'Tis The Season: Shutterfly For Holiday Cards + A Giveaway!

**Be sure to scroll down to the bottom to enter to win 25 free cards from Shutterfly!**
Sure, we've got 2 more big holidays to get through before we get to the Holidays. But if you're anything like me, you're already thinking about your Christmas cards. (In fact, I'm thinking of a "Have a SUPER Christmas" caption for our cards after yesterday's superhero costume photo shoot with my kiddos...coming soon...)

Last year we ordered our cards from Shutterfly and were SO happy with them. (No big surprise there...we order Shutterfly Photo Books regularly and LOVE them, and we make a new Shutterfly calendar every year.) We picked a folded card with 3 photos on the front and room for a full update on the inside. I'm thinking along the same lines for this year. There are plenty of options in their 925+ (!) item catalog of Christmas & Holiday cards with fabulous designs, no matter what your price range.

Pardon the photo overload, but I found so many I liked and wanted to share as many as possible. These are all flat or folded 5x7 Stationery Cards, which start as low as $1.04 for large quantities and under $1.50 per card for quantities of 50 (Smaller quantities available...as low as one card!). So.Many.Options!

{Great option if you're a design whiz & want to come up with your own creation & upload it...}

I'm also really digging the 4x8 Stationery Cards, same price range as the 5x7.





5x5 is a unique option (same price range for these, also).

And if stationery cards aren't in your budget, Shutterfly has the cutest photo cards I've seen. I LOVE this 5x7 (starting at 44 cents per card):
And there are lots o' 4x8's to choose from as well (as low as 32 cents each):

All designs come with envelopes included. Shipping is not included, but right now Shutterfly is offering FREE shipping on orders of $30 or more when you use the code SHIP30 (not sure when that one expires, but give it a shot!).

Best of all, Shutterfly has offered to give away three sets of 25 holiday cards to 3 of my readers! (Shipping not included.) Woo hoo! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post (If you're reading on Facebook, please click over and comment on the actual blog post...Facebook comments won't be counted.) Any comment will do, but if you're feeling extra cooperative, tell me one of these things:

1) How many Christmas/Holiday cards you usually send out. (I'm very curious about this one...our list just keeps getting longer & longer...)

or

2) Click over to Shutterfly and let me know which Holiday card design has caught your eye.

AND, please leave your e-mail address so I can get your prize to you if you win!

Good luck! The contest will close on Thursday, November 3 at Midnight, and I'll randomly draw three winners on Friday morning. One entry per person, please. Duplicate entries will be deleted.

Thanks for playing! And thanks, Shutterfly, for sponsoring this post!

To Stripe...Or Not To Stripe

Am I the only one who misses What I Wore Wednesday? I do miss it. But What I Wore in the Texas Summer is a really boring blog feature. Here's what I wore for 6 months straight: shorts and a t-shirt. Blah and blah.

Anyway, every so often I'll be getting ready and think...I should take a picture and start back up What I Wore Wednesday. And then, as per everything else in my life, my gnat-like attention span thwarts my plans and I never do anything I think about doing. Oh well.

I digress. The question at hand is...to stripe...or not to stripe. Here's what happened. I was at the Old Navy with my dear Mother, and found this super awesome fantastic extra long sweater dress on the clearance rack ($14.95! Perhaps that was my first clue.) I loved it immediately and showed it to my Mom. Her response?

"WOW!"

Hmm. Not sure what that means. But I tried it on and I looooved it.

Fast forward to to the checkout line. I pull it out of my cart and hold it up to admire it...and notice the clerk grimacing at it. She calls me over. "You don't like it?", I ask her. "I love it", I tell her, just so she knows where I stand. "No, I like it! But you have to be really tall and really skinny to pull it off!". Either she was telling me I was really tall (yes!) and really skinny (not quite so much) or she was insulting/warning me. Either way I bought it, but I still considered it strike two.

