DIY Gold Dot Flutes

My Mom got me these stemless flutes at an after Christmas sale, they are acrylic and perfect for parties. I decided to jazz them up a bit and give them a Kate Spade inspired look with these mini gold polka dots.

Here's what I used:

Mini gold dots

Stemless flutes

This project could seriously not BE any easier (said in my Chandler Bing voice.) But anyway, all I did was place my mini gold dots around my flutes in a random pattern spacing them all. Repeat 4 times or as many times as you need to to cover all the flutes you have.

And wah-lah! There you have it pretty gold obsessed flutes! They are so adorable and I can't wait to use them at our next party. But they look pretty cute decorating my office right now.

Add a festive gold stripe straw. 

What about you, do you love the gold trend right now as much as I do? 

DIY Heart on Your Sleeve T-shirt

Valentine's Day is coming soon, and I love a fun festive holiday! I don't take it to seriously but I love making my kiddos some heart shaped pancakes and having a fun filled day with them. One Valentine's Day my hubby brought Ava home a heart shaped balloon, she was over the moon excited about this shiny heart ballon. Have a little fun and don't take it so serious! 

I saw this knit sweater months back that had knitted hearts on the elbows of this sweater. It was so adorable but a bit out of my budget. I decided I might be able to make something similar. 

Here's what you'll need for this project:

Long sleeve t-shirt (mine is from Target)

Red felt (JoAnn's)

Aleene's Fabric Fusion (JoAnn's)

Here's what you'll do:

Wash and dry your shirt before anything. Put your shirt on and mark off with a sharpie where your elbows are with an "X" (see image.) Then you'll take your shirt off and place a small piece of card stock in the arms of your shirt where you placed your X. You don't want the glue to seam together your elbows, and this prevents that from happening. 

Then you'll cut out your hearts. I used a heart cookie cutter to trace my heart. I wanted it to be a perfect heart shape, so I used the cookie cutter to make it. Then I cut it out and placed them over the elbows. Using the fabric fusion I glued down my hearts completely. Let them dry for a couple hours. Go back and check to make sure everything is glued down, if not add more glue where needed. 

Then you're ready to do with a perfectly adorable shirt with a little something extra! This shirt is perfect for my everyday jeans + tee style! 

Paired with my clutch from Ivey Expressions. I love this clutch so much, it holds a ton of stuff for a clutch. Has a cute wrist strap and tassel to make you feel extra fancy. And, all proceeds go towards their adoption, so you're shopping for a great cause. 

This is the perfect little DIY shirt, you could also switch it up for other holidays as well. Shamrocks anyone?!? 

Happy DIY shirt making peeps! 

shirt- DIY

jeans- Target

clutch- Ivey Expressions

Creating A Family Binder

Welcome back! So Monday I shared with you all the FREE printables for your home binders! Today I'm excited to share with you how I use and put together my binder. Let's take a look at the binder itself first shall we? 

I choose this 8.5x11 3 ring binder, I found it on WeR Memory Keepers. Here's a link to it here. 

I love that the corners are reinforced with hardware making this binder a little extra durable! The gold polka dots help at all for cutness.. LOL! 

Ok, let's take a look at the inside and see it in action.  The two parts I wanted to section off were the "meals" and the "budget." I used some paper file folders and cut them in half and used some stickers to write the section names. 

I've already started to fill our our family's favorite meals and I can already tell how handy this is going to be for me. The grocery list is tucked behind this, I printed off a bunch just to have on hand. 

Budget worksheets, and my 52 week savings plan worksheet are behind the "budget" dividers. 

I also placed a clear pocket on the back of my binder to hold receipts. If you missed the free worksheets click on this post to download and print them. 

If you've already downloaded them I'd love to hear your thoughts and how you're using them. Tell me in the comments below.

Our Family Binder FREE Printable Collection

Happy Monday friends! I'm excited to share with you today something I've been working on especially for me and for you! For a long time I've been wanting to have a "home binder" where I can have a few different items readily available for my Husband and I to look at during the week when we need to, a place to keep some important home info as well. 

I decided to create a home binder for this. Today I'm sharing the first of many FREE printables you can add to your home binder as well. Most of these were created out of my own need, but I have a feeling that you will find them useful as well. Let's take a look. 

Keep your account info all in one place with this handy worksheet for usernames/passwords.

One of my most dreaded times is meal planning. So to help conquer this I created a worksheet with our family's favorite meal ideas, for easy reference when I'm meal planning and hopefully it'll make it a lot easier to meal plan. With that, I also created a grocery list to take a long.

A baby sitter worksheet, for you to use when you need to make special notes for the sitter.

Our family budget worksheet, each month my Hubby and I use a "zero budget" method. I've been writing them in little notebooks, but thought it would be nice to have this in the binder with our weekly savings plan worksheet. 

I hope these worksheets help you get organized for this new year! I'm using just a regular 8.5x11 3 ring binder to hold them all. Download all the printables in this post here. There's also a cover page in there you can download as well. Come back Wednesday and I'll show you how I put my "home binder" together and how I use it! 

Christmas Card Books

I absolutely love getting Christmas cards in the mail each year. I love seeing how our friends and family have grown, changed and added new members to their families. I put so much effort into my own Christmas cards each year, so when I get one in the mail I know just how much time and effort and money went into them.

Since 2011 I've been making little books out of the cards we get each year. I put them away till the following year and then I bring them out and place them on the coffee table or kitchen table to flip through during Christmas time. 

A few supplies I use to make them:

hole punch

stickers or any kind of embellishment

binder rings of various sizes, depending on how many cards you get you'll have to see what size you need.

cardstock, I choose a Christmas themed one but you could use whatever you like.

I start by sorting them by size and matching similar sizes together. Then I stack them all neatly smallest to largest so they open nicely when placed together. I then punch a hole in each card, some books I've done two holes and use two binder rings to hold them together, and others I've just punched a hole in the corner of the card and placed them through the binder ring. You can do what ever you like, see below for examples.

Once I've got them all together I use some of the card stock to make a front and back cover for my book. One the front cover I use the stickers and embellishments and decorate the covers. I like to put the year on the outside cover.

I also use ribbon and tie it on my binder rings for some extra fun! 

During the month of January each night when we sit down for dinner we grab and handful of cards and pray for each family that sent us a Christmas card. We do this each night in January until all the families are prayed for. 

I love doing this with my family, especially my children. It teaches them how to pray and care for others. It's a wonderful tradition that we started a few years ago and it's something I very much look forward to at the end of the holiday season.

What do you end up doing with your holiday cards? Do you throw them away or make something similar? I'd love to hear in the comments below.