Advent Calendar: A New Take on an Old Tradition

Advent Calendars have such a history and are a tradition in so many homes. For a while I've been looking for Advent Calendars that can hold items, that don't have a cheesy design, that can be reused, and the spot that can hold items isn't super small where only a piece of nickel candy can fit inside. 

Decided to go with the Grundtal "spice jars" from IKEA. I picked up enough to for 25 days, but a couple extra in case one goes missing or breaks. I think I picked up about nine or ten packages, so the initial cost was between $70-$80, more than I was planning on, but I am hoping to use this system for many many years!

When opened, I pulled out the paper that was inside the lid (that has the lovely food pictures on them) and I used it as my template and traced 25 circles onto cranberry cardstock and paper (of course left over from our wedding. Will we ever use up all the wedding paper goods?!).

Coming up with what picture or design went on the cardstock was a little challenging. I didn't want something that was "too adult" or was pretty just for me, but something that my son would like or would be interested in. At Fred Meyer, I found a bunch of gift tag stickers in a variety of pictures and styles that I thought would be perfect. Since he knows a lot of his animals, I picked up kitties and puppies. He also knows what snowmen/snow/snowflakes are, so picked up ones that had a lot of images of snow "things" too.

Then, I got to assembling each date, writing the numbers really large and tried to find a good place for all the stickers. Some stickers had to be cut, or used in a funny spot, but I tried to used most of the images so I didn't have a lot of repeaters.

I had enough canisters to make a complete tree and hang low on our fridge, so it is right at eye level for him. He LOVES opening and closing the canisters. Really he could care less about the prize inside at this point, but everyday I find him playing with them. I am pretty happy with the entire project and I love that it is something I don't have to find a spot for on a self or table.

My thought is, I can change the images as he gets older and even start to print some of my favorite Christmas pictures from over the years to put inside too. I also like that the space is large enough for other treats other than candy. Since my son is just about 17 months, this year's goodies were those sticky window decals, really tiny jars of Play-Do, and little monsters that squish when you squeeze them.

She's Ready to POP Baby Shower

Held a baby shower for my sister-in-law recently. As most of the parties I help plan these days, everything is planned over email, text messages, Facebook messages, and phone calls since no one seems to live in the same town!

Luckily, I got my house decorated for Christmas before the shower and I love my Christmas tree this year, such a beaut if I do say so myself! Here is the breakdown of our POP shower....

A table of goodies welcomed everyone. The table had a jar to collect predictions of when the baby would arrive and its measurements, and a cute graphic of a tree (similar to the one from their wedding invitations and print materials) for everyone's to put their thumb or fingerprint on later was framed for the baby room.

 

Also on the table was a lolliPOP bouquet that I put together.

Judy made this cute little onesie advice book that she called, "POP Culture" for Ashley and baby.

Also when people walked in they saw newborn pictures and black, white, and craft paper circles. I hung little bubbles with pictures of when Ashley and Erich were babies, an ultrasound picture of baby boy Simpson and little notes about when Ashley and Erich "popped" out.

Should have used the computer for these signs, I can't stand my handwriting!

I had some popcorn boxes left from either a project or a purchase from long ago in my craft items that I pulled out. I put small vases inside and filled with water. Then I purchased white carnations to look like popcorn! I placed them on the end tables and in the guest bathroom with a soda POP bottle!

I think we had quite the delicious and creative spread for everyone to enjoy, the leftovers for the next couple of days weren't too shabby either.

More cute signs that Judy made.

Of course for dessert it only makes sense to have cake POPs!

Yes, you read that right, a Corn POP quiche!

I was researching different things we could do with Corn Pops and found a quiche Corn Pop recipe, it was actually quite good.

Another fun dessert was a cake made out of POP tarts!

I found some Avery labels that were already this shape and color, so it was easy to make things for the party.

Judy's famous salad that we all love.

Hung poofs and honeycomb balls over the decorations. 

As people left, they left with some homemade caramel corn (that had some of the leftover Corn Pops in it) that is one of my favorite recipes. It was so so yummy and I used the same labels for these bags that I did on the table-cards.

How to Make a Kid Janitor Halloween Costume

My son loves to push anything that will move and using all kinds of brooms to sweep indoors and out. This fasinatiion may not be around for long, so I thought I would take advantage of his current passion with his Halloween costume this year. Let's have the little guy be a JANITOR! How fun would that be? When I told friends and colleagues what we chose for the little man, the reaction of many was like, what?! I know, you probably haven't seen too many toddler or even kid janitors over the years, but let's do it and do it right!

After searching long and hard for ideas and samples of a janitor Halloween costumes, I came up empty handed. Didn't seem there were many images on Pinterest or the internet to help me form an idea of what has been done, or showing me what I could do. Of all places I ended up finding inspiration from the TV show Scrubs. The character, Janitor, always wore his uniform on the show, so that is what I went with. Now finding toddler coveralls was another matter.

So what we went with was: a chambray shirt from Old Navy, thick navy blue canvas cargo pants from Goodwill, a custom patch from an Etsy vendor, and boots that we already had. To accessorize, we added his toy keys to his pants, and an ID badge. So the total costume was about $21 (as we already had about three of the things).

