Holiday Preppers: Theme Boxes

Have any of you started your holiday shopping? My goal every year is to finish by December 1st, and it is a goal that I just achieved for the very first time. In fact, if you've been following along on Instagram, my tree is up and decorated weeks earlier than normal! I am feeling the Christmas spirit early and not fighting it. 

I purchased gifts for 28 individuals, and had a lot of fun doing it, using the below framework for a number of the gift selections.

For any others that want to kick start their holiday shopping, I thought I would share some inspiration around my favourite way to create a gift (if you have asked us to take care of your children after your demise, or you're a blood relative of myself or Philip, maybe stop reading now!). 

The "Box"

I love a cohesive gift. I feel unsettled when gifting things that don't go together. That is why, my favourite type of gift to give is the "box". I love to make a homemade gift basket or box of items that go together and suit the person that I'm gifting to. Some examples of this:

My version of a FabFitFun box: I have given 4 or 5 of my FauxFitFun boxes now. A fall box for my sister-in-law filled with fall decor, snacks & makeup. A Christmas box for my sister including things like Christmas napkins, face masks, and small dishes for entertaining. A box for my brother-in-law with a mug for work, beard grooming gear, and turkish delights. I love to find items on a theme, and these are endlessly fun to put together. Just throw me in a Winners with $60 and I'm ready to go. Philip has pointed out to me the flaw in my ways. FabFitFun provides you with a $50 box worth $200, while my boxes are $60 box worth $60. However, it is extremely fun to think of items that the person will love and see their delight at each one. 

Homemade Subscriptions: One year, Philip gave me the most thoughtful gift that he called a "Book Box". He had purchased 24 books in advance of my birthday, and over the course of the following year I received 2 each month in a special box. They each came with a note from a fake company that was putting these book boxes on, and each month the books went along with a different theme. One month I'd get mystery, another Christian non-fiction, another classics or YA. It was the very best gift. This year we're doing this for a number of people on our list (stop reading now if you might be one of them), with some twists. First of all, it would be way over our budget to do 2 brand new books every month for all of these people. What we decided to do was be creative and we hunted the Children's Hospital Book Sale for previously loved books that we thought our loved ones would enjoy. We created 5 kids book boxes - one for each of our friends families - as well as 2 adult book boxes for Philip's parents. We bought a large roll of brown paper and wrapped each book, writing the month and some clues about the contents on the outside. Each month the kiddos in our lives (and our parents) can dig out their box and find the month, opening to find their next read. I really hope they enjoy it. We also did monthly boxes for Philip's brother & our sister-in-law. His brother will be opening an exciting pair of socks each month and my sister-in-law is going to open an item from "the religion". We call essential oils and other woo-woo things we're into the religion because it really bothers our husbands and makes us laugh. She's getting things like an acupuncture mat for her feet, an essential oils bracelet, eye mask, Himalayan salt ball, volcanic pumice stone, jade therapy stick, etc. Each month she'll open a new treat to enhance her wellness. Like I said, these are insanely fun for me to put together, and I love putting the thought and care into putting together a curated box for someone I love.

Finding a Theme

I am consistently helped with choosing any gift by having a theme in mind. I get annoyed when I pick out random things for a person and they don't go together. Maybe that makes me a little nuts. However, I've found this strategy works well for me. Some examples:

• A colour story. This isn't my top choice for theme, but if you're finding yourself unsure of what to get, it can be helpful to have your gifts look nice together. Not only for presentation, but to narrow your search field. Recently I bought one of our nieces a sequined mermaid cup for by her bed, a night gown, and a bath bomb. That had two themes, it was all in the blue/green under the sea type colour story, as well as having a bit of a bedtime/relaxing theme. When I'm trying to pick out a gift for someone and don't necessarily know what they need/love, it can be helpful to think of a theme and get gifts that fit within it. 
• A type of item. Books, beauty items, kitchen items, travel gear. 
• Homemade. This theme comes into play not when I think of a specific person, but if you're having trouble getting started with Christmas shopping, it can be helpful to think of a group of people and a type of gift that you can get for all of them. For example, one year we decided to make homemade gifts for everyone in my immediate family. It resulted in a wooden garage sign, a Christmas decoration made from a recycled mullion door, a paper mache rhino hanging, and a magnetic scrabble wall frame. It was super fun, narrowed our scope a bit, and gave us a focus to keep going.
• In my extended family, we choose names and there is always a guiding theme so that you know what to get. It can be hard to think of a gift for your uncle without a theme as you may not know what he wants or needs. We'll have a theme such as a gift that is plaid, a gift starting with the letter B, pajamas, or something used/homemade. That helps us to narrow our focus and pick out an item that meets the criteria that we think they'd like. They aren't annoyed they get another pair of pajamas, they already knew it was coming. 

