In honor of Thanksgiving: our fall decor!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, friends and family (and random blogosphere folks!) I hope everyone is having a wonderful day filled with family, fun, and foooood!

I am lucky enough to have a fiance who cooked the big old Thanksgiving meal for ME since I have a lot of homework to do and papers to grade. He is a bonafide chef, my friends. Here's a picture of my man at work with his turkey, mashed potatoes, and homemade gravy:



Here's the table all pristine, waiting for the incoming food:



And here is our delicious spread:





After gorging ourselves today, we set to Christmas-ifying our place. I realized that I should post some snaps of our fall decor before I show you how we've decorated for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! :) So, without further ado, here are the pictures of our little fall-scapes. All are from our living and dining rooms. (I will have to show pictures of the living room as it normally looks later on!)

Here's the centerpiece from our dining room table, featuring a candle I already had, some pinecones we collected from outside, a glass cake stand from Target, an acacia wood plate from Walmart and some maize that Ryan bought for us:



Here are the decorations on either side of the television. I got the large glass vase on sale from Pier 1, and I filled it with some harvest gourds that Ryan brought back one day from the store! The hurricane was also on sale from Pier 1; I put mini maize in it. I had the little stuffed turkey already, as well as the reed diffuser, the square frame, and the print inside it. I'll probably switch out the picture depending on the holiday.


Ryan bought the gourds and maize at the grocery store. The harvest basket is from the Dollar Spot at Target, the wood bowl from Walmart, and the little green dish from a consignment shop.



Here's our end table, next to our recliner:


I got the vase from a thrift store in Missoula, the frame from Michael's, the apothecary jar from Pier 1, the two smaller glasses from Goodwill, the wood chips and acorns from Walmart, and the pinecones from the great outdoors (Ryan scooped the big one up during our engagement photo session, so it has a nice memory associated with it!) Here's a close up of the glass things with the fillers:



And here's our little bookshelf in the entryway. The berry sticks are from Target--I just stuck them in a leftover olive oil jar I had handy. The hurricane holder next to the berries was on sale at Pier 1; I filled it with some maize. The hurricane in the center and the twig balls inside of it were also on sale at Pier 1.



Next year, I plan on replacing the bird prints above the bookshelf with some Thanksgiving art (which I featured in the last post!)

Here are some close-ups of this tablescape:

I got the plate from Walmart, the filler from Target (I added some of the acorns from Walmart and some wooden balls from Target) and the bowl itself from a thrift store.



I already had the frame with this photo in it, and then I realized it matched perfectly with this fall landscape, so I moved it to the bookshelf. The three bronze votive holders are from the Carnation Collection--they have a quatrefoil design on them that shines through when the candles are lit. (They are LED votives from Target and I love them--they have a delicious cinnamony smell!) The tray holding the votives is from Walmart. Here's another angle--you can see the quatrefoils on the votive holders better from this angle:



Here's another glass I got from the thrift store. I filled it with some itty bitty pumpkins from Michael's. Ryan actually found them as we were cruising the store for some discounted Halloween decor.



Well, that concludes our fall decor tour--stay tuned to see our Christmas spirit!

Sneak peek at our Christmas card!

This is just ONE of the five beautiful cards Ryan and I designed on Shutterfly. We ordered 10 of each design as a part of their "50 free cards" for bloggers promotion, which was as awesome as it sounded. I only had to pay $7.99 for shipping (since there is no sales tax here in Montana! Holla!) I should note that I designed 35 cards and Ryan and I had to narrow these down to 5. There were too many adorable options to choose from! I can't wait until we get them and start sending them out to our loved ones :)

Sweet And Retro Christmas Card

Get custom photo Christmas cards online at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Free Thanksgiving Prints!

As we're all gearing up for Thanksgiving tomorrow, I thought I would share some of the Turkey Day art that I've seen floating around the great blogosphere. All are from one of my new blog obsessions, Craftily Ever After--check it out, it's full of decor and DIY inspiration! Best of all, these designs are free to download, so you can use them as your computer backgrounds, you can print them off yourself, or you can order larger prints from Costco, Walgreens, or Walmart! (I personally prefer Costco--I ordered some of these prints in 11x14 for $2.99 each, compared to $6.99 at other stores. Click on the prints to open the image in a new window and then right click on them to save the print to your computer.

