Category Archives: Gift Ideas

Creative Christmas Gift Packaging

19th December 2020

I am in love with gifting in unique ways. This year I made a few different versions of ornament packaging and DIY gingerbread house boxes that I posted on my Instagram. Sets your corneas on these!

I am a private dyslexia tutor and gave this fun pom ornament to as student as a gift for completing a level in the program/Merry Christmas. The sucker is a cupcake topper which was perfect because it gave it natural height.

I went to a favorite things party for homeschool moms from our campus and I brought my handmade gingerbread house boxes and with my favorite nut butter from Gone Nuts. (And no, no one wore clogs with socks and denim skirts to the homeschool party. I almost wore a Biggie sweatshirt. Homeschool: It’s not just for Pilgrims anymore.)

I bought these large globe ornaments from Hobby Lobby and they came in a 2 pack. I’m not a magician. They come in two separate pieces that snap together. You can use blanket or loose snow and these bottle brush trees are what started it all for me. I’m a sucker for a bottle brush tree!

As a tip, loose snow is easier! Just hot glue the trees, figures, gift cards, etc. into the placements that you want, fill up one half while it lays on its back, and then snap the two parts together. I love the way they turned out and it’s cooler way to gift a gift card. Merrryyyyy Christmas!!!!!!

Pin, share, enjoy!

Wood Burned Kitchen Spoons Hip Hop Edition

17th May 2020

I call this post, “Having Wooden Spoons While Bored in Quarantine”.

I had several Target paint dipped wooden spoons laying around that I wanted to practice wood burning on and apparently, now I have the time.

Big Poppa, gangster, hip hop and stove top, and stir crazy in honor of being stuck at home. I have a really basic wood burning tool from Hobby Lobby for 15 bucks and I me likes a lot. You could make a really cute personalized gift with these! If all else fails, rapper spoons will surely be a crowd pleaser.

Have a great day, you gangster.

DIY Watercolor House Portrait Hack

5th April 2020

If you’ve ever wanted one of those watercolor portraits of your home or a home you once lived in or loved, well join my bandwagon! I have looked at them on Etsy around 1.2 billion times and thought about having someone paint one for me. For whatever reason, I’ve never bit the bullet but love the idea.

One day I decided to take a picture on my phone and turn it into a watercolor digitally and print it off in the world’s cheapest way ever!

First step, get a picture you love of your home or past home and edit it to the size you want with the color adjustments you want made.

Next, download the Waterlogue app for $4.99 and apply the watercolor effect of your choice to your picture. (The app icon is a whale with an umbrella, just so you know you have the right one.)

Last, upload your edited photo to Staples.com and print it off as a BLUEPRINT aka engineer print in color. You can print a large one for around 4 bucks! Yes, folks, you too can have a watercolor portrait of your home, or anything you want, for about 10 bucks! It gets the job done and works for me! While we are at it, it’s also an affordable and sentimental gift idea when framed. Just sayin’….

This is the same type of printing service I use for my parties like I did here.

Get you some watercolor prints, girl!

Pin, share, and enjoy!

22 Things You Can Do To Brighten Someone’s Day During Quarantine

28th March 2020

1. Buy a game for a family on Amazon and ship right to their door.

2. Add flowers to your grocery pick up and arrange them at home and drop them on a friend’s porch.

3. Order eggs and candy on-line and go put a surprise Easter egg hunt in a friend’s yard.

4. Send a meal to someone’s door! Most restaurants are selling family style meals now and everyone is delivering!

5. Order bubbles, crafts, chalk, water balloons, silly string, or jump ropes and make an outdoor activity basket to get some kids out of the house. Bubble bath is a great idea to throw in for indoor fun. Babyganics has clean and free bubble baths.

6. Joy Ride! This idea is my husband’s and we’ve been doing it the past few days. Make a jar of mom and dad slips of paper and a jar with every kid’s name on paper in a second jar. We put each kid’s name in twice. Each day, draw one parent and one child to go have a one-on-one joy ride. We let them each pick either a meal or dessert and we go find a place to picnic together. This picture is me and one of my daughters earlier today.

I actually wasn’t drunk in this picture, despite the appearance of intoxication. I call the look “no shower give up quarantine’ look.

7. If you are up to go out in a safer way, go to Walmart’s garden center and pick up some flowers to plant, a bag of soil and planter or a flower basket. You can stay outside, pay outside, and not be in Walmart crazy. Leave them for a friend outside who loves to plant or make them a planter to gift.