Back at home I pulled it out of the bag to show Chris. His reaction was pretty easy to read. "What IS that?! You would wear that?!" Chris isn't usually very opinionated about my clothing choices (which is good, because I'm well aware that my style isn't for everyone), so I suppose I should heed his concern and return this baby. But somehow it seems like the more that people dislike it, the more I like it. So...what do you think?

It's bright, it's slightly 80s-ish, but in a good way, I'd say. There we have it with bare legs & flats. (And months since my last What I Wore post and I still haven't cleaned my mirror! The shame.)

I also like it with tall boots and a teeeeeny bit o' pink tights peeking out.And you could also pull out the leggings with this. If I had a wide black belt, I would have tried that, too.

So, what say you? To stripe or not to stripe? Is this "something only I could pull off" (which I will take as a compliment) or something I should pull off (and return promptly to the store)?

Keep in mind: anonymous comments about how stupid I look will make me sad! And comments about how all that running is paying off will make me HAPPY! :) Seriously, though. Yay or nay?

Stay tuned: I'll be giving away 2 Shutterfly codes each good for 25 Shutterfly cards later this week! Hooray!

You're Invited...

October is party month for us, and this year was a double whammy!

First, we celebrated Maya's birthday with a pajama party! (I got the template for the invites here.)

Then we had a baptism! I designed the invites and had them printed by Overnight Prints. Super happy with how they came out!

Also for the baptism...I used the same fonts & colors for her programs and then used a corner punch to make them fancy. I also had I am a Child of God cards printed with the Articles of Faith (basic summary of Mormon beliefs) on the back. Overnight Prints will round the corners for super cheap, and I loved the way they turned out. (I also have a zillion left over if anyone can think of a brilliant use for them...)

And last but not least, we'll be celebrating our Simon this week! Since he's such a lover of "noomies", I thought it appropriate to deliver the invites with a balloon. It seemed like a great idea until I had a car full of balloons on a blustery fall day. But it was...exciting! :) We're going with a low-key park play-date party. With lots of yummy snacks, of course!

Don't forget to throw a church trunk-or-treat and a neighborhood Halloween-night potluck into the mix, and you've got one heck of an October party month!

Oh, and let us all remember...my birthday is less than two weeks away! Party on, party on.

Cookies + Lemonade & a Baptism

Eighth birthdays are special for us because it's the year that children are baptized in our church. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of friends and family to share it with us. So of course, that meant we needed a party, right? Just a little one, with treats + lemonade...oh, and a 25 minute slideshow of my girl's 8 years. I thought about posting it, but then realized that NO ONE (beside her parents and grandparents, maybe) wants to watch 25 minutes of Maya, as wonderful as she is. (And if you DID want to, that would be a little...creepy...) :)

I borrowed a friend's gorgeous cake stands (available at Home Goods), bought some colorful candy at the good ol' Party City (they carry LOTS of pretty colors now!) and set out some yummy stuff...

Rice Krispie balls dipped in white chocolate (a group effort by my Mom, me and my Mother in Law); Jen's gorgeous and delicious sugar cookies (piped with a broken wrist, thank you, Jen!), my ugly but delicious mint brownies, Stacie's super amazingly delicious raspberry lemonade cake pops (mmmmm!!!) and Mom's world famous and super yummy lime bars. It was a delicious spread. My big regret is that somehow I didn't get pictures of all the wonderful friends who came to share this occasion with us!

I did get the obligatory family shots, though. Oh, Simon! He's not much of a co-operator. How 'bout Maya's gorgeous dress? Chris' talented mother sewed it from a 1940s pattern and it was absolutely beautiful!

And we got the requisite church-photos, too. Maya & Daddy looked lovely all decked out pre-baptism (it is done in a font, by immersion, so Maya got to sport a lovely jumpsuit!).

It was definitely a family affair...Maya sang, I spoke, Chris performed the baptism and confirmation and our family provided the music and prayers. It all came together just right, and I was so proud of Maya!

