We’ve reached the busy season, and that typically means lots of parties and get togethers to celebrate the holidays. I love this time of year (like most of you) and there’s usually a lot that goes into getting ready for a party. Coming up with the food menu, activities, decorations, etc.
One of my favorite things at a party are the photo booths! I love that there are so many fun ideas to create a cute back drop and capture a moment from the party. If you’re having a photo booth, you’re definitely going to need some props! These props are the perfect addition to your Fall photo booth and you can make them at home!
These are easy to put together and add a little fun and silliness to your pictures! Who doesn’t love that? Here is what you’ll need to put these together:
Another year has come and gone, and I swear it felt like 2022 went by faster than any of the other years. This past year was the most we’ve ever traveled as a family. We visited Tennessee twice, went back home to California to visit family, and enjoyed a Christmas vacation in Costa Rica! I’m sure all the traveling helped make it feel like the year flew by in a flash.
Our kids certainly kept us busy on top of that! With the many different sports and hobbies they’re interested in, it made the weeks go by fast. Don’t get me wrong, there were weeks that dragged on and on, but for the most part, we kept ourselves busy chauffeuring our kids everywhere. Anybody else in the same boat? 🙂
With all that’s been happening last year, I was slow in getting the 2023 calendar out! I know that many of you use this to plan out your year and I’m so glad you keep coming back to get the new year’s calendar. I hope that you and your family have a wonderful and safe 2023!
There’s less than 2 months until Halloween, can you believe it? We’re so excited to dress up and stuff our faces with Halloween candy. Since we’re quickly approaching Halloween season, that means (for some of us) party season!
Halloween parties are one of my favorites. It’s so fun to see friends and family dress up, especially the DIY costumes. My SIL flawlessly puts together her daughters halloween costumes pretty much every year and she pulls them off with such ease! They look amazing and I’m always so impressed.
When our oldest was born, we started to dress up as a family and we kept the tradition alive for a while. A few years ago, we made Harry Potter costumes, and I enlisted the help of my MIL to help make the robes for the 3 of them, among a few other things. That was the last year our kids ever dressed up in themed costumes, but it was one of my favorites!
If you’re planning a Halloween party this year, here’s a free invitation you can use to send to your friends/family! Either print out with the pdf and fill in the even details, or send out a digital version of it that you can edit yourself! Both options are simple and easy to use.
One of my favorite small gifts to give, especially during the holidays, is hand soap. We were just walking through TJ Maxx the other day and found all of these adorable Halloween hand soaps shaped in pumpkins & ghosts. It’s the perfect little gift to give individually or add in a “You’ve Been Booed” gift basket.
Adding these Halloween Hand Soap Gift Tags helps make this small gift even more fun to receive. Simply print out the gift tags on cardstock and add some cute Halloween Ribbon and you’ve got yourself the perfect little gift!
These gift tags pictured fit perfectly with any Bath and Body works soap, but work great with any soap bottle.
It may only be August, but I’m excited and ready for Halloween! Part of the reason may be because we live in Texas and am ready for the cooler temps, but I love this time of year. I love all the decorations, the get togethers, and all the food.
Chocolate is my biggest weakness and I struggle to say no to it. This is probably a big part of why I love this time of year so much. All of the sweets and did I mention the delicious food?
We’ve already started thinking about what costumes our kids are going to wear for Halloween, and at the moment they’re saying they’re sticking to what they’ve picked out this year. I highly doubt our 6 year old has completely made up her mind, but she has a couple more months to decide! We’re in no rush, but it’s fun to plan already.
I’m sharing these cute gift tags to attach to treat bags for school parties, party favors or to hand out for trick or treat-ers on Halloween! There are 3 different options to choose from! If you love all 3, print them all out. if there is one or two that match better with your party theme, there’s that option as well.
I’m using these Kraft Paper Treat Bags to fill small treats in and a small clothes pin to secure the tag to it. You could easily turn these gift tags into stickers or hole punch them through the tags and attach them to bags with ribbon.
Another year has flown by, and we’re getting already getting ready for another one! I don’t know about you, but I’m grateful my kiddos are back and school and they’ve been able to enjoy some of their favorite sports this year. Our youngest started Kindergarten this year and I’m so glad she was able to start her first year of elementary school in person!
While 2021 still may not have been what we have wanted it to be, I’m hopeful that 2022 will be a better year!
What a crazy year 2020 has been! Just like many of you, I cannot wait until this year is over and I am waiting for things to get back to normal. While I know it will definitely be a while until that happens again, we are trying to make the most of it! Crossing my fingers things start to improve in 2021!
It blows my mind how many of you use this calendar year after year! I hope this continues to help you stay organized in 2021. Stay safe!
Our little girl turned 4 and she was so excited to have a unicorn birthday party with a small group of her friends. She has been waiting for this party since her brother’s birthday party in February, so this was a long wait for her (or any 4 year old).