8. Make and deliver a treat, or even better, a homemade birthday cake to all of those kiddos missing their planned birthday parties.

9. Drop off a Starbucks or a dozen donuts to someone who needs a little surprise.

10. Mail some happy mail to the elderly at nursing homes or to grandparents missing their grands.

11. Chalk a house! I did this in middle school with friends and we called it chalking. Go with chalk and decorate and leave encouraging messages on someone’s driveway.

12. Decorate a friend’s porch! Get balloons (not helium, just tape blow-ups ones) and streamers and a poster and tell them you love them and miss them. Adding in candy never hurt anybody. 😁

13. Here is a spin on the egg hunt…order the tiny glow sticks (1.5 inch) that fit in your mouth and candy and add them both to Easter Eggs to give a NIGHT egg hunt. It looks really cool and most people have never seen or done a glow hunt. You can get all of this on Amazon per usual life. 🙂 Light colored plastic eggs will glow the brightest! Everydaysavvy.com has these details PLUS a link on Amazon for the tiny glow sticks.

14. Serve somebody else! Show up and mow someone’s yard, pull their weeds, string some porch lights, plant flowers, walk a dog for someone who is home bound or elderly, or anything else you can think of. This is great for anyone, but especially for those among us who can’t do those things easily for themselves. This also is for anyone you can bless who hates yard work!

15. Have a meal kit delivered to someone’s house to have something different for dinner and as an activity a family can do together.

16. Adopt a student. We have a university in my hometown and they are offering an adopt-a-student option as a way to help some students that are quarantined on campus. I’m guessing that they are all international students who can’t return home during this time. Sending a student some cheer and essentials that are so far from home. Check the embeded link above to adopt a student. See if your hometown college has a program like this or maybe even start one up if not. I can’t imagine being a world away from friends and family during this time.

17. Make an outdoor/indoor scavenger hunt to leave in someone’s mailbox for their children. If you have a printer at home, just look for some on Pinterest and print them off at home and deliver with some bags so that the kids can collect their goodies.

18. Send an Amazon, Target, or any kind of gift card to a place still shipping to a friend who is slowly losing it inside. 😂

19. My favorite thing of all and I can’t claim as an idea. Create a sitting space in the tailgate of your van or truck. Go to an empty parking lot, park in a circle spaced out 10 feet or so from each other, and see your friend’s faces while you talk! If you don’t have a tailgate, put a blanket on the ground by the trunk of your car. These moms below ditched their kids and drank coffee and talked car to car. DREAM!

20. Use your gifts to bless someone else! If you knit, make someone a blanket. If you are handy, fix something for someone outside of their home or change their oil. If you are financially blessed, order groceries for someone or deliver essentials to shut-ins or less fortunate families. If you bake, deliver food. If you are a photographer, take pics from a good distance outdoors of friends. I have a friend who just offered this to me! If there is anyway you can safely use a gift or skill to encourage someone else, we should always use these things for others at all times, but especially now!

21. Paint rocks with your kids and hide them around your neighborhood along paths that families are walking regularly.

22. Tell your friends not to come outside or look outside for 15 minutes when you arrive at their house and set up fun disposable tablecloths, plates, cups, and silverware as a surprise picnic/dinner set-up. Tell them to go check their back porch when you leave and put a note on the table telling them that they hoped this would brighten up their day and lunch/dinner!


One day at a crazy stuck at home time, people! Make someone else’s day a little less quaratine-y! Pin, share, enjoy

Creative Guest Book Alternative Turned Home Decor

25th March 2020

On my last post I showed you my retirement party for my OBGYN. For that party, I had everyone sign silhouettes of Kentucky with reasons why they loved her to put in a large glass jar that she could use later. I had a moment when I was laying it all out for the party that I thought to put all of those KYs in a double-sided floating frame as a gift so that she could have a sentimental decor piece and still be able to read both sides!

I found this killer Joanna Gaines frame on Target.com and it is only available on-line. It comes in three sizes and these frames are so great that you could put them anywhere with tons of things between the two glass panes. I love them big time.

Here is how it turned out!

This is great for a cool home decor piece in general, so much so that I made myself one with leftover Kentuckys. I think it is a great way to do a non-traditional guest book that you can multi-purpose into something they can use for their home! Raise the roof if you’re with me? I ended that as a question, but really, you need only raise the roof.

Customize this any way you want for any sentimental reason, event, or personal interest. States are a great idea, but you could do so many different things. If you don’t have a machine to cut shapes, you can always find just about anything or customize anything on Etsy.

Pin, share, enjoy! Love y’all!

