It's seems like such a stressful thing every year to get family pictures taken, but I'm always happy with the outcome and love to pick out the Christmas cards. My favorite place to use is Shutterfly. I've used other places online in the past but they usually only have like 5 good ones to choose from that are really cute, and the rest are really cheesy looking. Shutterfly has the most unique Christmas Cards and Holiday Cards and I've shopped around. My favorites so far are...

Candy Boxes Christmas Card

Cool Blue Holly Christmas Card

Modern Damask Red Christmas Card

Snowflake Sprinkles Christmas Card

and

Peppermint Pink Christmas Card

They have over 800 styles to choose from. It's going to be really hard for me to choose my most favorite one. I like the ones with multiple pictures so you can use more than one family picture, but I also like the look of a big single picture. Another great idea for a gift is to make a shutterfly calendar for 2011 using family pictures.

To learn how you can get 50 free Holiday Cards go HERE.

Christmas Wreath Idea...

I made this wreath by using garland I wasn't using. I wound it around twice and tied it in some places to keep it's shape.

Ok, so Walmart has super fun sparkly sprigs and ornaments in a rainbow of colors. It took me forever to decide which ones to use.

For the sprigs I chose red, white, and green and wrapped them into little bunches and hot glued them into the wreath here and there. But first I took my dollar store ribbon and looped it in and out around the wreath using hot glue.

Then I contined with the sprigs.

I loved this sparkly blue sign that they had in 6 different colors.

Then I took my dollar store ornament and hot glued them here and there around the wreath. Then I took white ribbon and tied it to the bottom of the wreath and attached the ornaments to it.

Some of you might notice that I painted my hideous security door blue. It was an aweful off white and so I sprayed it brown and then dry brushed blue on top. I was so sick of putting cute wreaths and decor on top of such an ugly door.

I found the most perfect garland that matched my wreath for around the door at Home Goods.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

My tree is kind of candy cane themed. I'd say about 85 % of my tree is from the dollar store. Everytime I go there I always grab more ornaments. We upgrade to a taller tree last year so I had to add alot more to fill it in.

I love how a Christmas tree can make a home feel so cozy :).

Using old picture frames and free christmas printables...

First of all you need to go over to Craftily Ever After to see all the cute free printables that are available. She has really cute Christmas ones right now. I grabbed two old black picture frames that were hiding in the corner of my garage and wanted to use them to make cute Christmas displays. So I used two of the free Christmas printables from Craftily Ever After and taped them to the middle of some Christmas paper that I had. Then I just taped them both on top of the old picture I already had. I still like the mats.

Then I hot glued ribbon around the edges and added buttons to one of them. So EASY.

And whala!

Christmas Apron Dress Tutorial...

Here's my Santa's Lil' Helper :).

For my 5 year old I had a half yard width and it was 2 yards long. I matched right sides together and surged the ends at an angle, but you can zig zag the edges if you don't have a surger.

Then I decided to have a pleated finish so I started folding and pinning every 2 inches back and forth. I didn't calculate the measurements so once I got close to the end I had to fudge it a little.

Then with pins in place I sewed along the top edge.

Below is roughly what it should look like. If you want to make it alot easier you can just have a gathered skirt instead of pleats.

I also added a red ribbon to the bottom edge. Next I ironed all the pleats to make them crisp looking.

Next I pinned some 1 inch white elastic to the pleated skirt and sewed it together. For better instructions and how to attach elastic band click HERE.

You could leave it as a skirt but...

I wanted to make it into an apron dress so I cut a 12 by 15 square and adjusted the size once I held it up to Tori. I also made a pocket for the middle of it.

So for the pocket hem 3 sides close to the edge.

For the top opening edge of the pocket (which below is upside down) I hemmed the edged down 1 inch. Does this make sense?

Then I pinned it in place and sewed the pocket along the 2 sides and bottom edge to polka dot fabric. I then took big red ric rac and sewed it along the 3 sides of the polka dot fabric edges.

Then I pinned the apron square to the front of the skirt to the elastic and sewed it together.

The last thing I did was I added ribbon straps to the back and criss-crossed them.

So I really wanted to get a picture of the two of them wearing the dressed but of course my 3 yr old wouldn't have it and this is what she wanted to wear instead, hahaha.