Then we picked up items and created the janitor cart. It was another one of those items that needed to be made ourselves as the closest thing I could find was the Melissa and Doug Housekeeping Cart, but I wasn't about to pay $150. The blue metal cart was from Goodwill, the mop (a carwash sponge) was from a big box retail store, the thick yellow canvas pockets was fabric from JoAnne Fabric that my mom sewed for me, the garbage bags were black doggie poop bags, and some smaller scrub brushes were from WINCO. Then we just added some things we already had like blue rubber gloves, a plastic dust pan and broom, a spray bottle, and rags. Total cost was about $25-$30.

 

We did put window insulation around the perimeter of the metal cart for injury prevention to himself and our walls, but it was easily concealed by the black garbage bag. There you have it, an adorable Janitor who actually won Best Costume at one of the festivals we went to!

Children's Book, "Too High!"

One of the first books my son became attached to, wasn't one of the classic children's books that you have seen over the years or are given as shower gifts, but a random children's book we picked up at a friend's house. It is titled, "Too High!" by Judy Nayer and illustrated by Madelaine Gill.

I think my son became attached to it as he loves balloons, there are animals featured inside, and the animals featured are ones that he started to recognize. The words throughout are very simple and repeat over and over. Each page only has about three or four words, making it easy for a child to follow and easy for parents to give voices to each animal. The only thing I find strange is the summary of the most used words at the end of the book. I would remove most of the words and add in some that I feel like are the true words that are repeated over and over.

I couldn't find this book on Amazon or by a Google image or web search, so thought I would paste it here to share.

Wedding at the Oregon Gardens

My friend Marisa got married over the weekend at the gorgeous Oregon Gardens. She didn't need much as far as decor went, since the place itself is the decor, but she had a few things that added to the event. I was lucky enough to be able to help set-up the ceremony, cocktail, and reception sites. Thankfully, I had my husband and sister with me to tackle all the projects.

Here are just a couple of cute ideas and decorations from her big day.

Escort cards inside a vintage suitcase. Marisa had classy vintage travel theme as part of her wedding. She hand wrote all the names of her guests on the escort cards and we had the fun challenge of displaying them.

The cards on the bottom were laid inside paper folded up accordion style. The middle cards were tucked into a seam of the suitcase and the top ones were stuck into the lining of the suitcase with a straight pin. One of the challenges discussed before the wedding was what she was going to do with her friends who didn't share the same last name? She wanted the cards laid out in alphabetical order, but it was easy to do with couples who shared the same last name. So those guests, either because they are dating, married, but didn't take one another's names, or in a same sex relationship, what would make the most sense? We went with alpha order between the two people. So looking at the last names of the couple, whose last name came first? Using their last name, the card was inserted into the pile in alpha order.

Behind the vintage suitcases, was a framed world vintage looking map. Marisa cleanly stuck map pins and string into cities and places they've been, were born, been to separately and together. She created a little legend in the corner and color coded everything, so guests could learn more about them.

Her reception tables were glass vases of varying heights, shapes, and colors. We predetermined how many of what size were needed for each table. Then we went around a filled some with candles and others with one or two dahlias.

The table number was a picture of a famous city they have traveled to. Each picture looked a little vintage and on the back of the number had a little story about that city. 

Balloons, Balls, and First Birthday Party Decor

My son turned one over the weekend and his party had a lot of color, circles, and balloons! We had wonderful summer weather to have his celebration outside in our backyard.

 

The Happy Birthday sign is made out of felt and purchased from Target. It was so cheap, I couldn't have made it cheaper!

 

Puff balls from craft store hot glued to a Styrofoam ring, hung on the front door.

Our pergola held puff balls and streamers, with a circle garland in the background.

Puff balls were a combination of homemade and store bought ones.

The circle garland was made using precut circles from Michael's. A hole was punched on either end and brown ribbon tied each circle together. The garland now hangs in my son's room.

The balloon and circle themed was carried into table runners made out of butcher paper cut into balloon shapes. Extra balloon cut-outs were taped to our fence.

I found reusable ice cubes in balls on Amazon. Thought the small detail would be fun and I can reuse these and Conrad might even have fun with them with various activities in the future.

One treat that I thought would look like balloons was donut holes attached to skewers with ribbon around them. They were simple and easy and most of the adults gobbled them up!

The perfect scene to sing Happy Birthday! Foam letters were cut and taped to our house. Originally, I planned to hang these like garland, but they weren't cooperating and the foam holders weren't staying attached. Plan B worked even better!

Our homemade (healthy, but sweet cake) on top of our You Are Special Today plate. Water balloons were blown up and attached to chopsticks/skewers.

Here is the recipe we did for his cake (it is actually a cookie recipe we morphed into a cake):

3 mashed bananas (ripe)
1 cup shredded carrots

1/3 C applesauce

2 C oats

1/2 C raisins (we didn't put these in)

1/4 C almond milk (we used regular milk)

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

nuts (omitted the nuts too)

Most everything we used was organic and the goal was to use homemade whipping cream or a carrot glaze for the top, but neither set, so store bought canned whip cream it was!