Maya's 8th Birthday Party: Pajama-Rama

Maya decided on a pajama party (UN-sleepover) for her 8th birthday! It was nice to be back at home after a few Cottam parties "on location" lately. It was good old-fashioned fun!

We started out by making flower & feather hair clips (and I didn't take any pictures?!). The girls designed their creations and there were Moms standing by with glue guns to help put them together. They came up with some pretty extravagant stuff, that is for sure! And they snacked on popcorn and candy kabobs while they waited for everyone to be finished.

We tried to do a "photo booth" type thing, hanging a sheet up and setting out a box of hats, feather boas, etc. But it wasn't a big hit and we only ended up with a couple of shots...

And yes, I don't think we had the flash settings quite right! :) Oh well. This is only a few of the many girls who came over for a wild and crazy time that night.

We played a couple of games. First up: toilet paper race! Each girl had a partner and she tried to wrap her up with toilet paper as fast as she could. They had fun with it, though next time I'd give them a few tips to get them going. Of course, afterward it turned into a big toilet paper FIGHT, which was also fun.

We also did an "I have never" game where the girls wrote down something they've never done. I read them out and the girls who HAD done that thing had to put a gumball in their mouth. There were some big, nasty wads of gum after that game!Breakfast for dinner seemed like just the thing! Chris whipped up a huge stack o' pancakes, and we served bacon, scrambled eggs, fruit and juice. Yum!

After dinner, the girls brought the toilet paper fun outside! They toilet papered the trees and each other, and just generally ran around, dog-piled, laughed & were silly.

Then we brought the silliness back inside, this time for a sing-along dance party! I went onto YouTube and found karaoke-style versions of their favorites, made a playlist and voila, the girls sang at the top of their lungs! Eventually, it all erupted into a massive pillow fight...as all good pajama parties should!And finally, it was time to sing to the birthday girl. Have I mentioned how stoked I was about the cake?! I loved how it turned out. It's nice when things are remedial enough for even me! :) Watching this tutorial helped.

So another year, another party, and not enough pictures of some of my favorite party elements (Where are the candy kabobs?! They were so cute!). Not to worry, I had another party to throw for Maya the following week, after her baptism. That's up next...

My Latest Black Hole(s)

Does anyone remember those days when I used to blog daily? Multiple times? Man, I barely do. Life. Is. Crazy! And I'm keeping busy. With things such as...

• Ruffle icing piping! Maya is turning 8 tomorrow (!!!) and we hosted quite the wild and crazy pajama party at our house last weekend. Great times, and it deserves it's own post, if I ever get around to that. There were awesome sleepmask invitations, breakfast for dinner, slumber party games, a sing-along dance party and amazing embroidered pillowcase favors courtesy of Chris' generous mother. (I don't think she knew what she was getting into!) :) Aaaand, there was my best effort at a cake so far. (There have been...ahem...some not so nice efforts in the past...)
• Baptism preparations. In our church, turning 8 means being baptized! It's a big milestone and a huge deal, so there have been lots of things going on around here to get ready for that.
• Running! Still running! Still loving it and still making progress. In fact, I ran my first-ever 7-miler this week. Which was VERY exciting. And felt awesome. This makes 6 months of running, and I'm SO excited at how far I've come. I'm trying to spread the gospel of running far and wide, while training for my half-marathon in December. I was happy to have gone over half the distance to my goal of 13.1 miles, and I'm SUPER happy that I still have 2 more months to get ready!
• Thinking ahead: Simon turns 3 at the end of the month. I'm thinking we're going with a park/playdate party. (I don't think I will have recovered from having 19 sweet and wonderful - and not at all loud and crazy! - kids at my house this past weekend, yowza!) Two days later, it's Halloween time! I'm hoping to convince my two bigger kids that a family superheros theme is just the thing, but we'll see...

I'll be back with party details eventually, I'm sure of it! :)