Fun times! Am I right?!

Gift Card Ornament Packaging

25th December 2019

Sometimes people hate on gift cards, but I love them. No shame! I love to package them in cute ways and this idea is cute AND cheap. All my frugal ladies….all the frugal ladies….
– Beyonce

These clear ball ornaments are available year round in the wood craft and glass jar aisle at Hobby Lobby. You can score one for a little over a dollar! Just hot glue a line to the bottom of the ornament and affix the gift card. Hot glue peels off with zero effort from the card so once again, hot glue is the world’s best.

I bought a bag of styrofoam snow for a dollar from the Dollar Tree and I filled several little gifts with one small bag.

I hot glued on some leaf sprigs and added poms and twine and that’s all folks! Hope y’all are having a Merry Christmas!

DIY Giant Gingerbread Man Kit

18th December 2018

*Affiliate links appear in this post.

I have the world’s best, cheaper, less messy, collapse free store bought option to gingerbread houses:  Giant Gingerbread Man Kits for 7.99!

I bought mine from my local Kroger, but you can buy this one on Amazon for 14 and have it shipped to your door!  

It was the world’s EASIEST and SIMPLEST way to do a Christmas baking craft with zero frustration of the gingerbread houses!  

Package this up with the book The Gingerbread Man alone or with an apron and it is one cute gift idea, too!

You can tell how big these guys are by comparing it in size to my 6 year old above!  

Pin, Share, Enjoy!

Heirloom Vintage Jewelry Christmas Tree

10th December 2018


*Affiliate links appear in this post*

If you don’t think this is beautiful, your eyeballs are broken. Do you know what this is??? My friend Emily’s husband has this from his grandmother and it’s made from all of her jewelry made by her! Oh my goodness! WHAT A KEEPSAKE/FAMILY HEIRLOOM! What an amazing way to pass on something personal and with so much character. This is so priceless! I wish I had one and now I plan to make them from my mom and mother in laws special things, fabrics and jewelry.  

You can make this easily by purchasing an unfinished Christmas tree wood piece from a craft store and painting the color of your choice. Then lay out your jewelry design and lift up edges and secure each piece by piece with hot glue or super glue. I prefer hot glue almost always for everything! Don’t feel crafty and don’t want to meet with painting a piece or finding an unfinished Christmas tree pattern? No problem! Buy a wooden Christmas tree from the home decor section at your store of choice and cover it in jewelry. Tis’ the season to find about a million tree options and hey, they are almost all about to be clearanced out! Another cute twist on this idea would be to get a large wood slice, wood wreath form or unfinished wood circle from your local craft store and make an ornate jewelry wreath!

Here are some options you could use to make a tree: 
unfinished one foot tall wooden tree
Above is available in larger sizes as well.  Just paint and remove star if desired.  Add wall hangers to make it wall decor!
unfinished wood tree in different style, available from 6 inches to 2 ft. tall
nested plank trees (Remove the stand if desired and paint.)
barnwood tree (Remove wreath and star)
large wood slice to make jewelry wreath 



Find someone who you know could start this project, whether it’s a parent, grandparent or a child who has old keepsake jewelry from a loved one.  What a gorgeous and special heirloom to pass on for generations of things your loved one once wore and loved! It beats sitting in a box! Thanks to my friend, Emily, for this beautiful picture and for letting me share this treasure!
PIN, SHARE, ENJOY!


Fun Custom Doormats

20th August 2018

 

I love funny things and I love custom things.  I also love practical things and believe in making everything you have from spatulas to doormats full of personality.  What could be even better than all of those things all together in these custom doormats from the Etsy shop Olive Creative Company????  Check out their shop and even get a custom order if you a funny girl and such!  These are awesome and earned a spot for sure in my gift giving category because, I love giving gifts like Oprah…minus her budget.  We are only partially alike in that way.

*All images belong to Olive Creative Company and are used with permission

 

AND THE ONE I WANT SUPER SUPER BAD…..DRUM ROLL…….

 

 

If I were a doormat, I would be this one.  This is my personality inscribed on a doormat.  I love you mat.  Come to my door.

Pin, share, enjoy and go visit this lassie’s shop!

Sentimental Farmhouse Decor & Gift Idea

11th July 2018

 

Okay so, check it.  My sister made copies of handwritten recipes that my grandmother had written for me, my sisters and my mom for Christmas.  I’ve framed them for my kitchen and I LOVE it!

So this is a double whammy:  awesome gift idea AND crazy cheap and sentimental home decor!  I adore it!  What do you think?