it. :) One of my favorite things to do all year is decorate the house for Christmas. This year I felt that I stared early, right after Thanksgiving, but boxes and unfinished things sat around the house for a few weeks before I could get it all done. We seemed extra busy on weekends and evenings this year so I had to do little bits here and there, which took longer but worked out just fine.

 The living room.

I love these doors...one of my favorite things about the holidays is all of the cards we receive. I wrapped both doors in a very thick red ribbon and tied a bow. I used little clothes pins to attach the cards. 

Side table in the living room. The photo is a picture of my grandpa as Santa, myself when I was 2, my brother a few months, and my cousin 1. Grandpa dressed up and came every Christmas Eve until I told Santa that his shoes looked like grandpa's. :)

Our fireplace mantel. 

Our tree. I love the bunting and this year I added a few burlap bows.

I love to wrap presents. I used 4 or 5 different wrapping papers, polka dots stripes, Kraft and plain green. I mix up the ribbons and use tulle as well. For the tags I bought Kraft paper tags that were pre-cut. I also bought glitter paper at the craft store and cut out letters for first names. I put washi tape on the tags, taped the letter and wrote who it was to on the back of the tag. 

I bought that green glitter paper and only wrapped one present with it because the tape wouldn't stick. Bummer. :) 

Every year for Christmas my mom would get me a snow globe. I have quite the collection. I love to decorate the house with them. Some of them have lights and some play music. 

My mom painted that sign for me it says...."Dear Santa" "I want it all". :) She knows me well. 

I think it's so cute. 

This pic is a little blurry but gives you an idea of the living area. 

I love my wooden star. I saw these in the pottery barn magazine this year and asked my dad if he could make me two of then. He is a great wood worker. They turned our perfect. I'm so lucky to have a dad that will do these things for me when I ask. :) I put the other one in the guest room. 

On the kitchen counter I put a small hot chocolate station. I knew that our family coming into town would love this even though Richie and I don't really drink hot chocolate. Brenner our nephew just wanted the marshmallows....Richie would have some cocoa in his coffee. It looks cute though. Richie said "that looks like a picture from pinterest". :) 

Our powder room....my aunt Pam painted the picture of the pine cone. I love to put it up every year. 

Last year I made these. I bought three canvas boards, painted them, modge podged paper on them, and glued the letters on. They looked pretty DIY so I put them downstairs this year by our guest room. :) Sometimes some projects just don't turn out as nice as you had hoped or thought. 

yellow and blue baby boy shower

I threw a shower for one of my closest friends...Amy and I have been friends since high school. Her sister Haley who is married to my brother threw this shower with me. We had it at my home which is fairly small and the guest list was quite large but it all worked out. 

Caramel corn for the favor. I designed and printed the labels on the computer. My mom made her delicious caramel corn for us. 

The favors sat with the desserts. Amy's mom made all of the desserts. 

I covered the artwork on my wall with blue fabric and hung the bunting. I think it turned out so cute. 

Love Chevron. For drinks we served white wine and mimosas. 

The food table. It was a Sunday morning brunch. We had crock pot potatoes, mini quiche, fruit salad, sausage egg casserole, and french toast casserole (which isn't on the table yet)....funny story about that....a switch got tripped in the kitchen and the oven wouldn't work so my husband had to take the casserole to his friends down the street. Oh gosh... we found the switch later behind our bread basket. 

I was so excited to make these carnation balls, that sat on top of  candle holders. I soaked round (green) foam balls in water then cut white carnations off their stems and stuck them into the foam. They were very easy to make and looked so cute. I ended up needing a lot more white carnations than I had thought and surprisingly had to go to a few stores to find enough. I can't wait to make these again. 

Haley put this game together for the guests. Each one of these baby items were wrapped, numbered, and guests had to try and guess each item. After the guests guessed Amy opened each item and got to keep them. This was harder than we thought. :)

Instead of a guest book we had guests write cute notes on diapers for Amy to read as she was doing her late night changings.

Lots of gifts!  Our living room was full. 

