Tis the season...

I've found some time to make a few new goodies for my home this Christmas!  You know how you sometimes don't know what you're missing?  Well I've been missing creating with my hands.  Apparently. Because now I can't seem to find a stopping point!  The photography suffices to an extent, but I guess every now and then I just gotta get out the spray paint, scissors, ribbon, glue... :)

I'm foregoing tree skirts this year in favor of something simple and lovely.  I cut up a bunch of burlap and made these sacks for the bottoms of my trees instead, and tied them up with lace.  I'm having a mostly white Christmas this year, so it's just perfect.  Perfect and simple.

My husband finds it amusing that it takes me DAYS to get my house decorated for Christmas.  I find it therapeutic!  I gotta do something different every year, not necessarily with all new things, but I like to think of new ways to display things, and just tweak it from year to year.  It makes it so much more magical!  How about you?  How long does it take you to deck the halls?  Do you enjoy it, or is it a chore?  I'm guessing, since most of you love craftiness like myself, that we are all int he same boat. :)

P.S. I am still posting at Brown Paper Packages every other week!  This week we're talking about Christmas bokeh:

{Ah, that's nice... isn't it?}

Come see how to get the great Christmas bokeh at BPP... should be up tomorrow or Friday. :)

P.P.S. Let's see if I can blog twice this month!  I'm also working on an angel wings project... as I have been obsessed with wings lately!

Carnival Birthday Party

My Drewby is 7!!!  This year's party theme was "carnival"... so, so fun and full of possibilities.  Luckily, both Hobby Lobby and Party City have a party line of carnival themed items.  Plus I scored several items from Target's $1 spot for party favors.

I kept the decorations pretty simple...

The first thing kids wanted to do was play in the bouncy house we rented for the day:

This was the main attraction!  But we also played some fun old fashioned games.  We had a potato sack race and raced with plastic eggs on spoons.

The kids loved both games enough to play a few times each.

I also had a little photo area set up:

The kids came in and ate pizza, drank kool-aid and had cupcakes/cake.

Each guest took home a treat (circus peanuts or cotton candy in the plastic containers you see above) and a party favor that included these items from the $1 spot at Target:

Drew was one happy boy!  He had such a blast with his friends!