I posted this on my Instagram in early December, but I think, as our holiday rapidly approaches tonight and tomorrow, that this can actually be used for Christmas AND birthdays, so I wanted to make sure it had a more permanent place in my corner of the internet,
Look through these and let me know what you’d add!
If you’re searching for a quick, last-minute Christmas gift, I have a few ideas for you!
I actually made these little tea gifts for the Sunday School teachers at church. As the Christian Education Director, part of my job is being a resource and encouragement to our Sunday school volunteer teachers.
This holiday season, to thank them for leading our classes, I used small festive treat bags, 2 packets of Twining’s Holiday Teas, and address labels printed with a cute saying.
“Teaching is your special-TEA!”
We have a lot of teachers to buy for at the holidays! My eldest is in kindergarten, so we wanted to let his classroom teacher know how thankful we are for her. My second born is at the church’s Parents Day Out program, who I also work with in my professional capacity. I love these PDO gals so much – and they each do a great job of caring for the kids, so I wanted to find a way to thank all 5 full time staff for their hard work.
I ordered a large pack of $5 Starbucks gift cards from Amazon, got some flat white cardstock in size 5” x 7”, large mailing labels, small address labels, and construction paper.
I put a little message (with the “to” and “from” details) on the smaller address label and a cute mug image and “thanks a latte” message on the larger shipping label. I used tape to attach the gift card and glue to attach the construction paper right behind the larger shipping label.
I think they turned out so cute!
As one of four ministry staff members at the church, I work closely with our senior pastor, music director, and office administrator. Right now, we’re an all-ladies ministry team, and I’m very thankful for them.
To show my fellow ministry gals my appreciation, I assembled these little gift sets: a holiday themed jar glass (from Walmart), a small Starbucks gift card, and holiday teas.
This is the perfect little gift for friends or family, if they enjoy an adult beverage occasionally. I’m not much of a drinker – and haven’t even been able to, had I even wanted to, for a while now with two pregnancies in two years – but I know a lot of folks who indulge around the holidays, and this is a super fun gift!
If you’ve never had Mexican hot chocolate, you’ve got to try it! Be warned – it does taste different because it’s not just sweet, it’s also spiced. Abuelita’s is a common brand that most major grocery stores have available.
This year, for a few friends and family members, I assembled some mini kits: 2 Mexican hot chocolate packets, an airplane bottle of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey, and a tag with instructions/recipe. I printed the tag on address labels and attached it to a piece of red construction paper. I layered everything and tied it with raffia paper string, and voila! A spicy, spiked gift set!
If you’re looking for sweet treats to make for family and friends, check out my quick recipe for Rudolph’s Red Noses Candy here!
I’ve been very reflective this holiday season, and in the midst of that, I find myself missing my family so much – particularly, my extended family I grew up with in Ohio. When we were kids, we spent every Christmas Eve together.
This year, my closest cousin Rachel passed away, and I’m finding myself remembering her so very often – remembering opening up matching Barbie dolls together and asking my dad to open them so we could all play with them right away; remembering how she loved olives and would steal most of them from the buffet, putting them on her finger tips and walking around with olive fingers; and remembering how we dressed up in the fanciest dresses for these parties, thinking we were the belles of some extravagant ball.
We hadn’t had a Christmas together in a long time – once I’d moved to TN it would have obviously been hard – but we still often messaged each other on holidays and birthdays and sometimes just randomly.
I miss the comfort of knowing she was there. I miss the sound of her laugh. I miss the excitement of being kids on Christmas Eve together. I miss so much, and I find myself praying that she is at peace and that somehow, her Christmas in heaven brings the kind of joy that on earth, only giggling cousins in crushed velvet dresses with new Barbies and olive fingers can understand.
My little (big) boy is graduating preschool this Friday! I can’t believe it.
It’s teacher appreciation week and graduation week, so we had to do something special for his teacher and his school. We made two super simple and affordable gifts I’m going to share with you below.
AJ’s teacher, Ms. Cassie, has been the best. She helped so much with the transition to school when he was nervous in the fall, and has been a source of such positivity in his life this past school year.
We put together this sweet little gift. I snagged one of the color change cups from Walmart that have been going viral this season and filled it with a variety of fruit flavored hard candies. I wrapped it in cellophane, tied a ribbon bow, and added a tag. The tag thanks her for making “learning so sweet.”
We have been blessed with great Christian Learning Center staff that have doted on my boy! We didn’t want to forget to thank them all.
I got a dump truck toy at Walmart and filled it with vanilla tootsie rolls. I wrapped it all in cellophane, tied a bow, and added a tag. The tag says “you deserve a TRUCKLOAD of thanks!”
What do you all think? What crafty ideas do you have for teacher gifts this year?