1st birthday girl party

On June 21, 2012 I helped to throw a 1st birthday party for my best friends daughter and god daughter. When Mindy asked me to help I was absolutely thrilled....because I always love to help. :)

The gift table 

We made this cute banner (This was actually part of our ice cream banner from our wedding...we just changed the letters) and Mindy put together pictures, one from each month, of Haddie through the year. 

I bought different pink papers and cut them for the cupcake liners. I printed the circle tags on the computer and for the backing I folded papers like a fan and hot glued them into circles. I hot glued the front tag on and on the back I hot glued the tooth pick and put a small circle paper on the back with the date to cover the center of the fan and toothpick. 

I got this cupcake holder for a wedding gift and I've used it a million times....a great gift. :)

Hadley had an extra large cupcake for her very own and we decorated it extra cute with a special banner with her name on it. 

And of course we had to put some pink tulle on her high chair. 

The drink station. 

Each paper straw had a tag on it that read....Hooray Haddie's 1. How embarrassing is it that I'm just right now realizing that I spelled Hooray Hurray. ooops. 

There was a birthday wish station where guests could write a sweet note to Haddie and take a lollipop. 

Gena, Elyana, Mindy, myself and Mandy. Everyone but Haddie. 

It was a great party. I can't believe how fast the first year goes. 

travel themed baby shower

In Junior High I met one of my best friends. Each of us also has a sibling (her sister and my brother) 2 years younger than us....so in 8th grade my brother and Amy's sister began dating. They dated all through high school, continued to date while attending different colleges, and after college decided to move to NYC together. They both worked on wall street...living the dream. In 2005 they got married in Cancun, Mexico. After working in NYC they decided to take a break, travel around the world, and then came home to Portland Oregon...not really home but much closer to home than NYC. Then we were all so excited to hear that they were having a baby and Amy and I couldn't wait to plan the shower....travel themed of course. 

For the invitations I die cut brown paper for the envelopes, and map paper for the envelope liner. Then I assembled the envelopes. For the invitation I printed the info on a rustic looking brown paper. Then I printed a card (like a postcard) for guests to write a wish on and bring to the shower with them....my favorite part is the green baby stamp where the postage would go...so cute. Then I wrapped it all up and put luggage type tags on it with directions for the postcard. 

I wish I had a picture of each individual piece but I wasn't thinking that far ahead I guess.

I hand wrote all of the invites...very big and curly. 

We did a lime sherbet punch with 7-up in mason jars. The green paper straws had flags that said....."arrival date....and the date of the birth".

We decoupaged the letters of baby in the map paper. Thank goodness for Amy as she did this and this is not  a task I would have had patience for. :)

I die cut cupcake liners in the map paper and I printed cupcake toppers that said 

"precious cargo on board". 

Game gifts...travel size wine, different kinds of beers, and in the bag...a bag of travel size goodies. 

For one of the the games I typed a list the word baby in all different languages from around the word and the guests had to guess the language. It was harder than we all thought. 

Mom made homemade sugar cookie favors....and I decorated them to look like the earth. 

We put them next to this sign. Loved making all these signs. 

I bought a cute suitcase box for guests to put their wishes in. In this box I also put the thank you cards for Haley to write to her guests. A shape of the united states out of map paper with the words thank you. Each guest wrote their address on an envelope for her. 

I always love this part of any party I do...the food...yay! :) This is where I had a lot of help. Amy made a few things, my mom did, and Amy's mom did, as well as myself. We had such an incredible spread of food from different countries all over the world.

During this shower all of our men were downstairs watching the Seahawks game so I thought it would be a good idea to include them in a fun little relay game. There were 4 people on each team, and there were 4 different activities...put a diaper on the dolls (my cabbage patch kids....oh I loved these so much), dress the dolls, pick up toys that we spread out all over and put in the basket, and drink out of a bottle. 

Here's my brother pounding a "man beverage" out of a bottle and Haley's young cousin pounding water. They got smart and took the lids off. 

Here is Haley trying to dress the baby, and Richie. 

It was a great shower and what an incredibly fun theme.