Packaging and Sugar Cookies - What Could Be Better

Hi Everyone! Are you all ready for Christmas? I'm getting close. A few loose ends to tie up. But lots and lots of presents to wrap.

Last night, my mom had me wrap a present for her work Christmas party. What's inside is pretty cute, but I think the packaging turned out pretty cute too!!!!

Thanks to Amber, I am obsessed with making these bows on anything I can. And then I have been having more fun adding mini ornaments or regular size ornaments to them! I like to add some of the tinsel ribbon and silver elastic cord too. Or even baker's twine. I add as much ribbon and tulle as I want and always a little bit of type style paper, or a book page. Sometimes I will distress the paper with ink. A lot of times, I have just left it plain. The last touch is usually a little tag of some kind. And walah! There you have it! A fun and festive package just ready to be given away!

So this week, Peyton and I made sugar cookies. It was a lot of fun and very messy!! She wasn't crazy about frosting the cookies, but she loved the cookie cutter part, playing in the flour and topping the cookies with sprinkles! Okay, love is an understatement! She went crazy and went through a whole bottle of sprinkles. It was pretty funny.

It started off calm. Peyton didn't like the sour cream frosting, so I frosted some with chocolate frosting just for her. 

She decided on the pink and purple Barbie sprinkles that we still had. And then she wanted to mix it up with the Christmas sprinkles too :).

It is so hard to get a picture of Peyton looking at the camera. She just doesn't do it usually. All of our tricks to get her to, usually fail. So she sort of has scary eyes in this picture, but she is actually looking at the camera!

There ended up being more sprinkles on the plate than there were on the cookies!!!! It was pretty funny. And really pretty cute.

We are making cookies this week for the neighbors, so wish me luck that I don't run completely out of sprinkles before we get them all done! This time around I am making gingerbread cookies! Yum, yum!

Hope you all have a great last week before Christmas! 

Halloween Time!

I truly love fall! I love the cooler temperatures. I love the changing leaves. I love the warm colors of fall and Halloween decorations. I love pulling my sweaters out of storage. The only thing I don't love about fall is the shorter days. I am a lot better than I used to be, but I used to have a really hard time with the days getting shorter. Not so much anymore.

I got my Halloween decorations out last weekend! That has to be a record for me, right! Two things prompted me to get them out this early though: My cute new Halloween advent calendar, and my fun jars that I made, well I added to them.

First, here is the advent calender:

I found this super cute advent calendar up at Swiss Days. It's a local celebration that takes place up in a city called Midway, about 20 minutes south of Park City. It happens every year during Labor Day weekend. It is filled with hundreds of local craft booths, wrapping paper booths, bakery items, Navajo tacos {lovingly referred to as Swiss tacos} children's clothing, Halloween costumes. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much fun stuff there! And it's 2 days of shopping fun! It's so big that it has busted out of the original square from where it takes place and has booths across the street on the north and south side of the square, as well as down the street!

This year, a camera crew from HGTV was there even to film some of the fun and more original stuff. So so so fun!

The advent calender is all handmade! Hand cut and hand sewed. How cute is it! They had plush nativity scenes, church books, finger puppets and all sorts of fun things. They had Christmas advent calendars too.

So as I mentioned there were 2 things that prompted me getting my Halloween decorations out already. The other was some super cute jars - also purchased at Swiss Days!

Here are the jars:

The jars came with the candlestick bases and lids. What I wanted to do was make sure I could use them all year long. So everything comes off very easily. The other thing I wanted to do, was make them decorated from both sides. From this view the jars spell BOO.

Sorry, this pic turned out blurry. It's the only one that I have. The little saying says "Things that go bump in the night"

Here is the B.

And then this is the back side of the B. The image is a witch that says "broom rides 25 cents" and then there is a pic of a witch. I thought it was pretty cute!

First O Jar. In order to get the letters to stand up inside the jars, and in the middle, I attached each one to transparency sheets. I stamped spiders on them in black Stazon Ink, as well. Then the candy corn works to hold up the transparencies. Hard to tell from the pic though.

Here is the backside of the first O.

And then the last O.

Sorry, again with the blurry pictures. I thought I was done with that :). This is the backside of the last O.

Here are the supplies:

Patterned Paper: Echo Park, Authentique, Fancy Pants
Cardstock: Stampin' Up!
Punches: Stampin' Up!
Score Board: Martha Stewart {to make the banner}
Ribbon: Stampin' Up! My Mind's Eye. {the white lace ribbon and wine came on the jar :)}
Stamps: Stampin' Up!
Inks: Stampin' Up!
Dies: QuicKutz, Spellbinders

The Hello Kitty basket is what I pass out Halloween candy in. I haven't been home for the last few years though so we haven't passed out candy. The ceramic pumpkin was made by my grandma :). I know you can't tell on from the pic, but the tree has flashing lights on it that are candy corns! I love them. I got the cute little pumpkin at Tai Pan Trading this year. The little dish is filled with a candy that I didn't love, in fact despised, until this year! Candy Corn!!! The runner was made by my mommy, and is Hello Kitty Halloween :).

