Wandering through life one season at a time
I told you during Christmas In July that I would post some photo gift deals, and this is a great one! Snapfish is having a Surprise Sale this week with a different best seller featured every day. Today’s sale was 71% off flipbooks – too bad I found out about it so late that none of us can order one! Register to see each day’s sale.
Hi Everyone! I hope you have enjoyed Christmas in July this week. Hubby has taken the day off today, so I am just going to post a few links for you. I will come back later & share my ideas & recipes. You have until noon today (CST) to enter my snowman drawing.
** Razzle Dazzle Recipes one of my favorites
Oh!! If you have a tried & true sugar cookie recipe, I need one!
How do you decorate your home for the holidays? I love the festive atmosphere, plus it’s the only time of the year that my home is decorated & coordinated :o)
**My nativity collection that I talked about Monday is my favorite thing.
**The kids’ bathroom is all decked out in icicle lights. I have seasonal hand towels throughout the year, but don’t go spend $6 at Target for a hand towel! Check places like Dollar Tree and Dollar General if you have them. You can get a Christmas kitchen towel there for a dollar, & guess what? It works the same as a bath towel! lol
**We have long flower beds across the front and I made big presents to scatter about. Just take a cardboard box, place something heavy inside like a brick, and wrap in shiny Christmas wrap – not paper, but maybe mylar?? It’s in with the regular Christmas paper at Dollar Tree. (yes, my entire house seems to be decorated from Dollar Tree-even some of my nativity collection is from there!) I add ribbon & a big bow using wide wired ribbon that you can get fairly cheap at Walmart-use ribbon that resembles mesh or lace, not fabric.
**This year I want to make some of these candy canes for our front porch. Be sure to buy your pool noodles soon, & hopefully on clearance.
**Storage is important: it is so easy to just throw everything into a box at the end of the year because you are tired of it, but that makes twice as much work next season. Decorating should be as easy as possible because Christmas is not about how fancy your house looks. It’s about celebrating the Joy of a little baby who was born to save you! Pack items away according to where they are in your home. Take pictures of your decor first so you don’t have to waste time next year trying to remember where everything fits. One more storage tip: if you remove everyday items (like off the mantel), just put them in your Christmas storage box until it’s time to switch back.
Don’t forget to enter my giveaway! You get an extra entry for leaving a comment with an idea, or for linking to my post.
Sorry this post is late going up ~ re-stocking my bare pantry seemed a bit more important than playing on my blog this morning.
Today we are sharing gift ideas!
**One of my favorite gifts ever was from my SIL & BIL. They collected recipes from the whole family and then made us all a Family Cookbook. They printed the recipes on their computer and put them in a binder (the kind you can slide a pic into the front & back cover). They designed a pretty page for the front of the cookbook and wrote a sweet letter to everyone for the back.
**Sign up to get newsletters from online photo places like Snapfish. They will email you coupon codes & promos for their gift shop. You can create some really adorable gifts~calendar, desk organizer, pillow, cutting board. In fact, I will start posting any promo deals between now & Christmas, so that means you have to keep coming back to my blog! You can get a notebook with photo for only $9.99 – add a promo to that and you’ve got a good deal. Here are some other good photo gift sites~some of them have photo books you can create which are really neat!
**Gooseberry Patch books – check & see if your library has these books. They are packed with great idea.
**Treasures from DJ look on right for lots of gift ideas
**Splitcoast Stampers you could spend days here
**Wee Wonderfuls for those of you with the patience to sew – free downloads; for those of us without the patience – she has a store
**Craftbits I posted this yesterday for crafts, but it has a ton of gift ideas
**For Kids
journal jar cut up slips, put in jar and add a journal & pen
**Gifts in a Jar
smores – change to Christmas theme
Don’t forget to enter my giveaway! You get an extra entry for leaving a comment with an idea, or for linking to my post.
Welcome to our second day of
Please share any craft ideas or websites that you enjoy. Don’t forget to enter my Snowman drawing! You get an extra entry for leaving an idea in the comments, or for linking to Christmas in July from your blog.
**We have a Snowflake party (since there is no such thing as a white Christmas around here). We sit down with a stack of computer paper & my scrapbooking scissors, and an hour later we have some beautiful creations. I paste them in our dining room window with a gluestick – the glue comes right off with a little windex & elbow grease.
Dave’s Snowflakes for great pattern designs
Snow Crystals breathtaking photos of real snowflakes – great for a discussion on the beauty & majesty of God
**My mom & I had so much fun hosting an ornament exchange party. Send out invitations in October & make sure to get an RSVP within 2 weeks. Once you know how many people will be coming, let your guests know how many handcrafted ornaments they need to bring. (ex: 10 guests, everyone needs to make 10 ornaments) We always had a brunch on the the first Saturday in December – casseroles, muffins, coffee, tea & cocoa. Our guests would bring their ornaments in a basket & I provided festive bags for the ones they were taking home (usually $1 for 10 at my favorite Dollar Tree).
**I tear out ideas from magazines like Family Fun (& also print them off the internet), put them in clear page protectors, & make a Holiday Fun Idea notebook.
**Vista Print is a really cheap site to purchase note cards & labels. A couple of years ago I got an email about customizing note cards for your family members (little people caricatures). I just happened to notice that in the hat selections there were Christmas hats. I made custom Christmas cards of our family for the same price I would have paid for ordinary cards from Walmart. Create an account and they will email you special offers like free notecards, just pay shipping costs.
Craftster Forum Warning: You may find some R rated language/crafts here, but the ideas are fantastic; view at your own discretion
Imagitek good for kids
Do you have any ideas to share? Leave a comment, or add a link to your blog if you want to do a Craft post. Click on the Christmas In July banner above to see previous ideas.