My oldest son, AJ, was gifted a beautiful hand-painted, customized wooden Easter basket five years ago. It was his first Easter, and the gift came from a dear church friend.
This Easter, our newest family addition is celebrating his first Easter! I wanted Teddy to have his own customized Easter basket for this year’s (and future!) egg hunts at church.
I decided I could DIY this project and have a ton of fun.
I got all of the supplies at Walmart: a wooden basket (they have tons of colors – purple, blue, green, yellow, and we selected yellow); black craft paint, 3 other spring colors of craft paint (I choose spring green, tangerine cream, and tropical blue); a pack of cheap paint brushes (30 pack for around $2); and Q-tips. I also made sure to have a pencil on hand.
On the basket front, I sketched out Teddy’s name – well, I put “Ted” which is what we often call him at home (I guess as a nickname for the nickname). Then, I traced the pencil-sketched letters with black paint.
After this black paint dried, I used the other three colors to fill in the letters, bringing a spring feeling to the basket.
Finally, I use Q-tips in the three different colors of paint to create a polkadot handle and border to the basket.
The final product turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself! This is definitely not as gorgeous as the basket my eldest was gifted – but it certainly has a cute springy vibe and is personalized in a really fun way.
Let me know if you have DIY’d or done any Easter basket projects! I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
And from my family to yours – happy (hoppy) Easter!
It’s the week of St. Patrick’s Day! I guess a good old-fashioned “top o’ the morning” is in order.
If you know anything about me, you know I love a good DIY or craft, and it’s made all the better if I get to do it with my son, AJ. AJ and I did two crafty art projects for St. Patrick’s Day this year, and I got the bonus of doing one project with my four-month-old, Teddy.
I’m going to show you all three projects here today. I hope one – or even all three – of these will be something you can do at home with your little ones.
#1: Toddler Trinity Stamp Activity
As a Jesus-loving momma and a part-time church worker, I couldn’t resist explaining the Trinity using the three leaves of the clover or shamrock.
For this activity, I bought sponges at the dollar store and utilized a sharpie, scissors, green paint, and paper that I already had. First, I cut my sponge into one heart-shaped sponge and one small rectangle. Then I filled a disposable bowl with green paint.
I had my toddler stick one side of the heart sponge into the green paint and then put that on top of the white paper three times – one on the left, one in the center, and one on the right, with pointed part of the heart pointing inward.
The heart served as the leaves of our shamrock. Then using the rectangle piece of sponge, we put paint on one side and stamped it underneath the pointed parts of the heart to make the stem of a shamrock.
We then had a conversation about what the Trinity is and labeled each of the leaves as father, son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. AJ was tickled pink with the final project and can now tell me the three parts of the trinity!
#2: Baby’s First Shamrock
This is the project that I was able to do with my infant. Teddy is four months old, and I had the thought that I’d like to have something that has his little footprints on it for his baby book or a family album. This project will be perfect as a keepsake, and for now it’s hanging up in our kitchen as St. Patty’s Day decor.
For this project, I used green paint, poured into a disposable bowl, white paper, a paint brush, and my infant’s two little feet.
I simply dipped his bare feet into the green paint, and then gently press them onto the paper to make a transfer of his footprints.
I will note that the first time I got too much paint on his foot. We ended up using a second sheet of paper, and I wiped the excess paint off on it before making the art project on a clean piece of paper. Not all of the prints turned out perfectly, but that’s okay. It’s still turned out really cute – and I can’t blame him for having wiggly toes when experiencing the sensation of paint for the first time.
We made three sets of footprints. Each set had the eels facing the center of the page. The first set was at the top of the page, and the other two were on either side, facing their respective sides of the page.
Then, I painted a green stem with the paint brush.
I then traced around them with a black marker to really finish the look. I added his name, the date, and that it was his first St. Patrick’s Day on the page.
Here’s the finished project!
#3: The End of the Rainbow
It wouldn’t be St. Patty’s Day without a reference to a rainbow and that ever elusive pot of gold.
Using a sharpie, I sketched an image of a cloud with a rainbow, bowing out of it, and into a pot of gold. This is a fairly rough sketch, but it did the job. I even made myself a copy so that I could do the project with my four-year-old.
This project requires paint in a variety of colors, your sketched rainbow on a piece of paper, and Q-tips.
I helped AJ decide which color should go in each spot. Then I helped him dip his Q-tip in the paint and had him put dots of paint in between the lines to make the image come to life with colors. I’ve done this before in a similar craft or we focus on the story of Noah’s ark. I’ll link that here. For today it was kind of fun to have that lucky part of golden rainbow as a symbol of St. Patrick’s Day.
These Q-tip painting projects are perfect for hand-eye coordination!
Here’s our final project.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see several reels posted today and tomorrow that feature these projects. Keep an eye out!
What crafts for this fun holiday have you done? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. And let me know if you tried any of these easy DIY paint projects!
