Christmas Tree DIY - great for newlyweds!

The first year my husband and I were married we also bought and remodeled a house ourselves. When Christmastime rolled around I was thrilled to get set up for the holidays in our new home but going and buying a bunch of holiday decor wasn't in the budget. Ornaments for the tree or new pulls for all the drawers in the kitchen? Dinner out or use that $50 for 2 gallons of paint? You get the picture. Ever the pragmatic one, I went for the drawer pulls.

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is going to the mailbox each day to find it full of Christmas cards. With e-mail, text messaging and e-vites it's so rare to get "real" mail these days. It makes it all the more fun to have stacks of pictures to look forward to each day. However, all those cute cards ended up in a bowl on a table somewhere. As they say, necessity breeds invention and inspiration struck...let's clothespin the cards to the tree and make them our ornaments instead! That way all the cards would be out for us to enjoy as well as our guests throughout the season - because lets be honest - it's fun to look at everyone's Christmas cards - even if you don't know them.

See that? Hi Tory, Hi James, Hi Baby Jake! And there is my godson Kellis, giving me the peace sign. Right back at you buddy. I even like looking at pictures of pictures. Pathetic, I'm sure.

As our holidays have grown and so have the boxes of Christmas decorations that come out of the attic every year, the Christmas Card Tree is a tradition we've kept. We're not going to win any awards for the "perfect tree" with matching collectible ornaments but that's ok at our house. We get the tree started with lights and bright colored balls and then watch it fill up as Christmas draws closer. As the Christmas cards we receive have changed from documenting fun trips and the weddings of our friends to documenting how their families are growing and growing up, it's fun not only for us but for our kids to enjoy the photographs of their friends on the tree!

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Yesterday we loaded up the girls and went to the Christmas tree farm and cut down a great tree. Instead of the perfect shape and top, we tend to go for the tree with it's own personality. This year it has multiple "tops" springing out like a fountain. We also got a live, potted one for the girl's playroom and a little bitty one for the coffee table. We had a blast listening to Christmas music, stringing lights and hanging pink, turquoise and lime green balls on it's branches and putting stars on each of the many tops last night. Now we can hardly wait for the mail to start arriving!

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays! I hope this season is filled with joy!

"I just want it to be fun and happy"

Last spring I met with Amy, a bride who, like so many women these days, had a lot on her plate and very little time to plan a destination wedding. She chose the location and then gave me a call. Her wonderful bridesmaid came to town with her for our initial meeting and gave me the heads up: "she makes really fast decisions". She was right! That day we went over a lot of looks and as we started narrowing down a direction Amy told me something that stuck with me. She said, "I just want it to be fun and happy because that's how I feel. Happy."

We walked down to Morgan Davis and she picked a really fun, colorful and totally unusual invitation before we even we sat down. After that we were off. Save the Dates and then Invitations went out and before we knew it the wedding was upon us and my entire studio was filled with bright colored tissue paper poms and candles. FILLED. Seriously. There was a VERY small path to walk into the front and turn in a tight circle, nothing else.

Amy's now husband, Aaron, was so nice and this was one of those weddings that Jasper and I both had "Awwwww" moments and got all teared up just during the rehearsal! I know. We're saps.

Photographer Corrie Fish was nice enough to send me these images. She and her husband work as a team and not only did they do a great job, they were really nice and so easy to work with. Thanks Corrie!

Kairos absolutely glowed with warm light from all the candles and Chinese lanterns

Goodbye you two! It really did turn out to be fun and happy...just like yourselves.

DIY Labels

Recently I sent out these invitations for a bride - problem was these rich brown envelopes only lend to writing on them with a gold or silver pen. This wasn't really the type of invitation that wanted gold or silver writing - not to mention that my handwriting, while tidy and neat, isn't nice enough for wedding invitations. The invitations were beautiful, yet casual and fun enough to be able to handle something besides a calligrapher addressing the envelope so we started looking into the idea of labels. Nooo, not those white labels...surely you know me better than that. We wanted color. We wanted different.

We tried to order labels from Paper Source in strawberry or papaya to match the paper colors inside but the big ovals been discontinued! Oh the tragedy! What to do now? These invitations MUST go in the mail soon.

And so....

We ordered some of the text weight papaya paper, printed our labels on the computer and then cut them into 1" strips (the same width as the 3M permanent double stick tape) by that wrapped around the invitation to reveal the return address on the back. It worked out perfectly, if I do say so myself.