Riley and I came up with a few different ideas on what crafts she wanted to do with her friends. We thought about making unicorn headbands, decorate unicorn sugar cookies or make a unicorn painting. Finally, we decided on 2 crafts, and they made unicorn bracelets, and unicorn wands. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, since 3-4 years have short attention spans.
I have been loving the look of the bubblegum necklaces, and we found a pack of mixed beads on sale at Hobby Lobby, and I also ordered some beads on Etsy to add a few more colors. To call it a “unicorn bracelet,” I bought some unicorn charms to complete the look. To help make things easy and organized, I bought some small organza gift bags and placed the beads and pre-cut stretch magic string and tied the ends. This also worked out perfectly to put their bracelet back in the bag after they were done.
Materials for Unicorn Bracelets:
16mm bubble gum beads
Stretch Magic 1mm jewelry cord
Unicorn Charms
Organza gift bags 3×4 – optional
For the unicorn wands, we used small wooden stars, wooden dowels, acrylic paint, and found some unicorn stickers. We played some games while we waited for the paint to dry, and my MIL helped glue the dowels to the stars and the ribbon. This project was definitely the quickest for them to complete, but was definitely longer due to having to wait for the paint to dry and then putting together the wand. But I love how they turned out!
Materials for the Unicorn Wands:
Wooden stars
1/8″ Wooden dowels
Acrylic Paint – assorted colors
Paint brushes
Assorted Ribbon
Stickers
For the games, we played the classic “Pin the Horn on the Unicorn,” and the Unicorn Ring Toss. I had my boys be the center of the game, and while they acted like they totally hated it, I think they had some fun doing it. There was no order to the ring toss game at this point, as we had 30 minutes left and we still had a pinata and cake to get to before the party was over! The girls just threw the rings at the boys, but my kids loved playing it before and after the party was over.
I wish I had taken a picture of the cake with my DSLR camera than with my phone, but I loved how it turned out! We did a small birthday party with family the week before on her actual birthday, and while I thought it looked pretty good, I just didn’t want to mess with the fondant for the ears and the horn again. I found this awesome unicorn horn and ears topper that worked great on a 6″ cake. I had 3 layers on my cake, and there was still half of it remaining. I don’t make cake very often, but this party has proven that with a small group, 6″ of cake is enough, especially if there are 3 layers!
I even went crazy and made some cupcakes in case the 6″ cake wasn’t enough for everyone. Nice to know that I probably won’t have to do that again unless I have a bigger group of friends over.
For the decorations, I like to try and keep things more on the “frugal” side. I used a lot of streamers and I thought they turned out pretty elegant! I like to hang banners in front of them to add a little more dimension. My favorite banner is this Unicorn Banner that I’ll link in a future post to come.
I cut out circles of colored card stock and glitter card stock and sewed them together to create the hanging decorations. Instead of having to cut the circles out by hand or waiting for my Cricut to print out hundreds of circles, I use this Craft Punch circle tool to get them cut in a short amount of time. I used my Cricut to cut out gold glitter unicorns to put at the end of some of the hanging decorations.
I found these amazing unicorn headbands at the Children’s place for such a great deal and used these as a party favors, but the girls were able to pick them up at the start of the party to get into the theme of the party.
We had a blast, and it seemed like the party went by in a blur, but I know Riley had such a great time and was happy to see her friends. It takes a lot of time and effort to throw a party, but knowing that she was happy with they way things looked and had fun, is all that matters! Happy birthday baby girl!
We moved into our brand new home the day before Thanksgiving last year making this our 7th home! This does not include all of our transition periods staying at one of our parents’ homes in between a few of those moves. We have lived in 4 different states, California, Idaho, Washington and currently Texas. It has been quite the adventure for us and our kids.
With every move I’ve found it usually takes me months before I’ve formed a plan of how I want to decorate my walls. My entry was lacking a bit of a warm welcome, and I finally found a solution! It was during the early stages of quarantine that I needed a small project to keep myself busy with all the free time we had after work, when the kids would normally occupy our evenings with sports.
This project was easy, not unbearably time consuming, and just what my entryway needed! I found everything I needed on Amazon:
All I needed to do was paint my letters white, and then after they dried I hung them up on the wall with 2 command strips on each letter. For me, the easiest way to hang it was starting from the bottom and then moving my way to the top so I knew how low I wanted my letters to be. I hung the wreath up with a nail to complete the farmhouse look. You could definitely change up this look during the holidays to make it more festive!
Life has been crazy since the last calendar was out, which is why it has taken me so long to get the 2020 Printable Calendar on the blog. I have gone to work full time and being a working mom of 3 busy kids is no easy task! I’m sure many of you can relate to this! JD is playing baseball and soccer, Danny is also playing soccer, and our 3 year old Riley is working on her potty training so that she can start either gymnastics or dance, that’s her reward if she can be completed potty trained (anyone else out there hate potty training??)
Having a calendar to keep our life organized is now more vital than ever. I’m so grateful to have these around, and I love hearing how many of you are excited to use these calendars year after year!