I hope this helps with getting started with shopping this year. Are there other ideas you'd like for Christmas shopping? I'm not an expert, but would love to give book recommendations for gifts or other box recommendations if you're having trouble! Ask in Instagram DMs, Email, Facebook Messenger, or the Comments below and I can always put together another post on Christmas gifting to try to help you brainstorm! 

Head to Head: Birthday Edition

What's the coolest gift you've ever received?

Cass: By far, the vow art Philip made for Christmas this year. A homemade gift that will be treasured in our home forever.

Philip: When I was in my teens I got the Adobe Creative Suite of design programs, which set me on a pretty solid path of design and creativity. I used to design logos and jerseys, and now I still use it when planning out plans for our home, creating our blog banner (don't worry, I'll try and produce a June one this time), I even designed our wedding stationary. 

What's your favourite birthday dessert?

Cass: Ice cream cake! Hands down. The most refreshing and delicious cake, can be made in a bajillion flavours, and even shapes! Mm I want a heartshaped strawberry ice cream cake right now. Never had it but picturing it is beautiful in my head. 

Philip: Cheesecake is my answer, no matter what the occasion. 

Invent a party game and explain how it works.

Cass: For our Christmas gift exchange one year we had to make homemade gifts. I crafted a family trivia game, which is a great idea for anyone on a budget who needs a neat birthday/Christmas/other event gift. Think up some categories, questions, and print them out on cards to play at your next family gathering.

Philip: Pin the insulation in our ceiling. It's like pin the tail on the donkey, except you take down old insulation and reinsulate our attic while blindfolded. Great for all ages.

DIY Gift: Vow Art

Yesterday you heard about my date jar gift to Philip, and so today we'll be talking about the homemade gift that I received from Philip. While it is Friday and Philip is the typical author of today's post, he's busy enough writing the drama for our church's dinner theater (at Eastview around Valentine's Day if you want to mark your calendars), so I'm taking this one for the team. I won't try to incorporate him in this post with a painting like I did my date jar yesterday (phone randomly fixed itself, so there is an actual photo over there today!)

When preparing to write this post he emailed me everything I'd need to know about how he came to make this beautiful craft, and so hopefully I can do it justice.

After seeing some great pieces of art that featured wedding vows or other wedding memorabilia, I had been hinting pretty heavily that I'd like something similar. Here are a few of the pieces that I had shown to Philip but didn't want to buy because I knew Philip could easily make something amazing and it would be more meaningful than buying it off Etsy.

I heart this personalized print from Silhouette Blue.

While I don't need Train lyrics on my wall,
 I like the graphic feel from Alexander Creative.

I really love the idea of personalized art (I think I've mentioned that before), and so it was really thoughtful of Philip to take that into consideration and make me an amazing Christmas gift.

Philip started with a completely different idea than what he ended up with. Beginning with an owl inspired (due to the owl trend that's invading the stores these days - and I might have allowed it to come into our house a bit) piece. 

While this is really cute,
I'm so much happier with what Philip ended up with!

The goal with the owl artwork was a layered and textured feel, looking custom and professional, but also really cute and fun. It didn't work out because pencil crayon on black construction paper didn't work as well as Philip had hoped, and the owls ended up looking a lot more juvenile (although I do still love the owls that he made and will definitely hang them somewhere) than what the content would call for. 

I'll still give a bit of a run through on how to make the artwork above, if it's your groove.

Philip started by printing the vows and adhering them to black construction paper with Post-Its (so that the construction paper wouldn't be damaged when it was removed). This way he could trace the letters onto the construction paper below to achieve the font and look he'd planned. 

An innovative use of Post-Its. 

Philip had designed the owls ahead of time on the computer so he had a plan when it came time to craft.

Cutie owls, I do still really like them!

After creating the owls virtually, cutting them out of construction paper in layers was a lot easier and well planned out. It turned out so adorable! I can't wait to hang them up. Have I mentioned how talented my husband is? I couldn't make that on the computer, and I'm definitely not a master of using scissors, can't even imagine how long it would take me to make that tree trunk out of the different papers, let alone the owls. 

The most beautiful construction paper craft I've seen to date.

These owls get their close up.

