Winter Photography & Decor 2018

Welcome to a winter decor update!
Today I'm sharing a couple of family photos as well as a bit of my winter decor, enjoy:

Sledding Photos

One of my favorite ways to decorate is to use personal photos.  I have tons of pictures that I change in and out with every season/holiday/ etc.  Most of them feature the kids faces so in the interest of maintaining their anonymity, I'm only sharing a couple, but aren't these sledding pics adorable?!?!

I love the way that photos can help establish a certain mood within a space.

Snowflakes

I'm still using these old snowflake boxes that I purchased from Wal-Mart over 16 years ago!

Snowballs & Ice

The faux ice was a treasure hunting find.  The snowballs I made by gluing faux plastic snow (also found treasure hunting) to Styrofoam balls (Dollar Tree).

Baby Mittens & Hats

I am so glad that I saved the kid's cute little hats and mittens!  I love being able to pull them out every year and remember their tiny hands and faces 😍

(Husby isn't concerned with anonymity so I'm letting one of his ice fishing photos slip through here 😎)

Snowflakes & Winter Florals

My Baby Girl made the snowflake cut-outs at school during a previous year.  The white velvet poinsettias are left over from the welcome baby party that I had for my Little Man.

(You can click here to read more about that party)

Ice & Snow

Another snowflake cut-out and the rest of the faux ice and snow dress up this corner of the kitchen.

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I hope you enjoyed this winter decor post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2018

Thomas the Train Birthday Party: The Invitations

All Aboard!

My Little Man is turning 4 very soon and we are celebrating with a 

Thomas the Train themed birthday party!  

Read on to see how easy it was to put together these Thomas themed invitations:

Thomas the Train Party Pack

Usually when we plan a party, I rely mostly on color to convey the overall theme -I don't often purchase character plates or balloons, for example.   But this past summer while treasure hunting, the kids and I stumbled upon an entire bag of Thomas themed party decor.  At $2 for the entire bag (and with great enthusiasm from the Little Man) we snapped it up!


In case you can't tell from the photo, the pack contains large (folded up) banners of Thomas, cardboard character cut-outs, swirly foil streamers and character 'confetti'.  The confetti didn't show up well in this pic, but that's what I pulled to use for the invitations.  If you don't have something similar, don't worry.  Thomas stickers would work just as well.

Step 1

After gathering my supplies (blue scrapbooking paper, red envelopes and the 'confetti') I printed out the wording that I wanted to use for the invites.

In case you can't see it, here is the wording:

**ALL ABOARD**

(Child's Name Here) is turning 4!

Join us for lunch & dessert (Date Here)

The birthday express will be departing (Time & Place Here)

Side Note:  Those red envelopes are left over from when I made the Little Man his pirate party invitations last year.  (You can click here to read more about those)

Step 2

Using a standard sized (8X10) sheet of colored paper, I cut each 

sheet into equal fourths to serve as the backdrop for the invitations.

Step 3

Next I glued the trimmed down wording sheet at an angle for a couple of reasons.  

One, there was more room that way to feature all of the text and two, I just thought it looked better 😊

Step 4

Lastly, I added a couple of embellishments from the 

Thomas birthday party pack and the invitations were ready to go.

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I'll have more party fun coming soon, but in the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed this how-to post  Thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2018

How We Celebrated: Christmas Cookies 2017

Welcome back to our holiday kitchen!

A few days before Christmas the kids and I spent an afternoon in the kitchen baking up our holiday cookies.  Check out these photos from our fun:

Supplies

This baking adventure started out with several cookie mixes (the gingerbread failed 😖),  a cake mix for Mamaw's birthday (dark chocolate & Andes mints 😊), a gigantic pile of sprinkles, M&Ms, icing, color gels and the crock pot. 

I included the crock pot in the photo because after four hours of baking, there was no way that I was cooking dinner.  I can't remember what I had in the crock pot, but I was glad it was there! 😁 

Sprinkles!

I love having a large variety of sprinkles for decorating my baked goods, but they can get expensive really fast. My strategy is to wait until right after a holiday and buy them when they are 75% (or more) off. 

Tip:  Check the 'sell by' dates to be sure, but usually they are good for a year or two after purchase.  Store them in a cool, dry place and you are good to go 😉

Little Hands

My Baby Girl and my Little Man had different 'techniques' when it came to 

rolling out dough, but both had a lot of fun 😀

Sugar Cookies

Tip:  We cut and baked our sugar cookies first so that 

they would have time to cool before decorating.  I highly recommend having a set of cooling racks on hand if you are going to be baking a lot of anything at once.  It doesn't take long to run out of work space and stackable racks are a life saver!

Sprinkle Tray

In the past I've set all of the sprinkles out on the table and let the kids shake them out as they wished.  It worked but a whole lot were wasted on the floor 😏 

This year I decided to take a couple of mini muffin tins and use them to create sprinkle palettes.  Each of the kids got their own tin and spoon and had a much easier time.....Well, my girl did.  The Little Man just sat there eating sprinkles with the spoon, but that's ok 😀

Santa Cookies

Each of the kids made a special cookie to be left out for Santa on Christmas Eve.  The rest they divided between themselves and Daddy 😉

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Here are the rest of the cookies we made that day:

Chocolate chip with red sprinkles

Double chocolate chip with Andes mints and green sprinkles

Chocolate chip with M&Ms

Snicker doodles with red, white and green sprinkles

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Those were our holiday cookies this year.
I hope you enjoyed the baking post, thanks for stopping by!
-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2018