Meg vs. Giveaways: Christmas Prints from Little Boston Print Shoppe!

To be honest, I am a little ambivalent about gaining followers on this blog. I mostly started it to record our progress on the house and keep myself motivated, but then I felt silly writing to myself so I thought I would write to, well, some readers. I am not particularly creative, or handy, or thrifty, or chic, and I blog in spurts. I don't even own a glue gun.

But I do enjoy sharing what we do around here and pretending like it's useful or interesting to someone else. So I'll just focus on sharing. And right now, I am going to share a set of these fun Christmas prints made by my awesome friend Emily, who blogs at Everything for the Love (where I occasionally blog as a guest) and sells her adorable prints at the Little Boston Print Shoppe!

My boys love, love, LOVE Christmas, and these festive prints are a perfect way to add some Christmas Spirit to your home! So fun and festive. There are lots of things you can do to win a set, and you don't even have to follow my blog (unless you want to). =) My treat, a Christmas present to some lucky friend. Just pick one or more tasks from the entry form below and you're entered to win! The more you do, the more chances you have to win. (And you can do some of them once per day.) The giveaway will be open through Friday night, and I'll announce the winner on Saturday.

Good luck, and Merry Christmas!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

p.s. To make it easier on you, I didn't require verification for most of the tasks. Enter on your honor!

Meg vs. Myself: Weekly Goals November 19-24

As I mentioned earlier, it has been a long week. I am just happy I can do laundry again, and we'll try again next week (with some scaled back expectatoins...).

November 12-17
*Get everything ready for Little Brother's 2nd Birthday.
*Get the whole house clean for family coming into town.
*Figure out/fix the leak in the drain pipe for the washing machine (as much fun as it was to have the toy room flood last week...).
*Seal the grout!
*Put the sink/vanity back in the front bathroom and rehang the shower curtain.
Bonus:
*Start staining the vanity
*Start painting the walls

November 19-24
*Plan and shop for Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws
*Make my pumpkin cheesecakes!
*Seal that grout!
*Get the house clean (or at least hide the mess).
*Giveaway!

Meg vs. Decor: My new pillow!

It has been a long week. The kind where I meant to get lots of things done, but the house just got worse instead of better (thus no posting this week). And I think I might have some kind of sinus infection.

But then I got a sweet package from by BFF Emily, and it made my day! Look what she sent me!

I love this print, it matches my living room perfectly, and it makes me happy every time I see it! Not to mention that it is a super sturdy pillow cover, which should stand up well to all the abuse my little guys are all-too-quick to inflict upon anything I place in their reach. Check out this and other designs at Emily's Etsy store, Little Boston Print Shoppe. She is going to be listing some Christmas prints soon, and I am thinking I may just treat one of you lovely people to a set, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks, Emily!

Meg vs. Myself: Weekly Goals November 12-17

November 5-10
*Seal the grout on the new bathroom tile.
*Do two Thanksgiving activities with the boys.
*Re-fill the green waste bin.
*Get gas for the lawnmower and mow the lawn (or make the hubs do it).  John did pick up a gas can, but it was rainy this week so we decided against mowing. He raked and mulched all of the leaves instead.
*Install the new toilet seat in the front bathroom.

Between sleeping kids, kids refusing to sleep, and my lack of sleep, the grout just wasn't in the cards this week. But I did paint two doors and touch up the beadboard in the living room, plus I installed a few new doorknobs. And this week John is done with his block exams, so he is planning to help me get the bathroom in working order before Thanksgiving! So here are next week's goals and aspirations. I should think of something with which to treat myself if I get to the bonus tasks. Maybe a nap.

November 12-17
*Get everything ready for Little Brother's 2nd Birthday.
*Get the whole house clean for family coming into town.
*Figure out/fix the leak in the drain pipe for the washing machine (as much fun as it was to have the toy room flood last week...).
*Seal the grout!
*Put the sink/vanity back in the front bathroom and rehang the shower curtain.
Bonus:
*Start staining the vanity
*Start painting the walls

Meg vs. Thanksgiving: Thankful Tree

For my second Thanksgiving activity this week, I wanted to do something that would help us to focus on being thankful this month. After my handprint and footprint garland, I had a couple more paper grocery bags and decided to cut out a tree on a whim, to which we could add some fall foliage with things we are thankful for. The trunk took me about a minute to cut out, and then I cut out leaves during my spare minutes throughout the day. Here it is with our first leaves:

I thought it was fun that when I asked Little Brother what he was thankful for, he simply said, "Happy!" That warmed my heart, since ultimately happiness is what I want to give my kids. I think that being thankful is a big part of being happy.

