Category Archives: holidays

Holiday Cards

November 17, 2017

Holiday cards season!!! I LOVE this time of the year, not only for all the joy of the holidays, but because you get presents in your mail almost every day! I am a stationery LOVER and I always look forward to browsing online for my favorite cards. And it’s so much fun to see what your friends and family pick out too!

I always love a minimalist look for a holiday card. I want the photo to be what you see and focus on, not all the extra bedazzle going on on some cards. But I’m venturing out of my safe place a little bit this year, as I’m really loving florals on the cards!! Just a simple piece of holly or mistletoe is really beautiful and peaceful to me this year. I think it adds a nice touch. However, I’ll always be drawn to a simple “Merry Christmas” script though!

Here are 9 of my favorite holiday card designs!


1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9


Looking at this board, I obviously am in a black and white phase of my life right now! But the deep red pops of color on a few of those cards is very lovely to me.

I think my fave is #1! It’s modern, simple, and with a little extra fun. I’m loving it! And #2 is way out of left field for me, but for some reason I really like the big monogram letter of your last name. So cool! #4 and #6 are just lovely and peaceful to me. Then the rest are all very plain black and white, but I love that simple minimalist look! Let the photo do all the talking!

Plus what’s faaaabulous about these, is that all of them come with different colors you could choose. I always do just red or black or white, but there are blues, greens, pinks, grays, just about any color you could want! So if you like a design you can always change the colors up. Moreover, if you’d rather it say a different phrase, there are options for that too! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Joy, Happy New Year, etc. Tons of options! Couldn’t be easier to customize and find EXACTLY what you want.

As far as where to browse for cards,  I LOVE Minted the most. The best quality, so many options, and so easy. It’s like Etsy for cards. They are all independent artist who have their designs on there. So neat! They also have free recipient addressing which is UNBELIEVEABLE. Such a time saver and it matches your card so it’s really beautiful. Tiny Prints has this now too! This year, Minted added an option to text your photo in and a Minted designer will choose 5 designs that match your photo and text them back to you! I did it and I really loved 2 of the 5 they sent me. Kind of neat to see what others pick! Read more about texting a photo here.

This totally gets me in the holiday spirit! I love seeing everyone’s family photos right now, then I’m so excited to see it again on a card!

Hope this helps you narrow down the vast sea of cards!!! Which is your favorite?!


 

Happy Halloween

October 31, 2017

Happy Halloweeeeeeeen! Hope you all had a spooky night and had fun trick-or-treating! We had a BLAST and the kids were like crazy lunatics going from house to house! Leo ESPECIALLY loved it. He was all over the place! Mostly dodging scary werewolves and other freaky creatures, but when there wasn’t something spooky in his way, he was running for candy. Kinda loving this age. So young and still scared, but enamored with all things festive and excited about Halloween and trick-or-treating! So much fun with these little goblins! Faye stayed nice and warm snuggling with Emmie and Papa Koch while we were out with the other two. She will be cruising with them next year!

Ivy’s pose, LOL. She’s got that princess thing down! Ivy wanted to be Belle this year so that was easy!

Leo struggled with his costume. I showed him about 57 different costumes he might like, took him to Target AND the halloween store, and he would NOT pick one out! He kept saying he wanted to be “nothing” and would never pick one out, uhhhh! The only one he liked was a DIY bulldozer one I found, but yeah right, never got around to that, NOR am I crafty enough for that to turn out right! So we finally found a Blaze (Nickelodeon show) costume with inflatable tires which was awesome because he’s obsessed with all things trucks, but one of the tires got a hole in it this weekend while we were at a Halloween party. Shoot! So, we had this pumpkin in their costume closet and he was happy to be it! All worked out! WHEW.

Me and mah girls!!!

A vampire and his witch. John even did his own makeup, good job!!!!

Koch Kiddos! Love those three little goblins

Now let the trick-or-treating begin!