Anyway, this craft didn't work out for reasons mentioned above, and overall Philip just didn't like how it was looking. So he moved on to another plan, which took about the same amount of time as this failed attempt.

Philip changed to a simpler design, one that he found airy and knew would look great in the white matted white frame that he'd purchased, as well as on any of our wall colors. He went with the colors from our wedding invitations, yellow and grey, because it was definitely a reminder of our beautiful backyard wedding. 

He started similarly to the owl print, by getting the text onto the paper he wanted to use. That's one thing I really appreciate about the artwork he made, he could have easily printed it off the computer, but he hand wrote everything. 

Philip wrote our vows in a heart shape, the left side with my vows and the right side his.  (In the background you can see how he made a light table out of a reading lamp propped up under our glass desk.)

Philip wrote our vows in a heart shape (you can kind of see that above), the words were written in yellow, with the verbs in grey. The left hand side are my vows to him, and the right side are his. Then at the bottom he included our wedding date, August 6, 2011. I have wanted to have our vows framed somewhere in our house for a while, I like the idea of seeing our promises each day and using them as accountability and reminders of what we want for our marriage. 

Philip then cut them out, into two separate heart halves, and glued it on to yellow construction paper, in order to make it a little bit more 3D, similar to the effect that was meant with the owl art. 

All done, just needed to cut the mat.

After finishing up, Philip cut the mat to make room for the artwork inside. I love how it has a bit of a monochromatic and airy look, will definitely go with any kind of paint color or decor that we have in the room it hangs in. 

We opened our gifts first thing in the morning, which is why I'm looking a little sleepy and wearing an always flattering Seattle Mariners t-shirt.

I was so shocked to open it and love it like crazy. I can't wait to hang it up in our bedroom with some wedding photos. I still can't believe we've already been married for almost 2 years, it definitely doesn't seem that long! 

My favourite part of making crafts for each other was probably the fact that none of our rooms have doors right now, so we worked in opposite corners of the house with Christmas music blasting so we couldn't accidentally hear any hints. 

Anyone else make a creative Christmas gift or get surprised by their spouse? Almost done with Christmas posts a week into 2013, on Monday I'll share one other quick anyone-can-do craft that might help with cleaning up your Christmas decorations a bit, and then on to 2013! Make sure to vote in this weeks poll on the Facebook page and on Tuesday you'll hear about our resolutions! Have a great weekend!

What We Want for Christmas

This past week, we asked what you wanted for Christmas. A majority actually wanted practical things, which is surprising, and certainly is not how Philip makes his Christmas list most of the time. I do like things of a more practical nature, but prefer if they're things I may not have bought myself or didn't want to spend the money on.

This Christmas, we're definitely hoping for some practical items as we've been dropping a lot of money lately and every little thing helps! Some tools for Philip would be great as we've been borrowing a lot of them from our parents, and any decor items are top on my list so we can keep accessorizing this place!

Now, on to our Christmas lists! 

Cassondra 3 Christmas Wishes

I have a lot of trouble making Christmas lists, my mom never bought us things off of them so putting things on a list was basically asking to not get those things. She always gets us amazing gifts, just thinks of them herself. So from there stems my aversion to Christmas list making. I did make a list this year, but I can't even think of how to rank them. 

1. Personalized Artwork

One of the projects I'm really excited about in this house is getting more personalized artwork up, I really want our house to be ours and show all the things we love. Philip is handy at computer artwork and things like that, so we'll probably end up making a lot of our own, but here are some artwork pieces that have really been inspiring me lately!

Jenna Sue Design will create a custom sketch of your house! 

This personalized love art totally floats my boat, from Silhouette Blue. 

2. Raclette

At Philip's parents house on New Years Day we always have Raclette. It's a great tradition and I love that kind of eating, where you sit around talking eating a bit at a time, sort of like fondue. I'm hoping to get my own someday soon so we can invite friends over and enjoy that tradition on more than the first day of the 2013. 

You melt cheese on the bottom and then put it over the grilled potatoes, meat, etc. 

3. Tickets to Something/Going Out Gifts

Since working on the house has taken up a lot of our extra cash, one of the gifts that I appreciate is restaurant gift cards, tickets to an event, etc. that Philip and I can enjoy without worrying about our wallets. We've definitely been low on date nights and so a night out is always a great treat.

 

Philip's 3 Christmas Wishes

In our relationship, Cassondra is definitely the Chief Listmaker. Her lists have lists. (“The 5 Lists in my Purse Right Now.” “The 8 Best Things About Lists.” “212 Ways I will get revenge on Philip for making fun of my love of lists on the blog.”) But at Christmastime, I take the lead.

