It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Who doesn't love Shutterfly! I know I do. I have ordered Photobooks, Yearly Calendars and Christmas Cards. They are great! And always have such a good quality. This is also where I made special announcement cards to tell our families we were pregnant both times (with Genevieve and this baby). So I am a big fan of Shutterfly.

With Christmas approaching, I have been thinking about what we are going to do for a Christmas Card this year. I went to the Christmas Cards Section on Shutterfly and fell in love with so many of their cards.

Take a look...

Wonder Trees Noir Christmas Card
My 1st favorite...Its fun. I love all of the colors of the trees

Bright Blooming Tree Christmas Card

This is my 2nd Favorite. I like that its more traditional...yet its not.

Mod Snowflakes Story Christmas Card

I like the black with the color snow flakes here.

Funky Christmas Wishes Christmas 5x7 folded card

Just as it says, I love how funky it is.

Swirls And Dots Holiday Card

Fun, Cute and Simple!

Sweet And Merry Christmas Card

This one is super cute too...but might be too girly for Nick.

Get Glowing Christmas Card

On this one I really like the Christmas tree as dots and the fun print.

Warm Wishes Christmas Card

I love how they have highlighted the words among the "subway art" on this one.

So don't be surprised if you get one of the above cards (insert our family) in your mailbox this year. They are fantastic!


As I mentioned before, I always make a Shutterfly Photo Calendar every year. Just like the picture below. Genevieve loves to see the pictures of herself from last year. It's the fun part of changing the calendar every year! And I love looking back and remembering what our family did last year. And I really like plugging in the birthdays into their system and they remember it for me so when I make my calendar for 2011, it will all be there remembering my birthdays...we'll just have one extra one to add!




Something else Shutterfly offers is their Canvas Wall Art. I have been wanting to get a canvas picture for a while now. I mean, how cute is this picture below. I have so many wedding pictures and none of them hanging up. I totally am adding this to my Christmas List! I would love to have a wrapped canvas picture hanging in our house. I have no doubt that their quality is fantastic.



So has that got you thinking about what you are doing for Christmas this year? Do you have your Christmas Card Designs yet? I highly recommend checking out Shutterfly for your cards and photo gifts this year. They have SO many things to choose from!


Fellow bloggers, want to find out more about how you can get 50 FREE Holiday Cards from Shutterfly...click HERE to find out! Good Luck.

Happy Holiday Card making to one and all!!!!

Gobble Gobble

One of the crafty blogs that I follow posted a link to this turkey shirt tutorial. I fell in love with it! I ended up finding a $2 tee and used some of my scraps. I ended up needing to "find" (aka buy) some extras too...I didn't have too many fall colors quite yet. For the turkey body, I dug into my giant felt stash.

Genevieve was so excited about this shirt when it was done. Her exact words were "Oh WOW!" Another success in the eyes of a toddler! She has wanted to wear this shirt everyday since I made it a week ago.

What a fun project for scraps! Now I'm just thinking of all the other holidays and what shirt I can create with scraps next!

Hooded Towel

Genevieve is growing out of all her hooded towels. So when walking through Tar.get one day, I spotted some clearance towels. I picked up a bath towel and two matching wash clothes. I would have ideally picked a different color and a hand towel vs 2 wash clothes, but orange was the only bath towel left. It worked out fine, Genevieve loves the color and loves the towel! And it only took me 15 minutes to whip up. I'd say that's a success!

Homemade Halloween

This year I decided it was going to be a Homemade Halloween. Growing up I loved that my mom made our costumes. So this year I decided to start the tradition to make Genevieve's costumes homemade from here on out.

So here we are:

Genevieve is a little lady bug and I am a skeleton (baby and all)

Our little lady ready to go to the special zoo event

I made a no-sew tutu skirt for the costume. I opted not to put spots on the skirt, it just didn't seem to need them. (there are so many tutorials on the Internet if you are interested in making a tutu for your little one)

For the antennas, I found a package of three headbands at the do.llar store and purchased some pipe cleaners and fuzzy craft balls....add some hot glue into the mix and there you have it! Genevieve and I had so much fun making the lady bug one, I let her pick from the other two color headbands and pipe cleaners and we made a second set for her to play with...we call them her funny bug.

And those wings...oh my, they were a little more challenging. I used wire hangers to shape the wings. I first made them too big and had to redo them. Trying to figure out what to use for the red of the wings was the challenge. First I tried tights...I even purchased 1xl-2xl and they wouldn't stretch. They I tried more tulle that I used for the skirt....well that was too see through. SO, finally I remembered that my husband has a red tee shirt and it was the perfect size! He was a little hesitant to let me cut up his shirt...but we convinced him otherwise. Once I had the tee in hand, it was all hot glue gun from there! The little black spots are felt circles I cut out. Then add a little elastic and there you have it! The cutest little ladybug there is!

In September I started searching for a Halloween maternity shirt and found a few, but most importantly saw a skeleton one with a baby fetus...but I was not willing to spent over $30 on it! So I just blew it off and said I didn't need a special shirt. Then one of the blogs I follow, G.et Your Craft.On, posted this....it was that same skeleton I saw before. But this time it was just the iron on and much more reasonable. Well, It was too late for me to order something to iron onto a shirt. So again I just blew it off and said oh well, I don't need a special shirt. THEN another bog I follow, M.ake It and L.ove It, posted this. PERFECT! I already had a roll of freezer paper sitting in my pantry waiting for the perfect project to try out stenciling with. So on Friday I went to the store and purchased a men's long sleeve black tee for $7. I burned the midnight oil Friday night, 1:30am to be exact, to create my skeleton shirt. It was a lot easier then I thought to use the freezer paper stencil idea. You should try it! I LOVE the way it turned out!!! And it was dry just in time for us to go trick-or-treating at the zoo.

I really do love how both of our costumes turned out. We had SO many compliments at the zoo and trick-or-treating the next day. I was so proud to tell people I made both costumes when they asked. I even had several people tell me that Genevieve's ladybug costume was the cutest one they had ever seen...better then the ones at the store. Love it! We will defiantly be doing homemade costumes from here on out!