Host a Kid-Friendly Gingerbread House Decorating Party

Celebrate the Christmas season with a kid-friendly gingerbread house decorating party filled with fun and sweets. Here's how to pull it off. 

The best parties are the ones that let kids get involved and be creative. This holiday season, invite kids to join in the fun of an age-old holiday tradition: gingerbread house decorating.

Sweet Invitations

Set the tone (and color palette) for the party with this adorable gingerbread house invitation. Traditional Christmas colors mixed with unexpected gray and graphic patterns create a fresh take for the holidays. Just print, cut and fill in your party details.

Dress the Part

Find a special outfit that your child can wear to parties and gatherings all season long. Department stores, boutiques and online handmade shops are filled with seasonal clothing, like this vintage-inspired dress, weeks before the holiday festivities begin.

A Sugary Wonderland

Create a dessert buffet inspired by the colors and flavors of the season. To give your dessert table a professional look, use cake stands or wrapped boxes to stack sweets at various heights.

Gingerbread House Centerpiece

A completed gingerbread house makes a perfect centerpiece for the table. Not only is it a great focal point, it also serves as inspiration for the party guests while they decorate their own mini houses.

Fabulous Paper Details

Most gingerbread houses are made for display purposes rather than actual eating, so why not use paper elements to spruce up the decor? Make this embellishment by folding strips of decorative paper accordion-style and securing with hot glue to create the background fan. Top with the printable gingerbread man party circle design.

Mini Gingerbread House Pops

Proof that anything is better in miniature: These adorable gingerbread house pops. To make, piece together mini gingerbread houses with royal icing. To create a pop, simply stick a marshmallow on the stick before inserting it into the mini house.

A Home of Their Own

Construct a mini gingerbread house for each guest, attached to a cardboard base with icing. Make it the centerpiece of each place setting. Then, just add a beverage, a personalized name card and a few decorations. For a simple, disposable place mat, use a 12x12 piece of decorative paper. To continue the theme, you can also add a gingerbread man or woman for each guest to eat or use for decorating.

Warm Them Up

Hot chocolate is the perfect beverage to warm up your guests on a chilly winter day. Top with whipped cream and colorful sprinkles for an irresistible treat.

Gingerbread House Decor

Fill bowls with candy for your guests to use to decorate their mini gingerbread houses. Provide a variety of shapes and textures to inspire creativity, plus classic gingerbread embellishments like peppermints, candy canes and lollipops.

Too see how to finish Hosting a Kid-Friendly Gingerbread House Decorating Party give us a call and scedualle your complementary consultation... 

Creative Ideas For Your Wedding Guest Book

Having a guestbook at your wedding is a trend that many brides seem to be keenly following these days. The guestbook is something in which your close family, friends and other guests write their compliments and wishes for you, which can also be preserved as a keepsake. There are many local stores where you can pick up your wedding guestbook. You can even place an order for a personalized guest book which contains the couple’s pictures, the logo or other wedding elements. Leather bound diaries, handmade paper diaries, photo books are some variations of the typical guestbook. For those who want their guestbook to be more than a wedding attendance register, there are many options for you to explore. Many couples like to have a blown up picture of them mounted with a border so that guests can write their wishes around the picture. This picture with the border can later be framed and prominently displayed in your home.

If you are not too keen on using a book, you can simply set up a table with some blank cards, colorful pens and a bowl or a box to hold your cards. Your guests can simply write their wishes and drop it into the box for you to read later. To make this more interesting, you can use postcards instead of blank cards and have your guests fill and drop these into a box. A close friend or family member can collect these postcards and actually mail them to you so that on returning from your honeymoon, you have a mailbox full of wishes and greetings for the newlyweds!

 If you are the sort who loves the idea of an interactive guestbook, how about having your guests answer some interesting questions or put down the best thing or memories pertaining to you! Handmade paper with these questions can be left at the tables for your guests to fill in. These not only will bring out a laugh as you read the answers many years down the line, but will also serve as excellent ice breakers at your wedding. You can also have your guests jot down their thoughts on pieces of fabric instead of paper. Post wedding you can use these pieces to make a beautiful patchwork wedding quilt which will keep you cozy. We love this idea ☺

 

 Another interesting and fun way to spice up your guest book is to have a photo booth at your reception. Quirky backdrops, fun props, some white boards with markers are all you need to get the best out from your guests. You can get some fun pictures which you can add to your guestbook. You can add some self adhesive photo corners to your guestbook so that your guests can slip in pictures clicked and write a few lines beside the picture as well.

Why not set up a video diary? All you need is a corner set up with a video recorder, a backdrop or not and your dear ones cheering and wishing you all the happiness in the world!

Another interesting idea is to have your guests sign a keepsake that you can later incorporate into your home décor. A beautiful white porcelain vase or porcelain plates filled with wishes inscribed by your guests is a unique keepsake which can be displayed for years to come. A fabulous Christmas wedding idea is to place some ornaments in a basket along with permanent colored markers and your guests can leave their wishes for the couple on these ornaments. You will relive many beautiful memories every year when you decorate your Christmas tree.

