Christmas Party Invites

Because I don't have enough to do, the husband and I have decided to have a Christmas party at our house next Sunday.  We will probably have 16-20 people.  I wanted to do something fun because he has just resigned from the only company he's worked since graduating college to take on a new opportunity in a few weeks!  It's been a very stressful few months around our house.  I'm so happy for him and hope this new opportunity is everything he's looking for.  That being said, we needed some fun, festive invites!  I've decided on a "Santa" theme and this quickly came to be the invite... 

I used the Santa cut from the Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge; martini Christmas ribbon I had on hand; cardstock from MAMBI Christmas pad and a My Pink Stamper Stamp.  Then, I printed the party details on lime green to adhere to the inside. 

Favorite Ornaments -- Christmas 2013

Pulling the ornaments out and reminiscing is one of my favorite holiday traditions.  I've slowly built my ornament collection since I was a baby girl and it's fun to see how my ornaments have grown with me.  My tree is a reflection of my passion for dancing growing up, love of cats, worldwide travels and now my life with Adam.  

 

This little beauty is a Kate Spade ornament.  This was the "year of Kate" for me it seems!  My wedding shoes were Kate Spade, our new silverware is Kate and I've gotten 2 purses and some jewelry from there this year as well.  I love the brand's classy style.   

I'm a sucker for Hallmark ornaments and pick up a few each year.  The 2013 dog ornament was too cute not to get.  I love the antlers on the frame!

I picked up the Jim Shore Pineapple ornament last year when we were at the Bronner's Christmas store in Michigan.  Adam and I love pineapple and the detail that Jim Shore adds to all of his pieces is amazing. 

I got a few of these Vera Bradley ball ornaments when they were on sale after the holidays.  This is one of my favorite prints and love the way the light plays off the ornaments.  Beautiful!

I grabbed this little pilot at the Christmas Shop in Pigeon Forge last month.  A great way to remember this is the year Adam got back into flying. 

And of course... 2013 was the YEAR of our wedding.  I LOVE the various wedding related ornaments we have and have received as gifts.  These are 5 that I bought for our collection.  The picture frame is a Hallmark ornament and has the year on it but with the camera flash you can't see it in the picture.  The engagement ring is also from Hallmark and has the year engraved on the side.  I just picked up the dress and tux jacket a few days ago at Kohls.  They also have little charms with the year.  The cube is from Shutterfly and probably one of my favorites.  I also made one last year with our engagement pics and it's hanging nearby.  

What are some of your favorites?  Do you decorate in colors/themes or what's your tree decorating style?

Married Christmas -- Deckin' the Halls 2013 Style

Is Christmas really just 12 short days away?!  I hate that such a beautiful time of the year always feels so rushed and just comes and goes in the blink of an eye.  Not only was Thanksgiving super late this year but I had a business trip the last couple days that took away some much needed prep time as well!  This past weekend I finished up decorating and got ALL of the presents wrapped and under the tree!  As always, one of my favorite things is seeing the "finished" product -- decorated tree and wrapped presents!  This is also an extra fun year because it's our first "Married" Christmas! 

I added a few little things to this year's decorations:

(1) The reindeer name sign by the fireplace.  I have eyed the sign that Kirkland's has for months now but it's white with red glitter letters and 3x the price of the one I bought at HomeGoods!  Plus, I think the red background is the perfect pop of color.  Love it!

(2)  Poinsettia picks in the garland on the fireplace.  This was a super easy and cheap way to give a nice pop of color to the mantle!  We've had to arrange it a little so the signal to our cable box doesn't get messed up.

(3) Stockings!  I've had stocking hangers for years and never used them!  I go back and forth on stockings looking too cluttery.  I love a good monogram but with Adam and I both being "A" names I didn't want two stockings with A on them... THEN... on Cyber Monday I got an email from Crate and Barrel and couldn't resist peeking... it was love at first site with these adorable stockings.  Free shipping sealed the deal!  The little confetti pieces go perfect with our area rug.     

(4) Christmas Card Garland.  I wanted a better way to display our Christmas cards and this idea came to me while shopping at Michael's on Black Friday (actually it was Thursday so not sure what they call that??).  I found adorable Christmas mini clothespins and knew I wanted to hang our cards from garland on the mantle.  Again, it's bordering on cluttery but I love seeing the cards when I walk by.  I'll do another post on the finished product and close up shots of the adorable clothespins next week.  

I am linking up with Honey We're Home who is sharing her Christmas spirit as well! 

By the way, does anyone else HATE putting away decorations as much as I do?!  How come nothing ever fits back in it's box like it's supposed to?!!?  At least I get a good work out in carrying everything up and down the basement stairs!!   

Thanks for stopping by!  Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Deckin' the Halls

WOW -- December already!  With Thanksgiving being so late this year it definitely cut into "deckin' the halls!"  I will admit.. I put our big Christmas tree up pre-Thanksgiving as well as the WVU themed dining room tree.  I did this for several reasons.. mostly because my family was at our house for Thanksgiving and I wanted them to get to see our trees.  This past week, I spent time decorating the other areas of the house.  My absolute favorite decorations this year has to be in the dining room!  We finally got the rest of the furniture for the dining room (sideboard and china cabinet) in October and having the additional area on top of the sideboard to decorate has made for the perfect spot!  Plus, I used some of our wedding decor and it's an instant rush of happy memories when I see it in there.   

Let's rewind.. 

When I was schemin' what the wedding ceremony would look like, I spent a lot of time thinking about the aisle.  I liked the idea of rose petals, candles and lanterns.  I looked at hundreds of lanterns in various price points/styles.  I didn't want anything too ornate or too small and alas, I finally found the perfect lanterns at Hobby Lobby!  Two stores and two special orders later, I had enough lanterns to line the aisle for the ceremony.  I reused the lanterns as additional decor for the reception as well.  Plus, I knew the lanterns would be beautiful to decorate with in coming years.  

