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After digging through twelve months of archived blog posts tonight, I have been thoroughly reminded that this past year has been very good to me. Here are some of my favorites bits and memories from 2011...
Favorite Organizational Project
Favorite Moment with Our Nephew and Nieces
I feel incredibly fortunate to get to share so many of the big and little details of our family's life...thanks for being here for all of these 2011 memories. Happy New Year!
We are so doing this again. G3 2012 here we come...
This month we...
{G3 is a end of the month wrap-up for our little family}
Mac's thank you cards were all moustache stamped and written by yesterday morning and I still have to write all of mine...
It's two days after Christmas and I am surprisingly not as sad that it's over as I have been in year's past. In fact the Christmas tree is still up with a mess of unwrapped gifts piled underneath it. Rest assured though, I have gone crazy organizing all kinds of other things around the house.
I was organizing some photos today and came across a shot of the last two gifts I wrapped for the holiday...
As you could see on Christmas Eve, I successfully stuck to wrapping everything in kraft paper...these were the only two gifts I slipped any pattern onto. I used the random idea, that occurred to me a couple of years ago, of just wrapping a piece of wrapping paper around a gift wrapped in kraft.
And here's what was inside those packages...
I decided to take the whiteboard frame idea, I tried a couple of months ago, another step and cut fabric backgrounds to make a seasonal whiteboard. Way too many fabric choices were included since I can never walk away from a cute pattern (again evidenced by the wrapping paper above)...
I was so happy that the recipients seemed to like the idea as much as I did...can't wait to make more now.
For the last couple of year's Mac has made these paper snowflakes with one of his Dad's cousins. I have no idea how you would ever put this together, but they sure are cool...
Hope you had a fantastic holiday. Around here today we'll be cleaning up and organizing all the new gifts we were lucky enough to receive. And speaking of cleaning, I thought I'd share the random little hostess gift we gave at the celebrations we were invited to over the holiday...
I figured that it's pretty common to end up with tons of candy and other goodies from all the festivities, so instead of bringing more I used peppermint castile soap to make up some small bottles of "Candy Cane Counter Spray". Told you it was a random gift, but hopefully it comes in handy in tackling all the wonderful holiday messiness.
If you want to make up some countertop spray too here is a PDF of the tags... Download Candy Cane Countertop Spray Tags.
Sending many wishes for a holiday filled with happiness.
I love this stack of cards...just as I have loved the stack of cards in, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
However, this year's stack has me thinking that it might be the last. Fairly detailed, homemade cards almost put me over the edge this year. I figured out what I wanted to do in mid-November, but there was no time to really work on them until this past weekend. Just like the rest of the holidays, I want to get to enjoy the productivity instead of it being a major stress.
I discovered the other important aspect as I joyfully opened each envelope that we were lucky enough to receive this holiday. I really love the photo cards...I love the seeing our friends and families photos hanging together in our dining room and it helped me realize our little photos are tucked away hiding inside. Next year I'm thinking it will be the the first Griffin Family photo card...with at least one or maybe two homemade details. After all, it just has to be as cute as possible.
I figured if this year I could handle sixteen less strings of lights around the house or not being one of the hosts for our neighborhood holiday progressive dinner for the first time in seven years, then in 2012 I can figure out a couple more holiday simplifications.
Okay, too much talk not enough cards.
Is it possible that ideas like, "Hey, let's make our own striped trees out of tiny strips of cardstock" was part of what eventually sent me into a panic? It just looked so cute on that one card...surely it would work out for just over fifty of them.
Thanks for listening to my dose of reality along with this year's cards...no matter how crazy they may have seemed this time around it is always super fun to mail off a happy stack of envelopes.
Mac has been putting lots of effort into the gifts he is wrapping this week, including making bows out of magazines...
The December (nowhere near) Daily is underway.
A couple of years ago I joked that I was going to wrap everything in a paper bag from then on.
After putting these together I am re-convinced that it's the best idea ever.