In my family, my Christmas List is an annual event. I typically put an inordinate amount of time into them, cataloguing items by category, listing prices and places where you can purchase the items, and even theming the lists. (Most memorable was the Da Vinci Code-themed list from 2007.) I go beyond the typical list and research, catalogue, curate, and publish a veritable Christmas buying guide for me.

And then, this year, I scaled back. There are categories, but it’s all straightforward. There are no prices. No Amazon links. Just the basics. I grew up found a new passion, my very own castle to manage, repair, and upgrade.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t submit a list. Oh no. Can’t leave something as important as my Christmas gifts up to chance. So without further ado, these are the top 3 things I asked for, in countdown fashion:

3. Sunglasses

If you’ve ever met me in the summertime, you’ve seen my sunglasses. Winnipeg is one of the sunniest cities in Canada, and for whatever reason (perhaps the Lasik I had done a few years ago?) my eyes are particularly sensitive, so I wear my sunglasses almost incessantly; if they’re not over my eyes, they’re temporarily flipped atop my head like a real cool dude poser dork (hahahaha! Revenge #1 complete. –Cass)

Problem is, the lenses on my Oakley Fives 2.0 that I Love with a capital “L” are scratched like crazy, and that model has long been discontinued. It soon will be time to send them up to the great, ummm, underside-of-a-ball-cap-visor (?) in the sky. And so as a pre-emptive strike, I’m hoping for some new shades under the tree.

2. Blue Like Jazz: The RELEVANT Special Edition on DVD

Blue Like Jazz is probably my second-favourite non-fiction book of all time. (I may have a list for that too.) And I knew author Donald Miller and Steve Taylor were working on a movie of it thanks to Miller’s excellent follow up book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (which may also be in my non-fiction top ten).

But then, the funding didn’t come through. And the film was dead.

Except it wasn’t. Thanks to two enterprising fans and Kickstarter, the movie crowdsourced over a third of a million dollars, and I was one of the contributors to that effort who thus have their names among the credits as “Associate Producers.” (I have the t-shirt to prove it.)

Only problem is, Blue Like Jazz (The Movie) never opened in theatres in my city. And so I still haven’t been able to see the movie.

And to top it all off, my favourite magazine (RELEVANT) helped promote the movie, and as such has a special edition of the movie for sale in its store with exclusive features which may or may not have Donald Miller reading snippets of Christian romance novels aloud while wearing a snuggie.

And now that you know that Movies+Donald Miller+RELEVANT Magazine=my sweet spot, and it could only be theoretically topped if the movie starred my wife and/or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, what could possibly be #1?

1. Tools

This one’s for you, folks. Well, technically it’s for me. But as this blog has become our way of sharing this renovation process with you, it’s also for you.

So far, most of the work that we’ve done has been done with the use of the graciously-lent-and-gratefully-borrowed tools our parents or friends own. And while that can work for a while, there comes a time for a man to step up and get his own power drill and drill bits, 7¼” circular saw, random orbital sander, electronic stud finder, staple gun, and more.

This is in direct violation of my one-time distaste for practical gifts. As recently as a year or two ago, I rejected the idea of getting such items as gifts. Practical gifts didn’t send me giggling with fits of glee because I was going to have to buy them myself anyway, so unwrapping them was just preventing me from having to go to the store myself.

In fact, I still see some of the logic in that. However, something has changed.

It’s called a mortgage. They’re called bills. They’re called “not having unlimited resources with which to buy everything you might purport to need.”

So now, I’m all on the practical gift train. Tools? Yes, please! Clothes? I’ll wear ‘em with a smile! A 4-litre jug of milk? Sure, why not, I’ll pour that on my cereal. Rolls of toilet paper? Okay, let’s not get ridiculous. But you get my drift. I’m hoping that, over the next few birthdays/Christmases, I can accumulate my own personal arsenal of tools and the skills to put them to use, making Grandpa Joe’s House into everything it can be.

Share your Christmas wishlist in the comments! We'd love to get some inspiration for the birthday lists we'll soon have to make (okay not that soon). 

This week we'll ask about your favourite holiday food, you know our mouths are watering already waiting for some of the delicacies we're going to feast on. 

Would You "Tues"?

As you know, the poll was extended after last Thursday's post. This is because I remembered a fun tradition my friend and I had, which was that every Tuesday we would ask each other a poll-type question and call it "Would you Tues" (pronounced to sound like choose - or in this case something like Tch-yooze). 

