Runaway October

Every year I put off mail­ing my Christ­mas Cards until it’s almost to late. I hurry down to Michael’s and hope they have some­thing inter­est­ing left. Some­times I’m lucky, some­times I’m not.

So my goal this year is to get a head start on things. I’ve been look­ing at some of the var­i­ous photo christ­mas card offer­ings. Shut­ter­fly has always been a superb com­pany for me and my fam­ily. We’ve had mousepads, fridge mag­nets and beer steins made, among other things.

Check some of these gor­geous designs out:

I love this one because you have so many pic­ture choices and your fam­ily mono­gram. I’m a sucker for monograms.

Sim­ple and clas­sic. Again with the monogram.

How’s this lovely for bright and cheery?

Flirty and fit­ting for my neck of the woods, or should I say desert?

Love the vintage-y feel and col­ors. Very clas­sic layout.

I’m hav­ing such a hard time decid­ing! There are almost 750 designs in the Christ­mas sta­tion­ary alone. Yikes! All cards come with envelopes and Shut­ter­fly will either mail the cards to you so you can address and stamp them as you see fit, or they will address and mail them for you. Talk about a timesaver!

Don’t for­get the per­son­al­ized cal­en­dars too. You can add your own spe­cial dates and pic­tures. What a great gift for friends and family.

Throw­ing a New Years Party? Don’t worry, Shut­ter­fly does invites too!

Full Dis­clo­sure: Shut­ter­fly is pro­vid­ing me with 50 free Christ­mas cards for high­light­ing their prod­ucts. As with every­thing else I post about, the opin­ion is mine and not swayed by any­one else.

Blog­gers can get 50 free hol­i­day cards from Shut­ter­fly: http://bit.ly/sfly2010

Today we’re going to make this:

Well, you don’t have to but I’m going to pre­tend that you’re dying for me to teach you how to make this sim­ple wreath. Ready?

Gather your materials:

A wreath form– I used a 12″ press­board form, mainly because I had no final idea of what I was mak­ing and because they’re so much cheaper than styrofoam.

2 — 3 yds of wire-edged ribbon.

3 — 4 St Patrick’s day dec­o­ra­tive thingys. I think they call them flo­ral picks?

A Glue Gun and glue sticks — low temp is prob­a­bly best if you have one.

Scis­sors

What­ever doo­dads you want to add. Here I used mini “beer bot­tles” and some fake gold coins. Because what bet­ter sums up St Pats like beer and bling?

Okay, first step. Unroll your rib­bon and fold it in a zigzag pat­tern, kinda like so. Adjust it to make sure it will cover your whole wreath form.

It should like sorta like this from the front.

Now start to glue it to your wreath form. Tuck the end under for the first fold. You’ll have to adjust here and there to fol­low the con­tours. I found it eas­i­est to glue the bot­tom fold to the wreath and leave the top fold loose. If you look closely, you can see my glue marks here.

Con­tinue around until you’re within one fold from the end.

Now guage how much rib­bon you will need to tuck under the first fold and cut it there. Glue the end of the rib­bon UNDER the begin­ning fold and glue in place. Yours should look some­thing like this.

Now flip that sucker over. This is where you pull your flo­ral pick thin­gies apart. Mine con­sisted of wired pieces and well, non wired pieces. I cut the wired pieces out of 3 picks and glued it in inter­vals around the back of the wreath. I chose to do a spi­raly type pattern.

Then go back around and add the non-wired pieces.

Not enough bling, Katie. Go around and add more if necessary.

That’s bet­ter. Now flip it back over and add your doodads.

Once all my doo­dads were on, I used the green stem from my flo­ral pick thing and bent it into a hoop and glued it within an inch of its life to the back of the wreath. Just in case. I want my wreath to with­stand hur­ri­canes. Ta Da!

Now take down your Valen­tines Wreath that’s still up and put up your blingity-bling-bling St. Pats wreath.

Now every­one will know what you plan on doing next week. Wear­ing green under­wear, of course.

Speak­ing of the Valen­tines Wreath you hadn’t taken down, here’s mine. I used Tater­tots and Jello’s tuto­r­ial.

So… What are you plan­ning for St. Patricks Day this year? Any good recipes?

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They have a ten­dency to give “treats”.

This is what hap­pens when you give a 15 month old a Yummy Earth organic lol­lipop.

Some­where buried in that mouth is his lol­lipop. It’s a good thing I’m not a ger­mo­phobe as this may have pushed me over the edge.

He sure looks happy though!

(In case your won­der­ing that’s my lit­tle brother Cody and he just hap­pens to be wear­ing one of the awe­some Sur­vival Bracelets I make.)