Halloween Celebrations

November 2, 2011 By 6 Comments

We had a super fun Halloween weekend – how about you? After we created the Halloween printables for the Etsy shop, I decided I wanted to use those invitations myself, so we hosted a costume party for some of Molly’s buddies Friday night. I love to host a party and always have fun picking out the decorations, planning the menu and setting up.

Erin and Nina also used our printable owl collection for their respective parties – be sure to check out their blogs for all of their pictures. Both girls are super detail-oriented and everything looked fantastic!

Here’s a peek at Erin’s Graveyard Smash…

And at Nina’s Spooktacular Party…

I know I’ve said this a zillion times, but we absolutely LOVE to see how our sweet clients use our products for their own parties. I was excited to see some pictures in our in-box this weekend of how some fabulous ladies used our free printable party circles. They were perfect for muffins or cupcakes if you had some popsicle sticks, but they also made great tags for treat bags!

Hannah topped off treat bags for her coworkers and her son’s classmates using a fun combination of the party circles.

How stinkin’ cute is this? Whitney made s’mores treat bags for her daughter to take to preschool – marshmallow ghost, Hershey’s fun size bar, and graham crackers!

And Lacey is a girl after my own heart. She emailed me this picture and said they used the printables as labels for the mommy “juice boxes” at playdate!

Thanks, ladies, for sharing all of your fun pictures.

Did you purchase our printable owl collection or download our free party circles? If so, share your pictures! We’d love to see what you did with the items. As always, thanks for your support!

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Yet another fabric wreath

October 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was so excited about the fabric scrap wreaths that I made for Molly’s and Addison’s birthdays that I wanted to make one for Halloween, too. My mom ran to Hobby Lobby for me to grab some black, orange, lime and purple fabrics and I worked on the wreath for a bit at a time a few nights last week.

This is the final result:

These wreaths are super easy and can be pretty inexpensive if you can find cute fabric at a place like Hobby Lobby. I just might have to make a fabric wreath for every holiday. {Then we’d have to figure out where to store them…}

Have you been crafty this week? Did you make anything for Halloween?

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Yes, that’s my purple dining room wall! I LOVE that room and will always have a purple dining room. It was inspired by my Nana’s china, which lives happily in my china cabinet.

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{Menu Monday} Halloween Party Ideas

October 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, my friend Andrea and I were talking about how hard it can be to come up with food ideas for parties; all of my favorite recipes have been stolen – er, borrowed – from friends. Occasionally, we’ve shared menu ideas and recipes on our blog, but starting today, we’re going to have a weekly feature that we will call Menu Monday.

This week, I’m in full Halloween party planning mode, so I’ve been scouring the internet for cute food ideas. Of course I found some of my favorite ideas on Pinterest:

 

 

See? How fun are those ideas? I want to use *all* of them for my party, but that would be a bit over-do. So here’s what I’m thinking:

-chili
-cornbread muffins & torrilla chips
-chick-fil-a chicken nuggets for the kiddos (big and small; this is a staple at my parties!)
-the pretzel rod ghosts
-I might attempt the mummy dogs, just because I think they’re adorable, but we’ll see how the week goes!
-cupcakes, of course! The owl cupcakes go perfectly with our invitation and look easy enough.
-bowls & canisters of black and orange M&M’s and candy corn

I love the idea of carving out a pumpkin to use as an ice bucket for wine, and I want to make some kind of witches brew, but there are a ton of recipes! Anyone have a favorite to share?

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So there’s our first Menu Monday post. What do you think? Want to see more of these kinds of posts? Also, we’d love to share some of your menu ideas. Or if you have a party coming up and want ideas for a themed menu, let us know.

 

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{Free Printables!} Halloween invitation and party circles

September 27, 2011 By 6 Comments

Since we have the most amazing clients and friends, we want to offer our blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans a FREE fill in the blank invitation printable and party circles.

Yes, that’s right. There’s a fill-in-the-blank invitation with our favorite chevron stripe border AND a set of party circles! Want both items? Of course you do.

Download the invitation here and the party circles here. Print them on cardstock at home, cut and enjoy! We would love it if you’d take a minute to leave us some comment love on our blog or on our Facebook page. You know, just so we know that you were here and plan to use the printables! And, we will be forever in your debt if you send us pictures of your party afterward! We love to feature readers’ parties on our blog.

{Oh, and we’re not really having a Halloween party on the 30th, just so you know…}

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If you prefer a different design, we have more designs in our shop. Check them out: there’s an owl collection {here and here} and a different version of the haunted house.