Such a blast! Now time to dive into their candy buckets and steal all their sugar and anything sour! I don’t like chocolate (I know I’m weird!)! Nerds and fun-dips please!

How many stomach aches are we going to have in the next few days?! :)

Jack-O’-Lanterns

October 30, 2017

Finally feeling like Halloween over here! Pumpkins and decorations all over! We put our spiderwebs up all over the house this past week and the kids had so much fun throwing spiders into the web to make things a little more spooky around here. Spiderwebs are the best kind of decor, so cheap and spooky and easy clean up + no storage! Just toss it! We also got a few more extra large pumpkins for carving and couldn’t wait to make our jack-o-lanterns! Can’t wait for Halloween tomorrow!!!!!

Ivy had no problem digging right in. She kept pulling all the ‘guts’ out and would yell, “DIS-GUSTING!” Like such a teenager, haha. She didn’t mind getting dirty and loved picking out the seeds! Leo, on the other hand, not too interested. He pulled a few seeds and guts out and then just said, “too messy,” and went back to his trucks. The kid just wants to play all day! Ivy didn’t mind doing two pumpkins herself! :)

Do you know the history of the Jack-o’-lantern? Nope, I didn’t either. Read that here!

Loving all these recipes for pumpkin seeds! YUM Sweet and spicy for me please!!!

Ivy chose a scary black cat for her jack-o-lantern!

Ok Leo, I guess we’ll do yours… since he’s napping.

Gotta do the classic jack-o-lantern face! Ivy just said, “Make sure he’s a smiling pumpkin!” LOL

Spooky Halloween is here! Can’t wait for all the trick-or-treaters! We’ll be in our down coats and boots all bundled up with our costumes on. BRRRR! Nonetheless, super anxious to celebrate Halloween with these little goblins! Happy Halloween!!!


 

Easter Weekend 2017

April 18, 2017

Such a fun Easter weekend! And it was GLOOOORIOUS outside both Saturday and Sunday! I love when Easter is a little later into April, last year there was still snow on the ground in March! This Easter we had two days to celebrate. We went to lunch with the Easter bunny on Saturday and it was a huge hit! Leo was OBSESSED with the bunnies, following them around everywhere and giving them hugs. It was adorable. Ivy was more into the Easter egg hunt, running around to gather as many eggs as possible. She definitely got some practice, that was the first of three Easter egg hunts they got to do!

Easter morning was filled with beautiful music and a sentimental sermon at Church, followed by the second Easter egg hunt. Leo would stop to see what was in the egg each time, so he never gathered too many, which we didn’t need more candy anyways! We headed back to our house with my family and my husband John’s family to be together for Easter brunch. It was beautiful outside for the third and last Easter egg hunt, brunch, then drinks and socializing on our patio the rest of the day. So nice to relax and enjoy some sunshine while the kids ran around on sugar highs! :)

Ivy… such sass with that hip pop!

Ivy’s dress // Leo’s shirt // Leo’s pants

And I celebrated 33 weeks with the baby! Feeling huge lately, but I know how much bigger I have yet to get!

Dress


Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2017

Happy Valentine’s Day! What a day to tell someone how much you love and appreciate them! Holidays are always a good reminder to spread the love :) Our house shared LOTS of hugs and kisses this morning, great way to start the day! Love our family so much! So lucky to have a loving husband and kids!

Ivy couldn’t wait to wear her Valentine’s Day dress again (from Vivie and Ash)! It’s the cutest! These kids were all wound up on their Valentine’s Day candy Ivy got from preschool today! Thankfully that sugar rush wore off, naps ensued (praise the Lord!), and I gotta get ready for our date night tonight! Dinner and a movie… those words haven’t gone together in a LONG time! Can’t wait to catch a flick! Huge bag of extra buttery delicious popcorn for dessert please :) Hope you all have a fantastic and loving Valentine’s Day!

Love you hubs, can’t wait for tonight!

Dress