Insomnia-palooza and Polyvore

The last few days I haven't slept very much.  To top it off, Kipper has had to work early each morning so I have tired not to do things that would make too much noise or get Gulliver excited. (This is code for: I have spent A LOT of time on my laptop!) We all know how I love me some Pinterest and one of the sites that gets pinned a lot is Polyvore. (I know what you are thinking...she is addicted to some new website...well I plead the 5th!)


Okay back to what I was saying.  The official description of Polyvore is "The web's largest community of tastemakers where people can discover their style and set trends around the world. Trendseekers and shoppers alike come to Polyvore to discover the hottest brands, products, trends and looks."  Basically it is sort of like Pinterest but for fashion and you can take pinning a step further by creating sets and collections.

For fashion bloggers I know this site had to make things so much easier for them and if you like fashion, it is a lot of fun to play around on. And so I don't feel like I have just been wasting more time than I can to admit on the site, I figured I would share a few of the sets I have created during Insomnia-palooza! Enjoy!

Memory: A Way To Hold Onto The Things You Love, The Things You Are, And The Things You Never Want To Lose

A few years back I had a stack of old family photos that I for from my mom to use in some frames I had in my bedroom. Mixed in with them I found three snapshots from Paris when my Papa was deployed over seas at the start of the Vietnam War. On their own they weren't anything spectacular, but as a collection they almost "spoke" to me for lack of a better way of saying it. On a whim one night I decided to take the three photos and create something to hang on the wall in our bedroom. My Papa passed away when I was in the 2nd grade, so all of my memories are from a young age. The older I get the more I wish I could hear the stories about his travels during the war, among many other stories. Sometimes when I look at these photos I try to imagine the day, what it was like, what he did etc. While I might never know the "facts" in these and many other old photos, to this day, this project is one of my favorite projects that I had ever done and it makes me smile every time I see it.

As I was trying to decide what to do for Christmas gifts for family members, I remembered how much both Momma and Vickie loved the three plaques I did with the pictures of Papa. I decided I would create one for each of them as my special Christmas gift.  Not only would this be a gift they could enjoy, hopefully it will be something that will be passed down through our family as well. 




It took me a little bit of time to pick out which photos I wanted to use cause I wanted them to flow together. This is one of those projects that I stretched out a little longer than I normally would because I wanted to make sure they would both LOVE them!  By the looks on both of their faces when they opened them,  I am pretty sure I can say I succeeded! :) 


  

Momma's Gift 

Vickie's Gift

Creating A New Holiday Tradition

Can you believe it is already the 7th of December?? I sure can't! The last week of November we started getting all of our holiday decorations out at the house (which is certainly one of my favorite times of the year!) As we were getting everything out I told Kipper one thing we have never done is an Advent Calendar. After talking about it I turned to my trusty inspiration, Pinterest, and within 30 minutes I had a plan!

I went to Hobby Lobby and just wondered the aisles of Christmas until I decided on all the supplies. I purchased a strand of basic evergreen garland, a make it yourself advent calendar and 24 miniature stockings. It didn't hurt that everything was 50% off either!

I cut the numbers off the calendar and glued them on to the stockings for each day. Yes, this does seem odd, but if I wanted enough numbers to cover all of the days I would have had to buy several packages of all the other numbers Hobby Lobby sold (which were NOT 50% off) So to make this project budget friendly this is the route I went, which worked great!

For the display of the stockings I folded the garland in half, fluffed it and hung on the wall in this random spot that I always want to put something, I just never had. Needless to say, this worked out perfectly and it is right on the entry hall as you come in the house!

 Now for what is IN each of the stockings! Because we don't have kids and it would just be Kipper and I doing it I decided to get creative. I came up with 24 questions that both Kipper and I would answer separately. Each day we would pull out the slips of paper and read to each other what we wrote. I wish I would have kept the list of all the questions, but I didn't. As soon as we get through all of them I will put the complete list, but here are some examples.

• What is your favorite Christmas memory from your childhood?
• Gift you have been most excited to give?
• Eggnog or Cinder?
• Favorite Christmas movie?
• Favorite Holiday tradition as an adult? 
• What did you ask Santa for this year?
• Favorite line from a Christmas movie?
• If you could give your spouse ANYTHING this Christmas, what would that be?
• Give or Receive?
• What is a Christmas tradition you would like to start? 
• Christmas song you wish they would stop playing on the radio?
• The holidays are a time to...

 I am really glad we did this because everyday I look forward to going home and having those few moments with Kipper. While some of the questions are silly, it has been special to hear what we each choose to write down. Almost all of the answers have been an amazing reflection of how much we really love each other. (even though Kipper keeps asking where his "prize" is each day because as a kid he got a piece of candy or something each day!  lol) 

After Christmas I think I am going to make a scrapbook page or something out of them so we can look back at them years later. The best part of how I made this is next year we can come up with a whole new plan on what we will pull out each day!