The results are in, and most of you are further than we are in holiday preparedness, but there are a few procrastinators out there.

Here's where we're at in our decking of the halls:

Tree: 
Last year we didn't have one, we'll see what happens this year! I'm a "real tree" person, but I do have a hand-me-down fake tree in the basement that we might use this year. As of right now every nook and cranny of our living room is filled with books/gift wrap/wall art/etc. that is meant for the two rooms that are being reno'd right now; as soon as those are gone I'm getting that tree up! Boxes of books everywhere doesn't exactly scream beautiful Christmas party decoration.

As for other decorations, they really add up so I've been trying to slowly accumulate them this year. Last year I got a few ornaments from relatives, this year I've made my pine cone craft, and I just purchased this cute light up white tree decoration from Ikea (I don't know the scientific name for it which is why it ended up with that long run-on name), hopefully I can keep building on that until I have a proper Christmas collection!

For this year, our tree will likely look something like the below, with a variety of homemade when we were in elementary school ornaments, and no general theme of any kind. Definitely homey and much like what I grew up with at home, although as soon as I moved out my mom was ready for a beautifully put-together tree with ornaments that all came in a set together. Stay tuned for a beautiful tree photo, hopefully it happens this week!

Probably still better than how our last-minute Christmas Tree will look.

Gifts:
We have 20 gifts to buy this year, and so far I am completely done 6 of them, with 2 others started and 12 with no progress whatsoever. Hopefully after we're done these bedrooms and have the bathroom underway I can focus on shopping. I do love Christmas shopping and thinking of things for each person, but 20 people is a doozy! Also no idea what to get for Philip this year (we greatly lowered our budgets since we've been buying a lot of new things lately) so if anyone has any suggestions I'd appreciate them!

Events: 
This past weekend was our last weekend of freedom before we commence 2 parties a weekend for the entire month of December...ay caramba. I'm really looking forward to the festivities and all the parties will be fun - but it also means 4 weekends of not a lot of house productivity. The other main event planned for Christmas (we have to reevaluate this plan as some things may need to be ordered and not come on time) is completely gutting and renovating our bathroom. My parents have work off over Christmas and offered their labour over the week, so we're really pushing to be ready for them while we have the help. This coming weekend we start with my mom's side of the family and our church young adults group (this is the one we're hosting), followed next weekend by my friends and my dad's side of the family, followed by the real deal Christmas Eve and Christmas immediate family celebrations. In amongst that we'll also have our church services for Christmas Eve, which Philip is pretty involved in on the drama side so there are a lot of practices and things like that added into the mix. 

General Christmas Cheer Levels/Emotional Preparedness: 
Cassondra: As far as being stoked for Christmas, I'd say that my level of Christmas cheer is moderate. I'm really excited to put up decorations and for all of the events that we have planned, but that is being slightly crushed by the lists and pressure to finish these two bedrooms and get the bathroom planning into high gear. I'm just hoping that we can get this all under control to some extent by the end of this week so that we can focus on family time and relaxing a little bit over the Christmas break. Luckily Philip gets a week off at Christmas so that will be really nice, as long as it doesn't get totally taken away by bathroom gutting. 

Philip: Philip is busy caulking in the bedroom right now so I'm taking the liberty to write this for him after walking over there and asking how excited he is for Christmas. He is primarily in denial, as house stuff and church drama production things are sort of stressing him out. I asked him what he's most excited for though and - Cass family shout out - he said my family gathering on Saturday. That shows you how great my family is, that a gathering at the in-laws is the thing he's most excited for at Christmas time so far. We'll have to tell you a bit about our gatherings sometime, they are definitely unorthodox - and as a sneak preview you should know that this Saturday at our family gathering we are to come dressed in '80s workout attire (add going to Value Village for neon coloured spandex to the Christmas to-do list). 


In case you're one of the procrastinators out there, just remember, "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear." Try it out sometime, I imagine it's effective. 

This week, tell us what you'd like to receive for Christmas! I have to admit so selfishly that I am looking forward to getting gifts more than ever this year. I know this sounds terrible...but it's just the truth. We've been so busy with house stuff and constantly on a budget that being able to bask in some free treats that I may not have been able to buy for myself sounds glorious. Next Tuesday when we wrap this poll up we'll share a few of the things on our Christmas lists too, Philip is a very in-depth Christmas list maker so it should be pretty easy for him. Make your votes people - and as a reminder, we've learned that iPads don't allow comments or poll votes, so get your computer out!