Valentines Day is Tuesday!
If you’re needing a last minute valentine idea for your child’s classroom exchange, I wanted to share an inexpensive craft. Using just snack bags, craft supplies I had at home, and party favors, I was able to come up with a sugar-free, allergy-free valentine idea!
I got these finger skateboards at Target in a pack of 12 for $3. They are in the party aisle as a favor.
I then used the free version of Canva – a digital creation website – to put together an image. I downloaded the image, which features a skateboard and says “you’re a WHEEELIE awesome valentine!” I added a “to” and “from” line in a word doc with the image and printed.
Then I stuffed each baggie with one skateboard each, stapled a piece of folded construction paper over the top of the baggie, and glued on my print out.
These are super basic – but my little man loves them and can’t wait to give them out at preschool this week!
I’m sure there are lots of other possibilities using the party favor aisle… little trophies with the catch phrase “your number 1, valentine” or glow sticks with a catchy phrase about light. What ideas do you have? What DIY valentines have you made? Comment below to share your ideas!
In honor of our one year anniversary today (12/4/22, wedding on 12/4/21), I wanted to share a few quick tips for a budget-friendly wedding!
We went to our local Food City and ordered a full sheet cake, half white cake, half chocolate. We asked for it completely plain – white frosting with outer edge piping in white only – no other decorations.
I purchased a cake topper online; for our December wedding in the foothills of the mountains, we chose a natural-looking wooden topper. We added fresh flowers, using a seasonal bouquet from the same grocery store on the day we picked up the cake. I carefully arranged the flowers around the topper the night before the wedding and stored it in our venue’s kitchen fridge overnight.
I think this looked absolutely beautiful, and it cost us less than $100, counting the topper and floral pieces.
Also – a full sheet cake was MORE than enough for our reception, which was under 60 guests in size. We probably could have done a half sheet cake, but we wanted to be safe and went with the bigger size.
We used wood slices (purchased online), mini lanterns (gifted by my sister filled with remote-controlled faux candles we purchased from Amazon), table numbers (written on mini chalkboards), and wine bottles (emptied and gifted by my mom and my “extra mom” Angi). The night before the wedding, we purchased a couple bouquets of red roses from the grocery store when we picked up the cake.
We did do a slightly different centerpiece for our table, which was a sweetheart table with our son added with us. We used two white roses and one red rose at our table and a wood slice sign I made that had our last name and year of our wedding instead of a table number.
These turned out beautiful! My father-in-law helped us set up the night before and because they sat in the water overnight, they had opened up just slightly, as photographed here, and looks beautiful the next evening by reception time.
Pro Tip: Don’t order your flowers from Sam’s Club online if you need them in a specific color. We attempted to order carnations, but they arrived in the wrong colors and we punted to the grocery store roses, which ended up working our way better! We did find a use for the Sam’s Club carnations – we used them in our morning-of rehearsal breakfast in the centerpieces and then some by the guest book in the church narthex. They were beautiful and fresh looking, but just the wrong color. (If you are using lots of colors or aren’t picky about the color, these would probably work for your event. They were cost effective but just came pink instead of burgundy/red.)
Because we had a December wedding, we decided our favors would be Christmas tree ornaments! I ordered small wood slices online, drilled holes, and used an Etsy-ordered stencil with our last-name monogram and wedding date.
I hand stenciled each in a deep red/burgundy color to match our wedding color. For an extra bit of flair, I put them in coordinating organza bags.
We also added Moon Pies to our favor bags to fill space and offer a little East Tennessee treat for our guests.
I put our ornament on our tree this year, and it made me want to scroll through all of our wedding photos again! (Perhaps I owe this blog idea to the ornament stirring up the memories!)
What other tips and tricks for a beautiful, but budget-friendly event do you have? Share below in the comments section – I’d love to hear from you!
Since it is our anniversary, I also wanted to share some of my favorite photos from our day, exactly one year ago! Big thanks to Kayla Williams Photography – one of my besties – who captured our day for us.
If you have been following me on social media, you know that we were eagerly anticipating our baby boy for most of 2022.
He has officially arrived! Theodore “Teddy” Miller came on the evening of November 7, weighing in at 10 pounds on the dot! (And no, we didn’t have a c-section; he was born after induction only 2 days before his due date.)
We are so grateful for all of our family and friends who showered us with love and prayers as we awaited Teddy’s arrival.
We are especially thankful for the gorgeous shower that my sister, mom, and “extra” moms and sisters threw for us, and are also so grateful for the many handmade blankets and the diaper drive we received from our church.
If you missed glimpses of our pregnancy on my social media accounts, here are a few of our maternity photos we took and edited ourselves!
We have been settling in at home, as a family of four, for a few weeks now and are excited to share lots of photos of our family with you now.
