Fall inspiration

Each year I get really excited to decorate the house for the holidays.  I think it stems from my mom always decorating when I was young.  Good memories.  I love Fall, and luckily, the weather here has been getting cooler this week too.  I am actually wearing long sleeves and jeans and not melting.  It's a miracle!  Here are some of the decorations I have out right now. 

Burlap wreath I made. So easy and inexpensive. I used the tutorial found at Jones Design Company.com. IE will not load up the tutorial so I can link to it for some reason. I will try again later. I did not use any hot glue -- just straight pins. Can't mess around with stuff that can melt in Arizona!

Pumpkins and my new little green star on the tv armoire.  The wooden blocks say Happy Halloween.  Possibly everything is from Target.

Card stock bats that we hung outside.  The kids love them.  Unfortunately it rained on them and many have fallen down.  They are also all crumply.  Oh well!  Maybe they look spookier.  Better believe I am not taking them down after how long it took to cut them out. 

A fun new fall wreath on the wall.  And my Blue Lily photos -- soon to be retaken in November!  Yay!

This little sis got her flu shots today.   Actually, her nasal mist (which we referred to as fairy dust to boost appeal.)  It must be Fall!

Earrings on sale -- Christmas in October

The Pretty Poppy is having a major sale on earrings.  All sets have been nearly halved in price.  Check them out here.  Have fun!

New items

The Pretty Poppy has had a couple special requests lately.  We love special requests because it affords the fun opportunity to make something new and different.

First, this little baby bracelet.  It was made to commemorate a baptism, but the charm can be switched out and changed to reflect any occasion.  Very cute.

Next, this special necklace was ordered as a keepsake for a set of parents who lost their sweet baby boy.  I felt so honored to created something so special for them.  I am in contact with the family to see if there is a special organization for "angel babies" they are involved with.  I would love to donate a portion of the proceeds from this necklace in his name.  We will see what we can come up with!

I love Target (and their coupons)

Check out the little goodies I found in the dollar spot section of Target.  They were actually $2.50 each, but I was still pretty excited.  I had literally the day before thought that I really wanted to find some more pumpkins for our Halloween/Fall display this year.  Thank you Target for answering my wishes!

I also wanted to talk a tiny bit about Targets coupons too -- I only recently became familiar, and I want share the love!  First off -- I am new to couponing, and I am not a coupon fanatic.  I only get one newspaper and I only buy stuff I need or would use.  I use couponsense.com to help me organize the store ads - this is one of those sites that matches up sale ads with the coupons so that you get the best deal.  The cardinal rule of couponing is to only buy something if it's on sale too!  ;o)  It's worked well for me so far.  It's not only saved me money on the basics that I purchase, but it's also changed the way I think and shop.  I am more aware of what I buy and the prices I pay for things.

Once I started couponing, I became aware of Target coupons (thanks, Kelly!)  Target has coupons that you can print an unlimited number of times from their website!  They have good stuff on there too.  Money off clothes, and housewares and all sorts of stuff.  These coupons can be paired with a manufacturer coupon and used in a single transaction.  I had NO IDEA you could do this, and have gotten some really great deals doing this. You can also use the FREE site, http://thekrazycouponlady.com/.  She matches up the Target ads with coupons.  It's helpful!

Today for instance I printed a coupon they have RIGHT NOW for $5.00 of a $5.99 or more Transformer toy.  I found one for $8, which means I basically got either a stocking stuffer or a birthday party gift for $3.  I was pretty pumped.

Anyway, just wanted to share this since it's something I didn't know anything about a couple months ago.  I will say, couponing is a tiny bit addicting once you start!

Anyone else part of the coupon commotion?

Just a reminder...

...that we have blessings all around us!  Life is good!

Tangled Birthday Party

My little baby turned three a couple weeks ago.  And, like many little girls her age, she requested a Tangled birthday party.  I love the movie, so I was more than happy to oblige!  There are so many great ideas for this birthday found online.  I used many of them and am happy to share my sources!

 

 We started by hanging hair our of our own tower.  You can't tell from this picture, but our house has a rotunda style entry that looks like a tower.  Of course Rapunzel would let down her hair for all of our guests!  This was LONG hair.  It took about two skeins of yarn to make.  Loved it.  

The decor continued inside with about 2 dozen pink and lavender balloons displayed about the room.  The balloons represented the floating lanterns.  Had I thought of it earlier, I could have made the balloons into lanterns, but for 3 year olds, this worked great!  I made pink cupcakes with green frosting, and applied paper scrap booking flowers to the top.  Simple!

You can see in the picture that there is a banner hanging.  I couldn't get a great picture of the garland, but it essentially looks like the one in the town square.  I cut little purple triangles, and applied a golden sun using this template.


The table was set with Rapunzel coloring pages, from here.  The perfect thing for little girls to do as they arrived.

 

 The party food was based on the movie as well.  Of course we served Hazelnut soup, which I loved (maybe not the little girls so much), bread with cheese or jam, fruit, and blue jello with boats.  (I borrowed the jello idea but can't remember where I saw it to give credit!)  I think the kids liked the jello part!

 

I gave each girl a canvas and a set of paints for their favor and to use as part of the activity.  I think the girls really did enjoy painting, and I loved that they could take the canvas home and hang it up in their room.  I love kids art in the house!  I of course didn't get a picture, but I labeled each set of paints with the phrase, "Rapunzel's Paints".

The most exciting part of the day was the pretty hair and makeup.  I asked my two darling friends, Tricia and Lynsee, to style each girls hair in a princess "do".  They are both phenomenal hair dressers so I knew they would be up to the task.  All the girls looked amazing!  I made flowers (I glued the same flowers I used for the cupcakes onto bobby pins) for their hair so they could look like Rapunzel.

As the girls got ready to go, each took a balloon "lantern" to release.  I told them all to make a wish too, but I think they all just got excited to let go of their balloons and forgot.

I had a fun time and I hope all the little girls did too! 

This was the best picture I got when I asked all the little ladies to smile at me.  Hilarious.

Hello, again.

It's been awhile!  Forgive me for abadoning the blog all summer.  So many ideas, and so little time.  Now that school has started and schedules are beginning to form again, I am back!  And am here to stay. 

My adorable sister in law got married about a week and a half ago.  The wedding was AMAZING.  There was hapiness bursting at every seam.  It was great.  The reception was amazing as well.  The flowers were to die for.  More pictures of all of that to come. 

The wedding colors were various shades of green.  I was able to assist with some of the decoration creation.  One of the things I made was a pennant garland for the tent at the reception.  I wanted to share a little tip (which I actually learned from Lynsee), for creating a quick and easy pennant garland using paper and ribbon.

First, start with some gorgeous paper:

Cut the paper into triangles.  

Then, use your sewing machine and sew the triangles onto a piece of ribbon!  I love the sewing idea, because it's so sturdy, and the stitch line is so cute.  I used white ribbon and white thread, but green thread would have been a cute added touch.  Of course I have no picture of the finished product (it was a crazy week), but I do have this picture below where you can sort of see the garland hanging in the tent above us.

(This picture is me with my mom, my son (left), my nephew (right) and my other son in the background looking at some of those amazing flowers!)
Still can't believe I didn't get a picture.  But trust me, if you are making a pennant garland from paper -- sew it together with ribbon!  So much easier, faster and prettier!

More green wedding stuff to come!