{This Chistmas} Let me tell you where to go

Since we confirmed that HOTGI and I would be hosting my family Christmas dinner this year, I've had it in my head that I wanted to have place markers at everyone's spot. We are only going to be a small group, but I like the presentation of a well laid table and for me part of that look this year is personalized place markers. I knew I needed to made something fun :)

There are a lot of inspirations out there on the interwebz, and I like everything so I knew I needed a starting point. So when I went to Michaels this morning, I found these super cute place card holders! They were 2 for $1.50 and I knew they'd be perfect.

Using my Cricut and a borrowed cartridge (thanks Andrea!) I cut out a 3" tag using the "shadow" feature with brown cardstock and a 3" tag using the regular feature in a sheet of holiday scrapbook paper (again, thanks Andrea!) and glued them together.

Then, in an excercise of patience and dexterity I applied glue (via glue-stick) to the back of each letter of each person's name and placed them on the prepared cards with a set of precision tweezers.

I cut a length of pretty green satin ribbon, tied it through the hole of each card and trimmed the ends.

Adorable right?

There are six of us confirmed for Christmas dinner at our house this year and I am incredibly pleased with how these place cards turned out. They might not be appreciated by anyone but me, but I cannot wait to see how they look on my table, and sometimes it's the little things that make me happy!

Now that this project (that admittedly took a bunch of time) is over, I have a mountain of other things to get done... asap!

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A Halloween craft on a Friday night

I tidied up my crafting room tonight. It still needs some serious sorting and organizing but I can easily use the space now and set up my new Cricut Create! Tonight I made something fun and festive for Halloween!

After some trial and error with blade depth and cut speed, I cut out a few letters using some orange coloured copy paper that I've had hanging around for years using the Don Juan cartridge. I glued the letters to a piece of black craft foam from the dollar store. Then the craft foam was glued to another piece of orange paper, popped the whole thing into a dollar store frame that I bought for a wedding project 4 years ago and finished off with a piece of green ribbon that was in my ribbon basket.

Cute, non?

I think it looks adorable all nestled into the bottom part of our TV stand in the living room. It is a fun punch of colour and seasonally appropriate decor. And on a $0 budget too!

How are you decorating for Halloween this year?


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Mama's got a brand new toy!

So lately I've been dreaming about having my own Cricut machine. I have have been reading reviews and checking out prices and talking to others that I know who have them, trying to determine the best machine for my needs.

Then this morning I got an email from Michael's announcing that they were having a 2 day sale with some smokin' good prices on certain things. One particular thing was a Cricut Create on for $79 (reg. price $199!) so HOTGI went over (Michael's is fairly close to his office) after a meeting this afternoon and picked it up for me!!

*love*

I cannot wait to play with it!! Tonight I have too many domestic things to take care of around the house (not to mention baking an apple crisp to take to work tomorrow) so it will have to wait, but I have so many ideas of what I want to use it for!

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