1. Untitled, 2. joy, 3. Peppermint Reindeer Cookies & Free Printables, 4. small xmas tree, 5. DIY Adorned Glittered Clothespin Gift Toppers, 6. Untitled, 7. vintage ornaments on my charlie brown tree, 8. holiday cookie garland, 9. Holiday Garland, 10. Flower Bauble Wreath DIY, 11. Christmas stocking..., 12. it's time to deck the halls, 13. The Tree, 14. _MG_8014, 15. beginnings, 16. Sweet Stitching with Erin: Cross-Stitch Ornaments, 17. All Scrabbled Up, 18. gift certificates
1. Since I haven't done a Starred post in a hundred years I really have missed gathering the photo collage...so I put together a Christmasy one tonight.
2. I received my first grade for the Fall semester...an A+. I will enjoy this for a few minutes because I have a strong feeling it's about to be joined by two "B"s.
3. Last year one of our professors told us a "B" in grad school is basically like an "F". Granted, he was explaining this during a discussion of what it takes to get into a Ph.D. program, but the sentiment still struck a chord.
4. Despite this I will happily take my two "B"s because I never, ever plan on going back to school when this degree is complete.
5. There are only two Christmas gifts left to finish up around here and they involve eight yards of fabric.
6. I am also starting my December (not at all) Daily book tomorrow on December 20th. I have had a book cover and cute numbers waiting for me for the last month.
7. I also have my fingers crossed that I can start getting phone photos uploaded to a Walgreens app and printed in a matte finish at the store around the corner.
8. Matte finish photos are kind of a non-negotiable with me. Please tell me I'm not the only one who is picky about this.
Holiday break has begun for two out of the three of us (Mr. Griffin is in school until the 23rd) so tonight was dinner out and driving around to look at Christmas lights. We went to a neighborhood we've been visiting for years and found a new one (thanks to our brother-in-law) that hung balls of lights from every tall tree on the street.
Can't wait for more Christmas fun this week...
Packages of my favorite holiday tea to give as little gifts for school directors, my graduate assistant supervisor, Mac's tutor and a bunch of other people we are lucky to have help us throughout the year.
For teacher holiday gifts.
One more paper to finish.
One more week of school for Mac.
One more box of gifts to ship.
I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere. As long as I don't think of the pile of Christmas cards waiting to be made or the papers that I'll be grading later this week that are being turned in online tonight by a couple hundred students.
One thing at a time.
To keep going with the kraft wrapping I used these bags to wrap gift cards.
Where I would be on top of almost every holiday detail. The ornament for Sean's secret snowman at work would have been hanging on the tree in the teacher's lounge on the first day, like it has in year's past.
And this year it will be hung on the very last day they were told to have it up by.
A few weeks ago I thought I had a scary to-do list up on my whiteboard. That board has been wiped off twice by now and is currently full of the last list of the semester. Of course this one is the most frightening and I have exactly six days to get it completed. I have likened this to running a marathon...I may only be a couple of miles from the finish line, but it's a two mile uphill at the end and I am already feeling like mush.
I just need to keep focused and remind myself that I can pull it off. For instance those ribbons and tag are tied around the world's largest box that I never thought I could get wrapped decently, but I did and it's waiting for Sean right next to our Christmas tree.
Technically I should have been doing some of the heaps of schoolwork I have hanging over my head, but I took off a few hours today to spend time with Amber who was in town (actually "town" means two hours away, but I'm lucky that she drove out to visit). We marveled at the Purl Bee warehouse, devoured garlic chicken concoctions at Rutabegorz and talked and talked. It was so nice to spend time catching up with a friend and couldn't have been a better break from responsibility. Well, the only thing that could have made it better was an unlimited budget to spend on fabric, yarn and felt.
I'm pretty sure my love of deer started with some Christmas gifts a couple of years ago...since then it's popped up in scrapbooking or an occasional blog mention, but now it's back where it all began with wrapping...
(Deer stencil from this set)
{Quickly posing with our Thanksgiving turkey as we finished up the last preparations for our meal}
A couple of days late, but in November...
{G3 is a end of the month wrap-up for our little family}
This year's first Christmas tags were made in double batches...
