{Paper, Parties} Oh, By Gosh, By Golly, It's Time for Mistletoe and Holly

We celebrated our family's December birthdays at our place...with a houseful of people! Twelve adults and four kids was our (then) record for guests.

I had been hemming and hawing and brainstorming for an affordable idea for this table for over a month and ended up putting it together with things that I had around the house an hour before guests arrived. Andy and I found these antique candlesticks at an antique store in Wisconsin over the summer. I was so excited to see that they hold the electric "candles" that I bought a few years ago and never got to use. The flowers were a holiday bouquet from the grocery store. Andy was so proud of himself for picking them out.

I learned the hard way at Halloween that no one pays attention to photo or numbered wine charms. I used my Silhouette to cut personalized "wine charms" for everyone. They were brilliant.

But the place cards...they're definitely in my top 5 of all time. I loved them!

Each guest had a unique-ish design. I had 14 in total.

Even the kids got place cards - although, not a single one of them cared.

{Paper, Parties} Global Warming-Inappropriate** Birthday Party Photo Place Cards

Christmas has been in full swing up in here -- even a 2.5 week battle with bronchitis* and sinusitis couldn't even bring us down this season. The real fun begins this week.

The first of seven parties that we attended this month was a celebration of my mother-in-law, who turned a number that shall not be named. We celebrated at Chicago Cut, as is our sorta-milestone-tradition, with our other sorta-traditions, photo place cards and cake.

The cake was from Sugar Bliss. I *totally* recommend them! I scored the parrot tulips at the deli in the East Bank Club. How lucky was that? I was way too sick to walk to a real florist.

I made the cake topper by layering die-cut snowflakes with 3D foam squares and attaching them to wooden skewers. Not ideal, but it worked in a 2 a.m.-the-night-before pinch.

For the place cards, I used my Silhouette to cut 5.5 circles with the guest's name and a hole for the photo. Then, I inserted the photo and some shiny white paper behind the name. I attached the entire piece to an ornament card and embellished it with an off-white ribbon and more shiny white die-cut snowflakes. The napkins are cheapos from Home Goods. They're OK. They shrunk to cocktail napkins in the wash.

*I am pretty sure that I broke or pulled something major when coughing. 

**When Andy and I selected this not-to-Christmas Christmas snowflake theme back in October, we weren't expecting it to be 60 degrees in December. 

Smells Like School Spirit

Andy and I hosted my college friends for dinner on Saturday. I reused the table runner that I made in 2010, pairing it with gold, black, and white napkins and some pennant place cards that I whipped up – in true Tina fashion – an hour before everyone arrived.

I’ve had the sewing bug, so I bought more Purdue-themed fabric to make napkins, but chose sleep over crafting.

White flowers would have looked great, but I couldn’t pass up these brilliant yellow tulips. It was such a gray, slushy day when I bought them, so they stopped me dead in my tracks…spring was taunting me! I told my friends to pretend that they were "Old Gold" tulips, not University of Iowa tulips.

I also put some bud vases in beer cozies and used them as accents throughout the house.

I am ashamed to say that I actually thought of this myself and ordered the cozies online. That’s right. You get pure ass and class with me.

We have another dinner party with friends this weekend. I cannot wait! Andy is making braised short ribs for the first time. I'm so happy that I married someone who can get it together enough to cook.

Why You Call Me Greasball? I Bring You Free Pizzas!

I was scrolling through my iPhone and happened upon a little project that I never blogged.

Every year, we celebrate Gnocchi Night for Andy and his sister's birthdays. We all gather at Aunt Ruth's house and destroy her kitchen by making homemade pasta, meatballs, and sauce. I volunteered to make place cards this year.

Making 13 of these took much, much longer than expected. My first attempt at stitching the streamers didn't go very well. So, I taped the folds with double-sided tape (my glue stick ran out a few in) and then stitched the three colors together on the sewing machine. I was bored by the end, thus the lame circle names. I wish that had a Silhouette SD back then. I would have made some bold black names to float across the flag.

Andy and his sister's place cards received party hat embellishments, of course!



{Catching Up} Nursing Cap Place Cards

Back in December, Andy and I ended up hosting an impromptu cake-and-coffee party at our house in honor of my sister’s graduation from nursing school. And by impromptu, I mean, I was texting him from the graduation ceremony on noon Saturday to start cleaning the house and get dinner reservations for Sunday.

Since I was off the hook for cooking, I whipped up some quick place cards that looked like nursing caps for the restaurant.

I googled “origami nursing caps” and kind of crammed (not kidding) these together based on multiple sets of directions. I ran the ribbon and printed text through my miniature xyron to make stickers for the decorations.

The place cards and this wannabe floral arrangement greeted everyone at the restaurant.

I also hung a “congratulations, nurse bay-e banner!” in our “dining room.”

I cannot tell you how much my surplus ‘Source stash saved my a*s in the month of December. That banner and the circle labels were both in my stash. I never would have had time to make decorations.

Grateful Boxes from Paper Source

I just adore this idea for "grateful boxes" from the Paper Source blog. Each guest at the dinner table is greeted with a personalized box of notes listing something that another dinner guest likes about them.

{Image}

Just imagine if you used the same box year-after-year. You'd have a lifetime of memories showing changing penmanship and new additions as people marry and new babes are born. I don't think that anyone in my immediate family would go for this, but if I ever have mine own family, I think that it would be a beautiful tradition to start. Maybe I should make give it a try anyway...I just might receive "I am thankful for: Tina starting a new tradition" card.