Here's the lanterns in action at the wedding:

(The candles are also from Hobby Lobby and are beautiful! They matched the pattern on our cake.)  I alternated tall and shorter lanterns down both sides of the aisle and put pink rose petals in between. 

After the ceremony, we had some of the lanterns moved up to the MASSIVE mantle

Other lanterns found a reception spot behind the main wedding cake

So now, fast forward to my Christmas decorating.... 

The lanterns and candles are from the wedding as well as the crystal candle holder near the feather tree.  The white reindeer are a find from my mom from a few years ago but I've seen a lot of similar ones in the stores this year.  The feather wreath around the smaller lantern is from Michaels and was purchased with the anticipation of being used at the wedding but at the last minute didn't get used.  The white feather tree is actually from my college days at WVU!  I bought this at Macy's in Pittsburgh and still absolutely love it.  I worry everyday that Mason is going to get hold of it.  I decided to forgo the normal hot pink ornaments I put on it and "adult-ed" it up with some silver and slightly gold smaller balls instead.  

Did anyone else recycle items from their wedding into their home decorating?! 

Fiesta Store and some Random-itis

This past weekend, I made a mad dash back to WV for a friend from college's wedding.  I drove to Princeton Friday night and stayed at my parents.  Saturday morning my mom (aka my wedding date) and I made a little detour and went by the hospital in Charleston to see Lauren after she had Baby Logan.  Then, we made our way on up to Morgantown... after of course, a stop at the Everything Fiesta! store in Flatwoods.  I have always loved this store and have stopped their countless times on my many trips to and from Morgantown.  When I first started getting into Fiesta, I would stop there and buy 1 or 2 things and have slowly built up my collection.  Such a fun, beautiful, bright store!!

I wrote down some things I want to make sure to add to our wedding registry and also grabbed a few seasonal items that were on sale:

I think their Christmas Fiesta is a little on the plain side but decided to get a few of the serving side pieces to use with my everyday Fiesta during the holidays.  I don't understand why they put the tree on the bottom of the plates and then it's just covered up with food!  Regardless, it will make up a cute table come the holidays.

I also picked up this large mixing bowl to use as a fruit bowl.  I love the pop of color it adds to my kitchen!  It also tells me I need to get some more fruit!

This is the last purchase I made there.  This bowl was marked down to a fab price because it's a VT color!  They had a whole section of items that were maroon and orange they were clearancing out.  I mean really, what were they thinking with the store being so close to WVU?!  Oh well, love the shape/size of this guy, he'll be a nice addition!

I'm finally getting ready to pack up all my Christmas decor but wanted to share a few last things from this season!  First, is how I have displayed our Christmas cards the last 2 years.  I picked up this little Christmas tree holder at Ace Hardware of all places last year.  I like seeing it "fill up" as the days go by in December.  Only downside is that a lot of cute cards/pictures get covered up.

Here's a snapshot of our 2012 Christmas card:  I used one of our engagement pics on the cover and some pictures from Christmas 2011 on the inside and back.  No wasted space on our card!

 And, to end on a sweet note, my amazing fiance surprised me with this beautiful bouquet of flowers last night after work!  Isn't he the BEST?!  I think I shall marry him ;-)
 

Christmas at Peppertree

I found a post I forgot to post before Christmas, which actually worked out well because my brain is mush right now!  We had a great Christmas and New Years with both our families, did a ton of driving (and eating), and now I'm ready to get some structure back in my life!  I'll share some about our holidays later this week,  Happy Wednesday!

My whole life, one of my favorite things to see are the presents under the Christmas tree.  I think this is because my mom always does such a professional wrapping job complete with Martha Stewart bows and our presents looked like something out of the magazines.  So somewhere along the way, a little of this rubbed off on me I suppose.  I always try to coordinate my wrapping paper so that all the presents "match" but as we've added little ones to the mix, the paper tends to reflect their personalities vs my matching color scheme.  Last night, we loaded up the gifts to take home but I was able to snap some pictures before it was dismantled:

The "kid" side if you couldn't tell :)

...and my boys being silly

And 2 bonus pictures because I want to remember what it looks like 10 years from now :)

Christmas Gifts for Co-Workers & Neighbors

So each holiday I try to make something special for my co-workers.  I work in an all female HR group and really enjoy all the ladies I work with ( so rare for an all female office I know!!).  For Thanksgiving, I made the cute little turkey goodies bags so I knew I had to go even cuter for Christmas!  Here's what I came up with -- Scentsy hand soaps with a Santa face tag: 

 

Here's how I made them:

I ordered my soaps from my personal Scentsy store :-)

Aren't they cute?  They look like gumballs

I used the Cricut Craft Room Software to lay out the different layers I needed to cut.  These Santa faces are 4" I believe and from the Doodlecharms cartridge -- one of my first cartridges. 

Mr. Cricut got to work cutting layer after layer.  4 years later and this thing still amazes me!! 

I ended up with 3 pages of Santa faces in order to get 18 at the size I needed

Then I moved on to cutting the other layers, you get the idea.

As Mr. Cricut was cutting the layers I started assembling Santa.  I picked this particular Santa because there weren't too many pieces and they weren't teeny tiny. However, I didn't take into account adding all the little dashes to the 18 faces!!  That took quite a while. 



Here all 18 Santa's are ready to be attached to the soap. 

I played around with where to punch the hole and settled with on the tassel.  In hindsight, I probably would have made the face a little smaller.

I gave these to my friends/co-workers Wednesday before Christmas and they were a big hit.  I love doing something small to let people know they are thought of and loved!