Big thanks to my husband, Jake, and my sister, Samantha (of Samantha L Doyle Artwork), for their photography work! The first 7 photos were taken in the hospital by Jake, and the remaining were taken in our home by Samantha.
Enjoy these photos from Teddy’s first few weeks!
If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you know that we threw a little gender reveal party! Essentially, the party was to create excitement for our toddler, AJ, as he gets closer and closer to being a big brother.
Jake and I wanted to find out about the baby’s gender in the ultrasound room as a couple. There’s something special about finding out as you’re looking right at your baby – and we wanted to have that special moment.
But we also wanted to make sure that Big Bro AJ was the first to know outside of us and our OB. (We are working so diligently to try and include him as much as possible, particularly since his adjustment from being an only child to a sibling is coupled with the fact that he has a visitation schedule and a two-home situation that his sibling will not have. We are learning that blended families like ours need extra care in some ways!)
Luckily for us, our ultrasound and anatomy scan was scheduled for a Tuesday morning – and we always get Little Man on Tuesday afternoons, so it was perfectly timed!
When the ultrasound technician told us, “it’s a boy,” that morning, I laughed and Jake said “oh my gosh, really?!”
When we first found out we were expectant, I assumed it was another boy – I have for years assumed and felt that I would be an all-boy momma. But the more that I started to show and dealt with symptoms, the more I wondered if I was wrong – this pregnancy has been so different. That, and several of our family members who have had girls said “it’s for sure a girl.” Jake himself thought it might be a girl, too. So we went in assuming pink and frills.
But my initial reaction was right – I’m a boy momma! We are so thrilled and haven’t stopped giggling and grinning about it since. And, honestly, we’ve been thanking God a lot for the financial blessing, because we have some of AJ’s baby clothes and items that will work perfectly for this baby.
To share with our older son, we wanted to create a lot of excitement. We decided that we WOULD do a gender reveal – but we’d center it around AJ and surprising him.
For months, when someone asks if he wants a boy or girl, he’s been saying “we don’t pick, God picks.” My momma heart could just melt at how precious he is. But deep down, he’s admitted that he wants a brother – but that he’d be excited if it was a girl too.
So we went affordable and DIY with our gender reveal. I bought almost everything from Dollar Tree – wooden animals, paint, a frame, a cake topper, cupcake mix and icing, clothes pins, and dessert plates and napkins. I did buy some pink and blue question mark cupcake toppers from Hobby Lobby, and I bought a wooden stand and plaque from Dollar General, too.
Before the big day, while Little Man was on visitation with his father, I painted the wooden accents: some animals and a frame. I used cheap Dollar Tree brushes to paint the wooden animals pink and blue, and then I used q-tips to make polka dots of the opposite color on each animal.
On the frame, I dry-brush painted it gray and used the q-tips to make both pink and blue dots. I printed a copy of an ultrasound photo and put it in the photo opening.
I also painted a wooden plaque half pink and half blue. When it dried, I wrote in sharpie, “Pink or blue, either way we love you!” Then I got glued the plaque to the slatted wooden stand.
I also painted clothespins blue and pink and used a chalkboard sign I already had to instruct our guests to “wear their guess.” I stuck a pink and a blue cupcake topper to the sign for extra decor.
All of this decor cost me around $20 – and a lot of it can be reused. We can reuse it if a friend or family member has a small reveal, or we can repaint and repurpose! My sister has graciously offered to throw us a shower in the early fall – for things I didn’t get to keep when AJ was littler due to the divorce, for things we need to restock on, or for things that we hadn’t needed last time – and since the nursery theme is safari animals, she’s wanting to do the same theme for the shower. We can repaint these wooden animals to match the shower if she wants!
Dollar Tree also had Pillsbury cupcake mix and icing – and they even had pink and blue icing! (I grabbed these items before we knew, so I still have a tub of unused pink icing in the pantry!)
I made the cupcakes as soon as we got home from the doctor’s so they could be ready for that evening.
I baked the cupcakes according to instruction. Once they cooled, I used a spoon to scoop out the middle of each cupcake. Then, using a plastic bag with the tip trimmed off, I dropped a small dollop of blue icing in the center. I then used a bag of white vanilla icing to completely cover the cupcakes and blue icing.
Here’s a peek at our whole setup for the gender reveal party! We decorated just the island in the kitchen since it was just a dessert reveal in the evening.
We invited my parents, Jake’s parents, and our sisters (and my bro-in-law). Jake’s sister had a work exposure to COVID so we had to send her a video of the reveal – but we are so grateful that she was cautious with us having a toddler who had just overcome RSV and a baby in utero.
We had everyone gather around and let AJ take the first bite of cupcake!
He is so excited to welcome his little brother in November! Theodore Jacob Miller – AKA “Teddy” – is already so loved!
Kate with a Twang