Christmas Ready with Shutterfly.

The Christmas season is upon us and I couldn't be more excited about it! It's my most favorite time of year. We've been busy around here getting our home holiday ready, rounding up Christmas gifts and getting holiday cards together. 

Shutterfly is one of my go to places for unique gifts and of coarse our holiday cards. I've been using them for our Christmas cards for 8 years and every year they have something new to make my cards stand out! 

Today I'm excited to share with you how we got Christmas ready with the help of Shutterfly! 

A couple new additions to our holiday decor this year were some new pillows for our formal living room. I love that Shutterfly has a ton of options to customize your pillows, I chose a design on their site and personalized them with our family on one. 

More great options for customization is adding something to the back of your pillow, I made my plaid because I'm crushing on everything plaid this season for the holidays. This option makes them reversible and gives me two looks from one. 

---

Holiday Cards

This year I chose traditional red for our holiday cards. I haven't done red in a while, and I loved all the options Shutterfly had. I chose a red foil card this year. 

Another NEW option this year is the chance to add a slip in liner. I love this option because it makes everything personal and there's so many designs to choose from to make them your own. Add matching address labels to pull it all together. 

---

Gifting with Shutterfly

Each year I make a photo calendar from Shutterfly to give as gifts, but this year I wanted to give a few new gifts that were special as well. 

I love all the jewelry options Shutterfly has to offer, you can personalize them by adding photo charms and birth stone jems. 

I think they make really special gifts for the women in your life. 

Another fun gift option are these awesome candles from Shutterfly. You can choose the sent you want and personalize the image on the front. I chose a Christmas theme to add to a gift basket I'm putting together. 

The candles are generous size and come in their own gifting box if you want to give them as stand alone gifts. 

---

Home Decor 

Remember when I mentioned I was mad about plaid this year? I carried that over to my table scape this year. Shutterfly has so many plate options to choose from, I used the 'In Your Own Words' plate and added the paid background.

And if you need a cute way to display your holiday treats, serving trays customized by Shutterfly are the way to go. I also think these make beautiful hostess gifts this season.  

And lastly, don't forget to deck your tree with beautiful personalized ornaments from Shutterfly, which tons of great options you're sure to find something that fits your style. Perfect for celebrating special events; like baby's first Christmas and more! 

With so many great items on their site you're sure to find something that fits your taste and style. I love using Shutterfly every year for our holiday cards and personalized gifts! What are some of your favorites to get or gift from Shutterfly? 

---

Disclaimer: I partnered with Shutterfly on this post, all opinions are my own. 

Pumpkin Cookie Decorating Party

A few weeks back while Ava's was on Fall break from school we hosted a cookie decorating party! Something fun and low key for her to invite some friends over. I really wanted to plan some fun activities for her while she was out of school and this was perfect. 

I made an apple cider/coffee bar for the mamas + the littles. We had some simple snacks for the kids in addition to our cookies. 

I baked all the cookies and whipped up some orange frosting since we were decorating pumpkins. 

Each kiddo got to decorate three cookies and take them home in a goodie bag. We also decorated some pumpkins with stickers for them to take home as well. 

This was a super simple event that you could do any time of the year. You don't even have to make anything from scratch if you don't want to. Just use some store bought sugar cookie dough and pick your frosting. This is the perfect thing to host with little kids because it's so fun and who doesn't love getting to take cookies home?! 

What are some of your 'go-to' events for getting little kids involved and excited? 

---

Check out Holiday Hostess Gifts That Will Get You Invited Back

by Glam Editor at Mode

Annual Miss America Viewing Party

The 2016 Miss America Pageant was a couple weeks ago, I hosted my annual viewing party at my house. 

I'm an avid pageant fan, and it's something that has been apart of my life since I was sixteen. As an adult now, it's fun to to have a few girlfriends over and watch together. I also have let Ava stay up way past her bedtime the last two years to watch the pageant. It's fun having a girl and sharing this with her. 

My mom and I made crown sugar cookies that morning for the party. Any excuse is a great one to make my Great Grandma's cookies. 

