More Holiday Planning

If you are thinking about Christmas cards, and were not swayed by the last lot I posted, maybe these will float your boat.

I've posted about Night Owl Paper Goods before. I adore the cards I ordered last year & have used all of them up. I need to order more! I even picked up a couple of birch postcards that I have on the wall in my foyer. I admired the birch Christmas cards and if I weren't doing my own this year I would seriously be considering something from Night Owl Paper Goods holiday collection. I love the birch ones, but now they have all of their great designs in a paper version also. And they just announced an incredible Early Bird Special - a 20% discount on all Personalized Holiday Cards PLUS free domestic, ground shipping on all orders $49+. This offer is only good until October 26th, so head over to their website & get choosing! These are my favorites (click on the image to go straight to the site):

   



Disclosure: Night Owl Paper Goods offered me a free goodie pack for posting about this special deal. But it was easy since I already love this company and have bought their products for myself in the past.

Shiny & New

In going with a metallic "color" scheme for my grandmother's birthday party I was using these images for inspiration. I found them on Pinterest.

After many hours spent crouching in my garage spray painting, and folding & taping till my fingers hurt, here are my versions of the shiny tin can flower vases and the paper rosette photo backdrops.

My sister borrowed some silk flowers and put together the arrangements (with help from her 9yo). I like the look of fresh flowers in the inspiration image, but this was SO much easier on the day of the party.

You can see that I needed about 50% more rosettes, but I love the coverings for the centers. I bought packs of paper doilies at Walmart (30 for 97 cents) and spray painted them in my metallic colors. The rosettes will look fab on my dining room walls for Thanksgiving, and maybe even permanently. That last shot is my family (sans the 7yo boy) with my sweet grandmother.

Holiday Dreams

I love the entire holiday season. Our house is looking Halloween-y now and I'm planning to recycle all the decorations from my grandma's party for the Thanksgiving dinner I am hosting. The kids are busily deciding on costumes and last night I started my yearly spreadsheet to track our Christmas budget and gifts. I haven't bought a single present yet, which is unusual for me, but probably good because the longer I have to shop the more I want to buy. I also started thinking about our Christmas cards. We usually send fancy ones in the mail every other year and stick with something simple on the off year. My husband wants to do e-mail cards this year and I am voting for a postcard.

But if you are also starting to think of holiday cards, and maybe taking beautiful family photos to send to all your nearest and dearest, you should check out these cards by Alma Loveland. I love her designs and have taken several of her Adobe Illustrator classes. (I'd love to take the 102 class online next.) And now she is offering a choice of 22 different card designs for a super low price of $15. And the best bargain of all is that you are just buying the template! You will do further Photoshop work yourself, adding your own pictures and changing fonts and color schemes as you wish. Alma even has great tutorials to help you to customize your cards. That's what I call a smoking deal!

 

Putting my party hat on...

Apparently after 21 days of daily blogging I needed a break. For a month. But I am still trying to put together decent outfits (most of the time) and I am thinking a lot about a 30 for 30 Remix. I want to do one but I want to take pictures of my pieces first & somehow that just hasn't happened. Maybe after I get though this next weekend. Last week my dear grandmother turned 90 years old! And my parents, aunt, sister, and I are throwing a big birthday bash for her this Saturday.

My Mom takes care of the food, my Dad did invitations and all the coordinating, my aunt is making a video and will be the resident photographer, which leaves my sister and I to do the decorating. Naturally I turned to Pinterest (my boards are here) for a wealth of inspiration. After a little searching we decided on a metallic color palette - mixing gold, silver, copper, bronze, and whatever else we might find. Here's my to-do list:

1. create a crossword about Gram
2. centerpieces
3. balloons
4. food table decorations
5. make a photo backdrop to document the guests
6. party favors
7. decorate a comfy chair for Gram to sit in during the party
8. make a pretty crown for the birthday girl

I'm trying not to add anythingelse to the list, as that's a lot of work for my sister and I already. I loved the recent post on Living in the Family Room about the birthday party Darcy Miller threw for Martha Stewart. It was such a fab party and I wanted to copy every detail but limited myself to the monogrammed balloons and the crossword puzzle, which I finished last weekend. It will be a fun, personal detail that my grandmother and all her guests will enjoy.

All day yesterday I made paper rosettes to put together into a photo backdrop to help Gram remember the people that came to her party. I am using the ideas from here and here. I have learned a few things about making these pinwheel rosettes. Last weekend I bought a bunch of metallic papers, alarming my husband by how much I was spending ($11 whole dollars!). But once I started folding and looked up some directions I realized that I needed three to five sheets of each paper to make a pinwheel. Which takes my costs up quite a bit. I chose a few of my favorites and will take the rest back. And then I found a cheaper source - spray painted paper! I grabbed my silver, gold, and copper spray paints and my big roll of kraft paper and was able to make some very large, shiny rosettes. The kraft paper was brown, so the metallic effect over the top is a little subtler than I wanted so I turned to plain, white printer paper next. The metallic paint shows up much better over the white.
Tomorrow I'm working on centerpieces - stay tuned for more inspiration pics and a few of my own too.