The spider is also from Tai Pan. I LOVE that store!

These BOO letters were made about 4 or 5 years ago for a class that I taught. The style is sort of outdated already. But I still love them. All supplies are Stampin' Up! {do you like my rice cooker in the background :).}

And here is the other side of my living room:

I made the banner that says "SPOOKY" last year. A few things here stay up all year long - the drawers, glass jar on top of them, and usually the stripped vase.

The little scary guy was from my dad, to Peyton! You press his belly and his eyes turn red and he makes a screechy noise. It's pretty funny and Peyton is terrified of it! The skull garland, small black glitter Boo, and spider on the far right side is from Tail Pan. the white jack-o-lantern and big metal pumpkin are from Rod Works. The glass pumpkins are from Walmart. The banner from last year, is partially also from Tai Pan.

Here are some closeups:

Hope you all had a great weekend and have a great fall season as well!

A Wedding Shower Present

Last weekend, one of my husband's oldest friends got married. It was a beautiful wedding, reception and location! Shauna and her new husband, Eloy were married at the Mill Creek Inn up Mill Creek Canyon, here in Salt Lake. I wasn't able to go to her wedding shower the week before, so I added her shower present into her main wedding present.

About a month ago, Amber, Marci and I went to an annual festival here in Utah called Swiss Days. It is up in Midway - one of my most favorite places in this world! - and there is tons of crafty goodness everywhere there!!!!!! One of our most favorite booths was a booth that had these most darling stands! They were made of things, you wouldn't ever think of. Picture frames on top of candle sticks, plates on top of glasses, and on and on! So Alice in Wonderland for sure! I knew I needed to make one. So for Shauna's shower present that is what I made here. I was in a hurry when I took the pictures, so unfortunately I didn't get a good one to really be able to tell what it's made from. For her shower, I was assigned the color black.

Here is what I made:

Do you like that you can see Peyton in the background! She sees the camera and thinks she needs to be in the pictures!

All wrapped up. Yep, that is Peyton's hand and shoulder that you see there too! I know you can't really see it in the pic too well, but I live the cream and gray ribbon that I used to wrap up the package! It was super cheap from one of my most favorite stores, Tai Pan Trading.

So here are the details: The plate and cup {the stand part} are both from Tai Pan Trading. The plate was $2 and the cup was $1. Yep, that's all they cost! Right after we went to Swiss Days, I went to Tai Pan and got a green plate and pink bowl to make stands as well. How much fun are these! Perfect for a bedside table for jewelry, or to serve a special dessert! I used E6000 glue to attach the cup to the plate, let it dry over night, and then added the ribbon and paper. All the paper is Stampin' Up!. The punches, glitter and stamps are as well. The fabric {turquoise and cream} is Joanne's and I can't remember the brand of the black extra thick grosgrain ribbon. I can't wait to make more of these! I think they are a fun and unique gift.

For wedding and shower presents, my most favorite thing to do is to get a bunch of stuff from the registry list, and get a fun basket to put everything in, and have it all wrapped up in cellophane! For Shauna and Eloy, we got cookie sheets, a shaker, measuring glass, a picture frame, water goblets, a door mat and some other things. Again, from Tai Pan Trading, I got a huge basket and put everything inside. I wrapped it all up with cellophane and then tied it all together with ribbon, fabric and flowers! The basket was absolutely huge, so here is a picture of the pretty wrapping, since it was hard to get a big pic of everything:

I love the flower! I took a long stemmed rose {again from Tai Pan :-)} and took all the leaves and flowers off the stem. Then I glued the pieces onto the ribbon and fabric. So no, it's not too easy to open, but it sure looks pretty, and that's what really matters, right! He he he! I love giving pretty wrapped presents. I know it really isn't the case, but it always makes me feel like whatever is inside is even better because the outside looks so nice! I am a cheese, I know!

Well, I am off to hopefully do a little crafting before I head off to bed. We shall see if I will actually get anything done though! {Probably watch a little Vampire Diaries!!! That's for you ljkwoody!}

One last thing before I am off... I love the new Add Images feature for Blogger. It is so much better than even the last update. You can upload more than one picture at a time, and add them all at the same time! Yay, it's about time!

Alright, I am off! Till next time...