I kept things pretty simple, I made homemade chicken wild rice soup and pretended it's Fall here in Arizona. ;) 

I printed off some of these prediction cards and "CROWN" bingo that I made last year for the party. These were a big hit and such a great addition. Everyone had a lot of fun filling these out.

I love having this party every year and sharing it with my friends. It doesn't have to be big or really fussy and it's a great way to open your home and have fun with your girl friends. 

Did you watch the Miss America pageant this year? Who did you want to win? 

I predicted that Miss Georgia would win when it was down to the final four. She didn't have a great on stage question, but she did have a killer talent and was very likable. 

Till next year! 

Back to School Eve Dinner

Ava started Kindergarten this week (more on that tomorrow) so the night before we had a little 'Back to School Eve' dinner in her honor. 

This is an idea I saw from fellow blogger Erin of Bringing Up Burns. Erin's been doing these for years for her children and every year I read about them I'm so inspired and couldn't wait to one day do this for my own children. 

The basic idea of this dinner is to pick a theme for the school year, host a dinner and spend time together as a family talking about the upcoming school year. You can see all Erin's posts about Back to School Eve dinners here. 

I took the time to plan out a table scape using everything I already had in my home. Book pages lined the center of the table. I used some letter, number and color flash cards and layered them on top. And then placed two apples on cupcake stands. 

We had a simple dinner, drank sweet tea and chatted about the theme for the year we choose for Ava. 

We choose the theme: BE BRAVE.

This Summer she's been so brave. Learning to swim, holding her breath under water and swimming, going down the slides all by herself at the water park. It's been a summer of transition for our family with a new home and a new church and she's handled all of them with bravery and grace. 

We talked a lot about this concept and how that will help her as she enters kinder this year.

We also took some time to speak some words of encouragement over her and prayed for her as she was starting school the very next day.

I also made this fun little sheet of questions and we took the time to ask her each one and write down the answers. I plan on making the same list of questions each year and keeping them all in a binder to look back on during high school graduation. I'm sappy like that! 

Our simple back to school eve dinner turned out to be so much fun, and we can't wait to add this to our yearly traditions. 

What are some of your favorite back to school traditions? Tell me in the comments below. 

How We Celebrated Our 8th Wedding Anniversary

We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last week! While we were on vacation with our family. I thought I'd share with you a little today of how we celebrated. We were at Disneyland on the 14th the actual day of our anniversary. No better way to celebrate than with this family we've created together. We're both incredibly blessed for how God has molded our family and for the lessons he's taught us these last 8 years that have made our family grow and be challenged. 

The next day we snuck out together to celebrate just the two of us. BIG thanks to my mom for watching the kiddos so we could enjoy an evening together. Since we were in SoCal we headed to one of the spots I've been dying to check out since all my SoCal friends post about it so much. 

Taco Asylum. Which is located in this cool area called "The Camp"  (located in Costa Mesa, CA) which has an area of eatery places, yoga studios, coffee shops and other local shops. A fun place to go and walk around. 

This place was every bit as good as I'd heard. If you're ever in SoCal you must go! We each ordered our own tacos and we had the chili lime chips & guac which was awesome! 

After dinner we walked around a bit and found ourselves at the cutest coffee shop called Milk & Honey. 

outfit: shoes- Target 

jumper- Old Navy

tassel necklace- JC Penny

clutch- Ivey Expressions via Project Free to Fly 

My hubby knows coffee + macaroons are my love language. Milk & Honey was the cutest and coziest coffee shop! You must go! 

The parking lot at The Camp has all these fun words and sayings painted on the pavement. We just happened to park in the one that said "vacation time" so obviously I took a picture. Local places like these that add so much detail to their establishments make traveling so fun and unique! 

And just for fun sake I thought I'd share with you our wedding high light reel from 8 years ago! 

Love you Orion, and these last 8 years together have been wonderful. We've learned so much about each other, God and his plan for us. Can't wait for 50 more years together. I love this family we've created. This Worley House is ours. 

---