Weekend Pursuits

Just a DIY Maven who enjoys a great weekend!

Hello 2019!

I started 2019 recovering from a doozy of a cold, so I gave myself a bit of grace at the start of the year and took it easy. I am finally feeling better, so I started tackling all of my yearly January projects!

I am working on a home refresh, where I reorganize my closets and drawers, donating unused or forgotten items. I am participating in Emily Ley’s Simplicity Challenge again this year, it has turned it to a bit of an annual tradition for me. My final project is starting my Powersheets Intentional Goal Planner from Cultivate What Matters, I am really excited about this one! I feel a bit scattered when it comes to my goals, some are small and often get pushed to the side. Other goals are big and seem unattainable, but this goal planner guides you so you can conquer and realize your goals. The prep work is quite involved, so I wish I would’ve started in December, but next year it will serve as a reminder to tackle the prep work early. 

I know it is cliched, but I love that January is a fresh start and I am ready to tackle 2019! I chose the word forgiveness as my word of the year. Forgiving myself, friends, family and strangers quickly is the goal. For small and big things alike, whether it be an insensitive comment, forgiving myself for not perfectly executing some ridiculous task that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, someone stealing the spot I am waiting patiently for at the grocery store or others taking credit for your work, I plan to forgive because forgiveness is freedom.

I also have a ton of ideas for DIY projects in 2019! I love all of the holidays, but I am particularly fond of Valentine’s Day. The color palette of red and pink combined with hearts makes for some pretty cute combos. I can’t wait to share what I create for Valentine’s Day and all of the other holidays this year. I am also challenging myself to make more decorated sugar cookies this year, so look out for some cute cookie posts. Finally, I want to focus on sharing more party DIYs, party planning tips and theme ideas.

I’d love to know what projects you focus on in January, whether or not you chose a word of the year and any DIY projects you plan to tackle in 2019!


Our 2018 Christmas Card

Christmas is over, so hopefully by now all of my family and friends have received their Christmas cards. I wrote about my Christmas Card and Ornament Tradition earlier this month where I announced the 2018 theme.  So I wanted to share the final card and ornament that I mailed out with you.

Each package and card is a little labor of love. Every year they take longer to assemble (which is the BEST because it means my card list of family and friends continues to grow) and every year it is my favorite Christmas activity.

For this year’s card and ornament I opted for a buffalo plaid theme which I carried throughout. I painted a buffalo plaid pattern on acrylic reindeer ornaments, some were left blank and others had a Merry Christmas sticker added to them, which is actually my hand writing turned into a cut file for my Cricut and cut out of vinyl.

I continued the theme with our Christmas card photos and we were decked out in buffalo plaid scarves with our new neighborhood serving as the backdrop. To get the cards ready to send I hand lettered and addressed them, adding a little holly leaf to each one for an extra festive pop!

For those lucky couple dozen that received an ornament, I packaged them up in a box with a cute bow for safe keeping and they were sent out in a buffalo plaid mailer. I had SNOW much fun putting these together (I even added a handful of snow confetti to each package and card) and hope everyone who found one in their mailbox felt the Christmas cheer!

Christmas Cookie Exchange Party

This weekend my cousin and I are hosting our first (hopefully, annual) cookie exchange party. I think we were a bit ambitious, we asked that everyone bake seven dozen of their favorite cookie, which is a whole lot of cookies, but we will have plenty of cookies to exchange! We looked on Pinterest for cookie exchange rules and guidance, but realized everyone has their own recipe for success when it comes to exchanging holiday cookies. I thought I would share our cookie exchange party plan and I will let you know how the cookie crumbles after this weekend’s exchange.

OUR COOKIE EXCHANGE RULES

  1. Bake seven dozen of your favorite CHRISTMAS cookies.
  2. Please no store bought cookies.
  3. Be creative and thoughtful in your baking.
  4. Send a copy of your recipe to one of the hosts, so that they can share the recipes with everyone.

COOKIE EXCHANGE PARTY PLANS

  1. We will be having brunch before exchanging cookies. Quiche, bagels, fresh fruit and mimosas are all on the menu!
  2. We purchased bakery boxes for everyone to take home their treats, we will tie them up with twine to avoid any mishaps and top with a cute gingerbread ornament. 
  3. We plan to separate any mint flavored cookies from the rest when packing them up, either by using separate smaller bakery boxes or bags. Mint is so strong that it will make all the other cookies mint flavored by the time you take your cookies home.
  4. We plan on reserving a dozen or so cookies of each kind for tasting and voting purposes, we will then take the remaining cookies and divide that by the number of bakers, the resulting number will be how many cookies of each kind we get to pack into our bakery box. For example, if we have 15 people bring seven dozen cookies, we will reserve 15 cookies for tasting, which results in 69 additional cookies divided by the total bakers is approximately four cookies per person of each kind or five dozen total. This will leave some cookies unaccounted for, but don’t worry, this is to account for broken cookies, miscounting and extra snacking!
  5. We will share our recipes digitally, rather than printing them out or passing out handwritten cards.
  6. Each cookie will have a place card next to it with the bakers name and recipe written on it, so we can identify the cookies for voting.

ORGANIZING THE RECIPES

I opted to organize everyone’s recipes on Google Drive and I will share it with all of bakers once I receive everyone’s recipes. It is a simple way to ensure everyone gets a copy of the recipes and I hope to create a tab for each year, so that we have all of the recipes in one place and reference them easily when we want to bake.

COOKIE EXCHANGE COMPETITION

My brother and his friends played football the day after Thanksgiving for several years and the winning team would get a trophy that they passed back and forth, I thought it was an adorable tradition and wanted the same type of friendly competition between us bakers. I posted the photo of the trophy above on Facebook and it got heated! I bought the trophy as a fun memento of our exchange, something I hope we can pass back and forth between the winners of the exchange for many years. I didn’t realize our bakers had been watching so many cooking competition shows! Our bakers are very serious about their cookies and it definitley amped up the excitement for this weekend’s exchange. If you would like to buy your own trophy, you can find it on Amazon.

DRESSING THE PART

One of my 2018 goals was to dress more festive for all of the holidays. For the cookie exchange I purchased this cookie team captain shirt and this gingerbread sweatshirt to wear at the party, but until then I will be wearing my favorite apron and baking allofthecookies!

COOK

COOK

CELEBRATE

CELEBRATE

CREATE

CREATE

CHEERS

CHEERS

PARTY SUPPLIES FOR PARTY ANIMALS

PARTY SUPPLIES FOR PARTY ANIMALS

#everypartyneedsapiñata, but sometimes you don't have time to make one, feel free to visit my Etsy shop and request a custom piñata or anything else you have seen on my blog!