We would love to hear your guestbook ideas! The options are unending!

SMI Dream Events Present: Scrapbooking Workshop

Whether you are learning the basics or are a master in the art of paper crafting, take the time with us to learn new techniques, explore new products, and accomplish goals while participating in this course.

Happy Memorial Day!

Wishing everyone a Happy Memorial Day! And Thank You to our troops for their service...

Summer Is Approaching.... Clutter Control Time!

Clutter has been scientifically proven to raise stress levels. Follow these simple steps for a smarter, healthier and clutter-free home to help you feel more relaxed.

1.) Purge now:

Choose a room in your home and throw away, donate, and sell items that are not used or needed in that room. Each day, choose a different room. Before the week is up, you will have purged your entire home. Collect items in garage or one area to have a garage sale, or for items to be donated to your local area shelter, church or charity.

2.) Arm your family with storage options:

One of the biggest reasons home owners feel it is hard to keep clutter at bay is accessibility to storage options. Find a system that works for you and your family. Baskets for loose magazines, clear toy bins for kids, and labeled filing boxes for the home office.

3.) Teach your family to declutter:

When your children bring home arts and crafts, extra papers and miscellaneous clutter items. Ask them what they like the most, and file or cleverly eliminate what they don’t want. Older clutter items that may be taking real estate on kid’s desks and work tables can also be cleverly disposed of!

4.) Optimize vertical storage:

Instead of trying to use every square inch of your floor space, use vertical storage. Shelving, book shelves, and vertical storage solutions will help you gain more floor space and keep everything in plain eye sight. Use highest shelving for seldom used seasonal items, so you don’t have to climb a ladder or step stool often.

5.) Make it part of your schedule:

If every weekend for one hour you went through your home and looked for items that are no longer valid or used, this will keep down clutter tremendously. Magazine subscriptions, old newspapers, stacks of bills and mail are all items that should be filed or disposed of weekly

6.) Imagine how great you will feel:

Have you ever walked into a clean room and then right into a cluttered room? Even though you think it may not affect you, try living in the cluttered space for days and weeks at a time. You will find you are less productive, more irritable and less likely to want to spend meaningful time in the space. Try it.

7.) Make it fun:

Let’s face it, if organizing was more fun… oh how our homes would stay clutter free! Figure out what motivates you to declutter? Need incentives, new organization bins, file cabinets, or repainting the home office if you can keep your space decluttered? Make basket ball hoops over your kid’s laundry hamper… whatever works, right?!

8.) Know when to let go:

Often times, the source of clutter is our own inability to let go of the old and unnecessary. This is especially true with clothes, memorabilia, and family collections. Assess your reason for keeping, and be able to have a physical place for everything you keep. If the only place your items fit is in a brown box in the garage, you probably don’t need it.

9.) Every time you finish, put it away:

Parents especially are infamous for telling their kids to put things away after they play with them, but adults don’t always do the same. Your ability to put things back after you use them, will keep your home cleaner, and save you from procrastinating to the end of the week!

10.) Find productivity tools to help:

With the advanced technology era we live in today, there is some type of productivity tool to help you stay organized and therefore clutter free! From online resources to help you organize your papers to smart phone apps to help you organize your business, there is no excuse why you can’t have a clutter free home and life.
Your home doesn’t have to be a headache to get clutter free. Use these 10 tips to help you and your family figure out where to purge, clean, and organize for the future. Start small, or big – whichever keeps you going. If you get discouraged, go find a killer piece of furniture or electronic to motivate you! You’d be surprised how well you do, once there is a prize at the other end of the cluttered home hallway!

Freshome readers, we’d love to hear how you keep your home clutter free. Do you have good storage containers, or are you still trying to tackle your home clutter? Feel free to add on to our top 10 list below.

Wedding Budgeting & Knowing Where To Start

 There are a lot of new planners and experienced planners that struggle with knowing where to start when planning an wedding, I even struggle with this task.

Here Are 3 Tips To Help Pull Together An Effective Budget For Your Wedding: 

1. The most important place to start is what do you have to spend? This figure is often stretched by couples so a realistic approach is essential here. Then identify the crucial "cannot live without elements of the wedding" as each couple are different and have different visions for the day.

2. If the couple has chosen a venue, they would roughly gauge the cost for the hall and catering. Starting with the hall decorations because that's where most of the costs would go to. The rest of the things in the itinerary like the band, lighting, sound system, cake etc are the normal stuff that goes along with any other events. 

3. Have the couple each put together their own guest list, then compare those and make sure they agree on who they both absolutely want to have in attendance as opposed to who is "expected" to be invited because of parents' wishes, international relations or traditions. This is particularly important in "low budget" weddings as one can still produce a memorable and classy event. My point with that is to remind the couple that this is their day, not everyone else's opportunity for a party. It saddens me to see how many couples end up with hundreds of "strangers" at their wedding.


 

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Cinco de Mayo

 May 5th

This day commemorates the Mexican army's 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867). A relatively minor holiday in Mexico, in the United States Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations. 

Cinco de Mayo traditions include parades, mariachi music performances and street festivals in cities and towns across Mexico and the United States.

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