Thanksgiving Subway Art from Craftily Ever After:

Faux-Burlap Thanksgiving Print from Craftily Ever After:

And these three are Thanksgiving-themed versions of the iconic "Keep Calm and Carry On" print originally designed by the British Ministry of Information; again, all are from Craftily Ever After:




As I said, I ordered some 11x14 prints to go in these frames from Walmart. I plan on hanging them in my living room and rotating in new prints for each holiday season! In fact, here are some of the Christmas prints that I've found so far:

The prints would also look awesome as 8x10's matted in an 11x14 frame, like Jessica of Craftily Ever After has them displayed:



I do really like the look of the dark frame, the white matting, and the print! Maybe someday I will upgrade from my white frames to bigger dark wood 16x20's matted to fit my 11x14 prints. Once I get the frames in the mail and pop in the prints, I'll be sure to share some pictures!

Come back tomorrow to check out our fall decor--I realized I should share some pictures before we packed it all away to replace it with Christmas stuff!

FREE Holiday cards from Shutterfly!

Okay. I have been the world's worst blogger. I blame it on school, on teaching college composition for the first time in my life (writing lesson plans and grading papers takes FOREVER!), and on the general adjusting I've had to do after our big cross-country move. But I have time to catch my breath now, and I want to catch up the blog. To that end, I have a lot of posts planned, including:

• The absolutely adorable Christmas planner I crafted!!! (So excited...see the sneak peak photo at the bottom of this post!)
• Our engagement photos! (Preview the pics in this post!)
• More of our apartment tour (including multiple views of our bathroom and living room, which have changed a lot since their first dressings).
• Fall decor (I figured, oh snap, I can't take all this stuff down and replace it with Christmas decor without showing the blog world!)

And there will be more, much more!

For my first post back, I just have to gush about this A-MA-ZING deal that Shutterfly is putting on for all you bloggity gals & guys out there. They're offering 50 FREE holiday cards. Click here for more information. I've pretty much gone gaga over their entire holiday gift collection, particularly the photo cards, as I have some engagement photos that I'd love our loved ones to see. Here are my absolute favorites:



Seasonal Chic 2010 Christmas 5x7 Card. Non-denominational? Check. Spots for multiple photos? Check. Space for warm wishes inside? Check. And such a cute color theme.




Custom mug with chocolate. You can customize the design (over 20 to choose from!) I love personalized gifts, and who doesn't love chocolate? Could be adorable for grandparents--they love to see smiling tots as they sip their morning brews :)





Personalized wall calendars. Calendars are a classic holiday gift (Happy New Year! Here, keep track of it!) But instead of giving your loved ones a pop culture calendar that they'll recycle once we great 2012, why not customize it with photos that mean something to them? I've received personalized photo calendars before, and I always keep them in my memory trunk. Shutterfly's version is way better than any I've seen before, however, because you can add photos to individual days, not just the monthly headers! How ingenious--instead of writing out "Sam's birthday," you can insert a picture of Sam to get that message across!




True Blue Menorah Hanukkah 5x7 photo card. For my Jewish friends out there (shout out to Miss Sara Aisenberg!), Shutterfly not only has the non-denominational photo cards I highlighted above, but also tons of Hanukkah designs! Commemorate the festival of lights with this adorable card. I love the menorah design, and I must admit that the card model child is such a little cutie! (She doesn't come with, though :P)


If you're not hooked on Shutterfly's many holiday options by now, I urge you to check out their stuff, from photo cards to other customizable gifts. The best part? Their photo uploader is so easy to use! After you've created a FREE account, you can upload images directly from iPhoto, Picasa, or Photoshop! If you don't have any of those programs (like me) you can use their standard uploader to select a ton of pictures at once (it's so fast!) Plus if you have a iPhone or iPad, you can download the Shutterfly app and upload photos stored or taken on those devices. Once you've uploaded some suitable snaps, you can sub them in to your favorite designs and preview your purchases by simply clicking the "Get started" button on the product's page! Here's a preview of my photo card (one of the many I messed around with!):




The photo featured is one of our engagement pictures, FYI (more to come in another blog post!) The picture was really easy to edit using Shutterfly's site--I changed the photo color to black & white by clicking on the picture, the "effects" tab, and selecting "black & white." Here's a screenshot:




I can't wait until my holiday cards arrive (will they be the same as the preview I showed you above? That I cannot reveal...) Just to prove that I will post more, here's a preview of what I'll feature next--my very own Christmas planner, as inspired by the lovely sisters at eighteen25!





I love how it turned out and can't wait to share the project in its entirety! Until then, have a lovely weekend--it's supposed to drop to 15 below up here, so we'll be holed up for the weekend under our blankies, drinking hot cocoa :)