30 Day Flip- Holiday Decorating

Today I am linking up with The DIY Forum and HomeTalk to show my Christmas decorating. Thankfully, this year I was able to get a Cricut, which has helped with a lot of my decorating! I do not do too much though, as my son celebrates his birthday close to Christmas and so I tend to leave the decorating until after his birthday. I have come up with a few ideas to get my house into the festive spirit.

First up, my seasonal nook in the home has been taken over by Christmas papercrafts! I have done an advent calendar, Christmas banner, Papercraft Sampler and a small gift box decoration all from one Christmas paper packet and some cardstock.



This advent calendar has 25 tags, all with a perforated number that has an activity written on the back. My boys will love being able to see what we are up to each day!



This simple banner was made using cardstock and paper, tied together with twine. This file was free on the Cricut website!



One of my favourite projects this Christmas has been this sampler, which I hang in a 12x12 frame as seen above. I love coming up with an idea for each square, and having it all come together is so much fun.



I made up some cute Christmas present stacks for table placecards, but one is sitting in my decorated nook as well.



As far as gift giving goes, I quickly whipped up these wine bottle holders as wine is the perfect gift for Christmas party hosts, neighbour gifts, or even teachers.



My last little project was these two 6x6 canvases, which I decorated using scrapbook paper, cardstock and some embellishments.


I have had so much fun decorating for the holidays. I am still supposed to be resting for the next month, so my grand design plans have been pulled back a bit. However, I have been able to craft up a few little touches within my home to make my house feel a bit more festive.

Batman Birthday Party

My son celebrated his 5th birthday party recently with a Batman themed birthday party. Originally Lucas wanted a generic superheroes theme, but we narrowed it down to just Batman in order to keep my stress levels down!


First up was creating the Batman invitations. You can read the full process for making these invitations here.


My cupcakes were going to be decorated with bat sprinkles, but unfortunately these were out of stock so I had to make do with plain black sprinkles. I made the cupcake wrappers myself using black cardstock and the Cricut- they say Happy Birthday.

The food consisted of these cupcakes, fresh pineapple, ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, yellow jellybeans (purchased in bulk from The Lolly Shop), peanut butter truffles rolled in yellow sprinkles, batman cookies (using this cookie cutter) and Cheerio sausages, because my husband tells me it isn't a party without Cheerios.


For the tableware I went with yellow and black, as a lot of the specific Batman items were the new grey and blue style and Lucas really wanted lots of black. I used a plain black tablecloth, yellow paper cups, yellow plates, black napkins and some black treat cups.


We even had a special appearance from Batman himself! My Dad is always dressing up in costumes so this was brilliant, and all of the little boys were so excited.


We played a fun game outside to get the kids moving called Musical Superhero Sounds. I printed these printable comic bubbles to A4 size and laminated them, then laid them out on the ground. We played some music, and when the music ended each child had to jump on one of the sounds. I removed a sound each time, and so a child would get "out" each round. The game ended when only one child jumped on the remaining comic bubble.


It wouldn't be a birthday without a cake! I used my tried and true chocolate cake recipe, and spread the cake with yellow icing. I made the topper at a Superhero Themed workshop, which worked out perfectly!

Lucas was very excited to see his Batman cake, and blew out his back candles.

All in all, we had a great Batman themed birthday party and Lucas really enjoyed the games, food and cake. Now to think about next year's birthday theme!

Linking up with Pin Me Party and Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons!

Childhood Christmas Memories

Every year since 2010 I have been arranging a day where my children see Santa. I dress them in their best, but unfortunately my husband and I have had to be in the photos too! This year we finally got a great one, with two big smiles and no parents.

I started thinking about my own Santa photos as I couldn't recall ever visiting Santa for photos as a child. However, a look through my family photo albums shows a love of Santa that started for me at an early age!

This photo is of me and my Dad- my fist time seeing Santa at the Plunket Christmas Party. I was 14 months old here, and obviously unsure of Santa! Plunket is a local organisation that looks after new mums and their babies, and is a huge part of growing up in New Zealand.



Santa features prominently at Plunket Christmas parties- here I am with my twin sister. We always had matching outfits growing up, and my mum sewed some amazing clothes for us to wear.



This photo made me smile when I saw it- this was taken again with my twin sister (I am wearing the blue headband) at the local supermarket. The reason I love this photo so much is that now my boys have had their photo taken with Santa at the exact same supermarket this year. I was hoping to post that photo but I have not received it yet, but will update when I do! It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that some of my experiences with Christmas will be replicated with my children.



This photo is another Santa in a shop with my twin sister- do you sense a theme here? While we may not have had many professional posed Santa photos, we did have a lot of opportunities to get Santa photos in our local community. That's what I love about living in my childhood town- the spirit of Christmas comes alive locally and all of our neighbours, teachers and friends come together to make sure the children have some amazing experiences.



It was so much fun to walk down memory lane and see how much of my love of Christmas came from my childhood. Now that I have children of my own, I want them to experience the magic of Christmas. We do fun things each year such as meeting Santa and choosing an ornament for the tree, and I recently came across a beautiful website called Patience Brewster. Her ornaments, paintings and handmade gifts are breathtaking, and have so much detail. This rooster ornament will look perfect on my tree as I love all things poultry related, and the Chicken Teapot is on my wishlist! My boys loved the Mini Candy Cane ornament, as my oldest son declared it was the coolest candy cane ever due to the glitter shoes! This website captures the magic of Christmas so well for both children and adults, and would be perfect for gift giving or as a feature for your own tree or holiday decorating.

Christmas for my children this year is quite bittersweet as my son turns five today, and already the magic of Christmas is being lost on him. Doing family and Christmas related activities is a great way to keep the excitement in December, as well as create my own family memories so that one day I can show them photos for them to also have fantastic Christmas memories. Local events, retailers in our area and beautiful Christmas themed items help me to bring Christmas into our lives each year.

Do you have any favourite Christmas memories? What type of things do you do with your children to create memories? I would love to know!