Happy 1st Birthday Harper Girl!

Our little Happy turned 1 on the 14th & we had an absolutely wonderful day.  

Harper girl showing she's one, sitting in the rocking chair I had as a child, & wearing a beautiful Baby Gap dress I got at a garage sale for $1-- my idea of a perfect trifecta.

We woke up, went to church, Harper screamed her head off in the nursery (that part was not wonderful), came home & had a lovely party with good friends, my gram, & Aunt Sandra. 

The only problem with having the party immediately after church was Harper was completely exhausted, so while we had pizza, Harper girl snoozed away.   

Eventually she woke up & really enjoyed herself.  She LOVED her cake & played with all of her presents just as soon as Emerson opened them.  

 I made Harper's cake & bear print cupcakes, & was pretty pleased with how they turned out.  Aside from our usual, homemade decorations, I decorated our mantle & china cabinet in the dining room with bears, bear books, & the boxed set of Winnie The Pooh books we gave Harper. 

We gave Harper a "Harper sized" doll &  I knitted it an accompanying doll blanket that matches the blanket I knitted her before she was born (pictured above).

It was a beautiful day to celebrate our happy Harper girl & we are certainly blessed to call her ours!

Ways to Save on Christmas Wrapping

One of the more obnoxious expenses of holiday season are the costs of wrapping the presents.   The wrappings are thrown away & it seems wasteful to harm any trees & create more trash just to wrap presents.  I try not to spend anything on wrapping paper, gift bags, boxes, etc. & have tried to cut down on the waste of traditional gift giving.  Here are some ways to cut down your expenses & your impact.


Go Reusable--Most stores are offer really cute reusable bags.  The bag on the left my Mom bought to wrap my birthday gifts.  It was $0.99 & holds a ton.  The red gift bag was gift wrapping from a Target.com present & we've used it multiple times.  Instead of a bunch of small gift bags, consider buying one large reusable bag. 



Save & Reuse the Bags/Bows/Tissue You Receive-- I  save every gift wrapping that I receive.  After several wedding & baby showers we've acquired quite the stockpile.  This is a great way to cut down on your environmental impact & your holiday expenses.

Ask for Boxes--Many stores offer free gift boxes at the holidays.  Simply ask if they have any available. 




 Make Your Own Gift Tags--One great way to reuse the deluge of annual Christmas cards is to cut them into gift tags.  It's cheap, looks cute, & gives a second life to Christmas cards. 

 Hit Up The Dollar Store--If you don't have a stockpile & want traditional wrappings the dollar store is a great place to purchase gift wraps, etc. inexpensively. 







Buy After Christmas Clearance--Wait until gift wrappings go on clearance. Items are a fraction of the price & I've was able to get all of the cute wrapping items to the right for pennies of the original price buy buying after Christmas (& many were sustainably harvested!). 

Think Creatively--Wrapping paper can be made from salvaged brown bags, newspapers, old maps, & other such items.  Look around to see what you have on hand before you rush to the store. 

Hopefully you don't have to spend money on your holiday wrappings & hopefully such wrappings have a minimal impact on the environment.  Season's Greetings!

Homemade Christmas--Buggy Blanket

Bug & her beloved Purple

Our little Doodlebug LOVES her blanket.  I'm not a fabulous knitter, but I knitted her two while I was first pregnant.  One sort of fell apart, and the other, which is more the size of a shawl than a proper blanket, is Emerson's absolute favorite.  She calls it purple & cannot stand to be away from it.  I unfortunately learned this the hard way when we forgot to bring it to the Museum of Sciences in San Fransisco & she had a total melt down hissy fit.  Seriously.  Rolling on the floor screaming.  We were those parents unable to control their child.  You're welcome, society. 

In the hopes of creating another blanket for Bug to love I decided to knit her a brand new blanket for Christmas. I tried to do this as frugally as possible, so I deconstructed the first blanket I made her.  I then used a Michael's giftcard from my FIL & paired that with weekly 40% off coupons to gather materials as cheaply as possible.  And today, after what seems like forever, I finally completed the project. 

Bug's blanket folded in half

I also decided to use up the remaining scrap yarn & I made it into a little baby doll blanket.  I'm hoping she'll be satisfied carrying the little doll blanket so we won't have to lug around old purple or new purple when we go to museums, but we shall see.   

Either way, I'm proud of myself.  It took a lot of time & it's not perfect, but I'm so happy to be able to give Emerson something that I made with my own hands this Christmas.  Now I just need to start knitting a blanket for Little Baby as well...

Last Minutes Women's Group Gift

I belong to a Women's Group at my church.  Each monthly meeting there is a drawing for the friendship ball (pictured below), which contains a small gift.  Last month I won, which meant that the following month I needed to give a gift. I completely forgot about it until I was getting ready to go out of town, and needed to pull something together quickly.  I scoured the house, for a Valentine's themed present and came up with a candle (I don't know where I got this?), and a little hand sanitizer (free from January's I LUV BB club). The only thing I needed was how to make this present tied together and presentable.

Because the gift was to be given around Valentines Day, I chose red Christmas ribbon and some red origami paper, leftover from my childhood.  I wrote verses that pertained to light (candle) and love (sanitizer) to show a little correlation between the gifts.  The little present ended up being totally free, and in my opinion pretty cute for being thrown together on the fly. 

Decorating for a Birthday on a Budget

When we planned Emerson's first birthday party, the only time that would work for us was having the party on a week night, so we knew we needed to feed people.  Everything else would have to be cheap, inexpensive, and (hopefully) cute.  Last year my mother in law graciously gifted us a "party in a bag" that included plates, napkins and invitations.  I planned on using those, and working from there. 

The invitations (sorry, no pictures) were a mix of a set my mother in law gave us, and some blank note cards.  I figured it didn't really matter if they matched.  

The package of plates from my MIL only included eight, so I knew that wouldn't be enough.  To get more, I headed over to the Dollar Tree and got two twenty packs of purple plates for $2.  Who could beat that?!

 

We also had a matching set of sixteen napkins, and I used some leftovers from my wedding shower.  I always save extra picnic ware from take out in this lovely little caddy, so I simply pulled out everything that wasn't black.  

For the rest of the house, I created card banners from my saved childhood cards.  I had close to twenty years of cards to choose from, but I think if you asked friends to save theirs, you could have enough for a free banner in no time.

I used decorative scissors to trim the cards, and they turned out really well!  I just cut the triangles, hung it on left over ribbon (saved from gifts), knotted either side of the card, so it didn't slide, and hung them.

Then my lovely sister made this banner out of sticky notes that I had left over from teaching, and some salvaged chord from a wedding present. 

We also got some helium balloons as a little present to E.  These were from Dollar Tree, so they were a dollar each.

 

 Lastly, here are all of the cupcakes I baked for Emerson's party.  I used 4 boxes of cake mix, and 4 tubs of frosting colored with food coloring.  On top of the cup cakes I used Jelly Bellys to decorate.  For all 96 cupcakes that I baked, it cost around $10.

It was a very happy birthday party indeed.