We are planning to each put up something we are thankful for every day until Thanksgiving (or maybe through the end of the month?), so our tree should fill up pretty quickly.

Once the tree was done, the wall still seemed pretty bare, so I thought I would finish it off with a banner. If you read yesterday's post, that lead to an epic hunt for printable buntings and banners that you can customize. Next time the process should be a little easier!

Here it is with the addition of the banner:

Much better! I'm no Martha Stewart, but the whole point is to help my toddlers learn about Thanksgiving and what we should be grateful for, and I think this fits the bill (not to mention that it cost me approximately $0, since I had all the supplies, and many were things I inherited from other people or my mom's work).

What are you thankful for today? I hope you can say "Happy!" too. =)

Meg vs. Decor: Customizable Bunting Round-Up!

Bunting and garland is so in right now, and I am loving it. After making our Thankful Tree today (more on that to come), I thought the wall needed a little something to finish it off. A Thanksgiving message on garland? Just the thing. So I headed over to Pinterest to see what there was to see.

I wasn't sold on any of the Thanksgiving-specific printables I found, so I started looking for alphabet sets that I could customize myself. There are some really cute, free, printable alphabet sets available! So I thought I would put them all together and share what I found to save you (and me in the future) the scouring.

First up, good old Martha Stewart came through, as usual:

Found here.

Found here.

Found here.

Found here.

I love this one from Ruffled:

Such fun patterns and colors!

And Flights of Fancy put this one together with two different font types:

You can find this fun set at Wild Olive. Wouldn't it be super cute for a kids' party?

And if you like a vintage feel, try this one from Rook No. 17:

Here's a cutie from Jolly Allsorts:

Here's a simple set from Small Types:

Another from Shanty 2 Chic:

And one in miniature from The Tomkat Studio!

There you have them--have fun! I'll share my finished tree and banner tomorrow.

Meg vs. Thanksgiving: Fall Handprint Garland

I love handprint crafts. If you search "handprint" on Pinterest you will find seven kajillion (of course that is a number!) amazing, creative, super fun handprint crafts to do with your kiddos. My three-year-old has been dying to do a footprint with paint ever since he saw the kids on Barney make Halloween ghost footprints, so when I saw turkeys on Pinterest that had handprints AND a footprint, I knew we were golden. (Oddly, none of the links to the actual turkeys worked, so I won't link back to any originals. We started out the fun by looking at some pictures of real turkeys online, then got to work.

Now as much as I love a cute handprint, I am not really into making extraneous messes, so my kids aren't really well trained with hand painting/stamping activities. More specifically, my almost-two-year-old cannot hold still for more than about two seconds, so I didn't think that doing all the prints right onto the turkey would work for us. I decided to just have the boys do a whole bunch of prints onto a paper bag (since I am too cheap to buy real craft paper) and then assemble the turkeys later. I have these Crayola Washable Kids' Paints, and we have really liked them and haven't had any problems with staining, which is good since I neglected to strip my kids down this time before we got going.

I had them stamp their feet twice just in case, which worked out because at the last second I thought to take advantage of the extra paint on their hands and make a little tree canopy so we would have some fall foliage to add to our decor as well.

Then when the paint dried, Big Brother and I cut out the hands and feet and glued them together, added some googly eyes and a couple spots of paint, and behold:

Handprint/footprint turkeys!

We taped them on to some yard with our fall trees, then hung them up in the living room.

Big brother and I also redecorated our branches for fall, since our spring buds (cut out from paint chips) were in poor shape. Here's the before & after:

Blech.

Much more festive!

And I cut out two leaves to cover the tape we used to hang up our garland.

Super easy, the boys love it, and I think it's decor the grandparents will appreciate, as they are all coming to visit around Thanksgiving time.

I have to admit, I couldn't decorate for Thanksgiving without starting to get excited for Christmas. Growing up we always put up our tree and all of our decorations the day after Thanksgiving, so the two are intertwined for me. We may or may not have tuned in to Christmas Radio on Pandora. Don't judge me.

Here's to the start of the Holiday Season!