Happy fall, y’all!

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Oh! And keep sharing the news…we would love to offer a fun Thanksgiving printable too, but first we need to surpass another goal. 300 Facebook fans perhaps? 400 Twitter followers? Both??

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Welcome Fall!

September 23, 2011 By 2 Comments

Today is the first day of fall. Fall is my favorite season for so many reasons; I love the cooler weather, there are so many fun holidays and events, the beautiful oranges and browns and reds and greens, football, comfort food and of course, boots. I have a huge stack of October magazines to peruse and I need to get started before fall becomes winter! I am going to get out my ‘fall’ box this weekend and start getting the house ready for fall, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite inspirational images with you today, in the spirit of fall, you know!

I love the idea of writing messages on pumpkins. I’ve always wanted to do our names or monograms on our pumpkins; Jim is more of a traditional jack-o-lantern guy. Maybe we can do both this year.

via

I have seen this idea in a few places so far: stack some pumpkins on or in your planters to create a fall display and keep your planters from looking so lonely. And, this requires far less effort than planting and maintaing fall annuals. Yes, please.

And how cute and easy is this? Get some small pumpkins at the grocery or farmer’s market and wrap some ribbon around them. I could put a bowl of these in every room of my house!

Another cute idea for those small pumpkins? Check out this wreath! And mums just scream fall, don’t they?
I can’t wait to start decorating…maybe I’ll even remember to take pictures and share them with you! And, I might have to do a fall fashion post; I’ve seen lots of sweaters and boots that I’m eyeing.
Check back next week for our Halloween collections! We have some fun printables we can’t wait to share with you!
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Doing any fall shopping this weekend? Shop Tea Collection and buy any 3 items, receive 15% off! Just click on the Tea Collection button on the right to start shopping!
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{Giveaway} Trick-or-Treat Banner

September 21, 2010 By 11 Comments

We are SO excited to host our very first giveaway!

Since I have been ready for fall for a few weeks now, I have been dying to break out the pumpkin decorations and my sister and I already have the kids’ Halloween costumes picked out!  I even found a yummy pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting recipe that I just might have to try this weekend (as if I need cupcakes at the house…).

We created this super-fun “Trick or Treat” banner to kick-start my decorating, and we want to give one to you, too!

To enter the giveaway:

  • You need to visit another post on Sweet Birdie’s Nest or visit our Etsy shop and comment on this post about something else you love.  {This is required to enter the giveaway!}
  • Become a fan of Sweet Birdie’s Nest on Facebook.  Comment here that you’re a fan.
  • Follow us on Twitter.  Comment here that you’re one of our tweeps!

If you are our lucky winner, we’ll email you a pdf file that you can print and use for your personal use!  The contest ends Sunday, October 3.

{I made two slits in each letter and strung the letters on a some grosgrain ribbon.  I think it would be really cute with some sparkly touches between the words or letters, but I was in a hurry to get the picture posted!  The possibilities are unlimited!}

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Is it Autumn Yet?

September 20, 2010 By 1 Comment

I don’t know about you, but I have been ready for fall for a few weeks now!  In our part of the country, it’s still reaching 90 degrees every day, although the mornings are crisp and chilly, providing just enough of a hint of cooler weather to really make me wish it was autumn.  Sweaters and boots are in the stores, football is in full swing, and pumpkins and mums are on display.  I’ve already enjoyed plenty of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Lattes and picked up a bag of candy corn at Target yesterday.  But my favorite reason for fall:  There are always so many entertaining opportunities this time of the year, and Sweet Birdie’s Nest has a lot of fun parties coming up in the next month or two that we can’t wait to feature!

I’m ready to pack up my shorts and tank tops and get cozy in my new cardigan:

And then I want to decorate my home with some of these fall accessories:

Pottery Barn Pomegranate Swag

Pottery Barn Kids Halloween Garland

Pottery Barn Mercury Pumpkins {They're already sold out online...let me know if you find any!}

And I was perusing the internet for other fun fall decorating ideas, I saw these images from Martha Stewart and can’t wait to recreate them myself:

Glittered Pumpkins - so simple yet fun!

I love the simple, all-white palette here

Now are you ready for fall?  I’m definitely inspired by the images I just shared with you.  Are you hosting a Halloween party?  A football get-together?  Or need any excuse for a party?  Let us create the perfect invitations for your fabulous fall parties!

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