Thanksgiving Decor

Good morning! Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, but luckily my decor was centered around fall (I did that on purpose) and not too specific to Thanksgiving. I can leave it up until I put out my Christmas decorations if I want, even though it snows way before then (or I'll have to make some winter-y decorations for that in-between period).

These I obviously did not make. I bought these and my niece helped me put them on the window. She was so excited about them, and told me "Auntie, the witch has hair like you!" (I was having a particularly bad hair day). She ripped the one pumpkin a little bit, and had a mini panic attack, but I'm surprised that they all survived coming off the protective sheet. When her mom came to pic her up later that afternoon, she insisted on showing her, and when everyone came for dinner the weekend after, she showed them all what her and auntie did.

I shared this sneak peek on my Instagram.

I then later shared this photo of a little crate full of pumpkins. They're so tiny and adorable! You can find the tutorial for these adorable pumpkins HERE. That link leads you to Craftaholics Anonymous. They have tons of great tutorials and projects over there! The stem/leaf on top, I made using a modified cutfile. I just took a simple leaf shape and welded it onto a rectangle, then folded 1/4"
of the bottom of the rectangle and hot glued it to the top of the pumpkin.

When I started making them, my niece was helping me, and I had set aside pumpkins for her because she asked if she could make "pumpkin, snowmen". I knew what she meant so I made this little pumpkin-man family for her. After this photo was taken I added a mustache to two of them, hair bows to two of them, and one with a mustache got a little bowtie. They're adorable.

I wrapped them up in a Christmas gift bag with a snowman on it, and wrote in an adorable little card I made a few years ago for Valentine's Day (it says I [heart] U on the front). She loved it, and was almost in tears when she came to thank me. It made my heart extremely happy.

Some people do a fancy table set up, but because my family puts all the food on the table, I did a fancy set up on the cabinet beside the TV that has all of our movies in it. I cleaned everything off of it and put the silver candle holders and the blue bottles back up. Then I pulled out and added my fall arrangements (the one on the right is damaged from water getting in the basement). I also made some larger pumpkins and put them onto some candle holders I've had for 3 years, but have yet to find candles I like to put on them. I bought the owl, and the candle at Michael's, in their halloween section.

Here's those pumpkins. What I did was just figured out a pattern, and ran the string between the paper strips (just straight through the center of the pumpkin). I had to adjust a few of them as they smushed together more than I wanted, when I put them up over the window.

I hope this inspires some of you to save some money and make your own fall decorations! I see a lot more garlands in my future. Especially now that I have a sewing machine. For winter, I think I want to make a snowflake one. I'm getting pretty excited for Christmas, I already have a list of things I want to try, not just for the blog, but because we have very few Christmas decorations, and now that work is new and pretty, I'd love to make some pretty things for there as well!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

My Nephew's Baby Shower

Good morning! Today I'm sharing the only photos I took of my nephew's baby shower. I had this whole rant written about everything that went wrong with the shower, and all the things about it that made me disappointed, but because the day of the shower was the beginning of my 100 Happy Days, I've decided to focus on the parts of it that make me happy.

For some reason, I feel like banners aren't complete without rosette clusters. This was a tough one for me because it didn't turn out how I hoped it would, however, everyone still loved it. (I doubt they'd complain to my face anyways). I had Jon help me lay it out on the floor and figure out where we wanted to put each rosette.

We kind of had a navy/baby blue/black/white theme going on. I had this adorable mustache/bow punch I picked up a while back at Michael's and thought it would be perfect to make little clothes pins (for that game where you can't say baby). They were so cute! Luckily my mom had a ton of clothes pins on hand!

I made a bunch of these onesies. I cut them out with the Silhouette, and had my mom glue the blue trim pieces and mustaches down. This one was a little of a last minute thing. I printed what I wanted to say out on printer paper, and placed this card on top of what I'd just printed (where I wanted it to print on the card) and taped it down with washitape and printed straight onto this card.

This is something that frustrated me a little. I designed these in Microsoft Word, and printed them on sticker paper. Unfortunately, my circle punch refused to cleanly punch through the sticker paper, and so I ended up having to cut a few of them out by hand, and some of the borders didn't end up perfectly straight (oh well).

Here's the stickers on the little Jell-o shot containers. They look fine. At the top you can see the bow/mustache punch I used.

Here's the head table. This is where Carla, and the kids were supposed to sit, and I believe her mom, and my mom were also supposed to sit there, but they ended up at another table, and so Carla had her friend (the only friend that showed up) sit with her. I could have probably made the tissue paper pom poms, but because I was in a time crunch, and I haven't made any that size, I bought these from a local store.

This is my favorite thing ever. When Emmett was born, someone asked about nicknames for him, and Carla said they'd probably just call him "Em&Em". Being the creative person I am, I figured M&M's would make an adorable party favor, and so I made up this adorable sign so that it made sense to everyone else as well. (I thought it was rather funny to be honest).

Trying to switch up the angles I take my photos, and to show how many M&M's there were on the table. You can imagine how much willpower it took for me not to eat all of these before the shower started (not that many people took them anyways).

Of course I had to take a close up of this banner. It's just so pretty, and I kept it so I can use it again for other things. I made sure the "It's a boy" part was removable so that I could use this for a birthday if I wanted.

This picture is super grainy, but it was a little dark over in this corner. I put the gift table to the right of the head table for quick access when it came time for her to open them.

This is the set up I had just outside the door to the "party". I put the info about the games and the sheets for them, and the guestbook here.

I neatly stacked all the clothes pins in this little box (the lid has an owl on it), and put the instructions for the games in a frame and set it in the lid.

I put out a pen, and the little onesies that I turned into a little guestbook on the table beside it. Two additional games were placed above it.

My mom brought this little box to put the onesies in, once they'd put their well wishes on them. At the last minute I put a little picture frame with a photo of Emmett in it, in front of this.

Thanks for coming by to see the last minute and quick decorations I made for my nephews baby shower. If I'd had more time, I have so many ideas in my head that I wanted to do, but given this was all at the last minute, I think it all turned out pretty well! The food was good, the cupcakes were adorable, and Emmett got a bunch of new clothes!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria