Christmas Project Idea #7

Today's Christmas project idea is brought to you by my talented older sister.  She was going to use these as gifts for her Christmas party guests last year, but ran out of time.

Infusing your own vodka...
Basically, you can take really cool spices (vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, cloves, etc) or fruits (pomegranates, cherries, blueberries), or random stuff (bacon or jalepenos :).... let those infuse with the vodka for 3 days to a week.  Place the vodka in a beautiful jelly jar, apothecary jar, or empty vodka bottle (jazzed up with scrapbooking embellishments) and you are done!

Start a New Tradition

Okay, I admit it.  My husband and I started decorating for Christmas already.  We put up a small tree and garlands over the doors and windows in our playroom.  I find decorating for the Holidays addicting.  I see things and stores and brainstorm in my mind how I can come up with the same idea for less at home.  This advent calender is something that I am so excited to do for our dining room.  I can just picture Willow, Blake and I sitting around eating our breakfast and counting down the days to Christmas morning with this scrappy chic calender together.

Christmas Project Idea #6

Sara Rhodes created these beautiful graphic glycerin soaps for Elsie Flanigan's blog.  Enjoy the tutorial here, and make your own for stocking stuffers.

It's That Time of the Year: Holiday Cards 101

Since I was a little girl, I looked forward to my parents receiving family letters, Christmas cards, and photo postcards in the mail.  In my head I chose my favorite designs and (this is slightly dorky) picked my children’s names and how my card would look.  When the JCPenney catalogs would come in the mail, I would pick out my pretend family’s coordinating Christmas photo outfits to match our Christmas cards.  In my head the final product would be perfect thanks to my endless imagination.

Now my imagination doesn’t have to stretch that far.  Blake booked our photo session this summer and last weekend we took beautiful fall pictures at Antioch Park.  The morning of our photo shoot I did a little shopping to coordinate our looks and then we were off.  Our photographer was wonderful and was so patient with little Willow.  We were able to see a sneak peek of our images which turned out better than I could have hoped for.  As soon as we got home, I ran up to the office and went to the Shutterfly website.  There, I tried to find the best Christmas cards to fit our beautiful portraits.  With all of their new ideas for holiday cards, it was so easy.  I even got a jump on making my standard holiday calendar and some extra little gifts for loved ones. 

Although I am not done with the finished product yet, here are some ideas for creating your perfect holiday card.

These ones are my personal favorites:

For something really unique, try shutterfly's story cards or christmas gift tags. 

How about giving your husband beautiful wall art to adorn his office?  Is your mother a coffee drinker?  Personalize these mugs with your child's pics and you have the perfect gift for a grandparent.  I traditionally scrapbook calenders for my loved ones every year for Christmas.  Try this easy to create and fun to personalize version to save you a little time. 

Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly, click here:  http://bit.ly/sfly2010 

Christmas Project Idea #5

Your friends will heart you even more after opening these one of a kind journals.  Amanda Johnson of Here's Lookin at Me Kid has designed several different Wooden Mini Albums and wants to share these tutorials with you. 

Wooden Album Cover Tutorial #1

Wooden Album Tutorial #2

 Wooden Album Tutorial #3

GIVEAWAY!

Handmade Nest is giving away a Handmade treat!  Go to this blog, check out this Etsy shop, comment about your favorite piece, and you are in!  Check out this beauty below. It is my favorite!

Christmas Project Idea #4

It's entirely free....well I guess you will need to pay for the cost of ink and paper, but check this out!  Today as I was blog surfing (trying to amp up my classroom blog) I stumbled upon the most remarkable blog: papersnitch.com.  And there, I stumbled across and even more rad (okay English teacher, is this correct) blog: mybarnowl.com.  For all of you Owl Lovers out there, here is a FREE Owl lover Calender.  Just chose your favorite Owl images, and voila!  A 2011 Owl Lover's Calender.  For you, or your friend, or your sister, or your niece, or your mom.  Awesome, right?