Meet Me Under The Mistletoe Mantle

Jake and I are hosting a holiday party for a diverse group in a couple weeks.  We thought it'd be fun to mix it up and do something a little quirky with our holiday mantle.  We decided that a mistletoe and peppermints theme would be fun.  By "we decided" I mean that we talked about it over dinner at the Olive Garden last Saturday night while he was my captive audience.  :) 

Grab a mint and come on in!

 Max is ready for the holidays too in his little striped sweater from Target.  We picked up our cute initialed stockings there too.

 Here's a detailed look at the right side of the mantle.  If you look closely at the background of this photo (click it to enlarge it), you can also see some of the subtle damask texture of our living room walls.    

The red lantern was on our front porch all summer but I knew it'd be perfect on the mantle filled with ornaments we already had, some extra filler ornaments from Target's dollar spot, and clear Christmas lights.  I picked up the 'J' ornament at Hobby Lobby (50% off!) during my recent business trip to South Carolina.  The tall cylinder vase is filled with wrapped Brach's Star Brites peppermints.  Gotta love edible decorations!

Here it is at night.  So pretty!

Let's take a look at the left side next.

These glass hurricanes are simply inexpensive vases.  I nestled battery operated tea lights into unwrapped peppermint puffs.  How stinking cute is that?  The tall cylinder vase is stuffed full of wrapped candy canes.  


Click here to read about how I made the kissing silhouettes.  It was really easy and no cricut or silhouette machine is required!  The girl has a ponytail like me.  :)   It's hard to capture the twinkling of this red glittered paper on camera but I love it in person.  We found the mistletoe at Target after wandering around several other stores.

A little tip... Glitter was flaking off the paper like crazy so I sprayed it down with aerosol hairspray.  It didn't completely stop glitter from falling off but it helped a lot.  The same trick is used to set charcoal and pastel artwork.


Click here to read about the 'Mistletoe' banner I made for zero dollars this morning.

I love how fun and festive this area of our home looks.  Maybe we'll get a Christmas tree next!

Leila and Kevin from The Lettered Cottage are hosting a holiday mantle party November 30th.  Go join the fun and take a peek at holiday mantles all over the country!

  

Click here to see some of the parties we'll be mingling at this week.

Under The Mistletoe Kissing Silhouettes

I hadn't jumped on the silhouettes bandwagon before but I knew kissing silhouettes had to be worked into our Mistletoe and Peppermints holiday mantle somehow.  I considered doing a small 5x7 framed version briefly but knew that going big would be a much better idea...

My supplies
- white poster board
- scrap ribbon
- pc printer paper
- scissors
- pen
- almost kissing silhouette image found here
- foam board
- pretty wrapping paper
- hot glue gun

Once I found an image that I liked online, I handed the laptop over to Jake.  He fiddled with resizing the image in Paint; ultimately he cropped the image and worked with the boy's head and girl's head separately.  It took some trial and error to get the proportions correct because the girl's ponytail throws things off a bit.  Once the sizing was sorted out, the boy's head filled one printed page and the girl's head with her ponytail took two printed pages.

I cut the printed images out, traced them onto the poster board, cut the images out of the poster board, and tied scrap ribbon around the girl's pony tail.  I gift wrapped the foam board, eye balled each silhouette's placement, hot glued the silhouettes down, and leaned the foam board on the mantle.  Done!

I planned to hot glue a row of candy cane hearts (two candy canes placed facing each other to make a heart shape) along the bottom of the board.  I forgot about it though until I was looking at these photos and wondered what was missing.  Maybe it's for the best.  I think this looks like it could easily transition into Valentine's Day decor.

Have you made silhouettes before?  Is your holiday decorating started yet?

Click here to see some more parties we'll be mingling at this week.

Easy Holiday Banner

I whipped up a super easy 'Mistletoe' banner to complete our holiday mantle this morning.

My supplies
- three green scrapbook papers
- sheer red ribbon
- precut red letters (found in walmart's poster board section)
- scissors
- mod podge (optional)

Since I wanted to keep it easy and quick, I cut the square scrapbook paper into quarters.   Then, I punched two holes into each quarter and strung them together using the ribbon.  The red letters have sticky backs like post-its but I added a touch of mod podge to the back of each one for good measure.  Couldn't be easier!  I was planning to embellish each square with ribbon, buttons, ric rac, etc but I like this simple and clean look.

Now we're got a festive little banner with no Cricut or Silhouette machine required! 

Masculine Gift Wrapping?

As you can see by looking at my gift wrapping and ribbon wall, I'm drawn to pretty papers and I love to use loads of ribbon.  I try to stay gender neutral in my wrapping paper roll selections but sometimes I feel a bit silly presenting fellas with frilly wrapped gifts.  I had a DVD set to wrap and some fairly masculine looking scrapbook paper was laying around so I decided to give it a try.

One sheet of scrapbook paper almost covered the DVD set but not quite.

I could've just covered that gap with ribbon but I decided to use a second sheet of coordinating paper instead (cut using the middle section of the paper - like trimming triangles off the sides off a diamond).

Then, I simply tied a bit of ribbon around that.  Ta da!

If this didn't work out, I was just going to tie some ribbon on the handles of the Best Buy bag the set came home in. ;)

Have you ever watched The Big Bang Theory?  Jake and I enjoy this sitcom!  Sheldon is our favorite character and the actor, Jim Parsons, who plays him won an Emmy this year.  We're actually watching a favorite episode (The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis) right now as I type.  :) If you want a fun gift for the self-proclaimed nerds/dorks/geeks in your life that seem to have everything, give them this show!

Weeknight Date Night!

Jake and I work in the same area and make the commute together most days.  Of course, "What's for dinner?" is often asked during our 45+ minute drive home.  This is one of our go-to meals so we always have these ingredients on hand.

Here's what we use for our super easy French bread pizza for 2 that comes out great every single time:
One frozen Whole Foods organic mini baguette
Applegate Farms pepperoni
Whole Foods shredded mozzarella cheese
Whole Foods pizza sauce

Sides:
Bag of salad
Cole Farms lite Sweet and Sour dressing - my favorite!

Jake's signature drink - We call it Concoction:
light Hawaiian punch
orange pineapple banana juice
ginger ale

Cookies:
snack size Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix (prepare dough to package directions)
Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips
Sunspire peanut butter chips

Games:



Well, that's Pizza and Game Night at Welcome Sunshine Home!  Add in the 80s or 90s music channel from Time Warner Cable and it's a super fun weeknight date for us.  Do you have a regular pizza night or game night at your house?

Click here to see some of the parties we'll be mingling at this week.