{How to Wear Tacky Christmas Sweaters}

Hi readers! My name is April and I blog over at The Striped Flamingo. 

Can I talk to y'all for a second about tacky Christmas sweaters? 

Mmmkay. So, there's this store near where I live, which shall remain nameless, so as not to incriminate those who shop there for actual clothing. It kind of sells grandma type clothes. Well, for some reason, this store seems to be the tacky Christmas sweater mecca. For real. Every year, they come out with a fresh crop of terribad sweaters. It really makes you wonder if there really is a market for this type of clothing. 

Note to readers: apparently there is. Whilst shopping at said store for a tacky Christmas sweater to give at my work White Elephant gift exchange, there were at least 5 little old ladies animatedly combing through the tacky Christmas sweater racks, wearing, of course, tacky Christmas sweaters.

Something that has gained popularity in the last few years are tacky/ugly Christmas sweater parties. The main idea is to invicte people to wear these horrible sweaters/ensembles and revel in each other's Christmas tackiness.

Sounds fun, right?

So, besides the obligatory tacky Christmas sweater, what does one wear to this type of party? Well, I'm a firm believer that there is such a thing as over-accessorizing. And, these sweaters...well, they should be treated as an accessory. (Because, in all honesty, most of them contain no less than 7 bags of seed pearls and sequins anyway...) So, when Jamie asked how can you rock a Christmas sweater and still look "cute" (which I took as meaning "not like you shop at said old lady store on the reg") I figured others might benefit from my answer. 

As mentioned earlier, treat the sweater/vest/etc. as the accessory. You want to keep everything else you wear very basic. Obvi, the main attraction of your outfit is the sweater/vest, so don't mix a lot of other prints with it. I like the idea of a pop of color in a bag or shoes, but keep it to one color, balanced out with neutrals. 

Try to keep the rest of your outfit as modern as possible. I loved the idea of doing a tacky Christmas vest with black skinnies, a black t-shirt and red booties. The jewelry is very minimal with this outfit. For the other, more casual outfit, I like doing jeans and navy accents to balance it. (Navy Toms, um...yes?!?!)

All this to say, it IS possible to look "cute" while wearing one of these tacky sweaters. 

SO......Have you ever been to a tacky Christmas sweater party?

Thank you SO much April for the fun post for any upcoming holiday ugly sweater parties!!! I can't wait to post photos from our holiday housewarming party!! *I had previously emailed April asking her for some fashion advice before our party and that's how this guest post came about!! :) 

Please go check out her blog! I've been following April's blog and her Instagram for some time now and she writes about tons of great outfit inspiration, (this page here) crafts, photography, home decor, Christianity, and more! She also loves to sing (check out this song here)!!! Just a peek into a little more about her (how cute is this?!)......

Thanks again girl!!

Guest Post: Jessica from Happy Girls

Hey y'all! 

I'd like to introduce a friend of mine from college today here on the blog for a lil guest post!

Jessica and I shared the same major at UK and even had a few classes together over the years! She has a sweet husband, a large dog, and a precious new baby boy!!! Her blog is super cute and full of photos (which I love). She blogs about being a wife, a new mom, her new job with Rodan & Fields, home decor, and much much MORE.

The title to her blog is none other than an Audrey Hepburn quote :) Enjoy....

Hi!

My name is Jessica and I blog at

  Happy Girls are the Prettiest Girls

Since Jamie is in the process of fixing up her gorgeous new house,

 I thought I'd share something I like to do in our home decorating.

We really like to have pieces in our home that have special 

meaning or a cool story behind them.

We have our initials throughout the house (Joey and Jessica, so same initials!) and these here in our living room and bedroom were also used as decorations at our wedding!

These two prints I picked up at a small frame shop in my hometown.  The top left is a print of the bridge in my hometown, and the bottom right is from the restaurant of a hotel that used to be downtown. I also have always had the tradition of putting a horseshoe above the door in every place I've lived since college, and here it is above our front door.  

Horseshoes are supposed to = good luck!

I love the story behind this ship painting.  It is actually a paint by numbers and when my grandparents were first married they painted this for fun.  How times have changed ;)

I love these frames hanging on the left.  At our wedding we wrote our own vows (check back to my blog soon to read them).  The pictures on the right are of us each saying them to each other.  On our wedding day we wrote them in a little blue book to use for "something blue."  Last year on Valentine's Day, I decided I wanted to have them on display,
so we each wrote them out again and framed them.

My husband is what I call a "plant hoarder."
And I would never admit this to him, because it would make him think he should go out
and buy more plants, but they do make the house warmer.

I know no matter where we live, these owls will always go with us.  When I was in college, Joey found these at the Peddlers Mall in Danville and bought them for me.  When I moved apartments that year they got packed up and put into storage.  A year later Joey was helping me move and we were going through boxes, and he found these.  

He pretended to be so offended that I had packed them up and forgotten about them.  

So now they live on our key rack and I know we'll never get rid of them!

Another piece in our home that might not be the "prettiest" thing we own, but I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.  Joey painted this for me for my 21st birthday.  

I like it because I like things that are in someone's handwriting

 and also because it is the lyrics to our song, "Until You" by Dave Barnes.

My dad's side of the family is super artistic and creative,
and this print was given to us as a wedding gift from my cousin, Morgan.
She has even had her prints for sale at Urban Outfitters, which I think is so cool!

These prints are hanging in our bathroom.  

The left is of our Bassett Hound, Blue, and the bottom right is of our St. Bernard, Chauncey.  

To make it even better, they were painted by one of our friends!

Hopefully these will give some inspiration!

Thanks for having me, Jamie!

Getting Creative for Brooke's Shower

HeyHey! I'm Haley.... Jamie's bff and we're doin a little blog swappin.

Jamie has SO graciously kept my pup Lucy while I've been living in East Asia for the last year- for which I am beyond grateful. She has been a good mama to my sweet girl. I used getting Lucy back to me as an excuse to see her the weekend after we returned and she so graciously made the drive and met me at my parent's in East TN. So during our time together, we knew we had to be crafty
and saw the perfect opportunity with Brooke's approaching baby shower.

Brooke went to UK with us, and was such a dear friend in college. She and her husband are so much fun, and love the Lord passionately. She has always been such an encouraging friend. We are super excited about her sweet boy Finn's arrival in just a couple of months now. Finn isn't Brooke & Brandon's first baby, but he will be the first little one that they bring home with them. They had to release their first little boy into the arms of Jesus last September when he was born. It's definitely worth your time to read some of their story over on her blog.
Its an incredible story of perseverance
and hope in the midst of a lot of pain and sorrow.

Brooke is also super creative and fun, so we wanted to show her love by putting some time and love into making some special gifts for her and Finn. Jamie had the fantastic idea of using ideas from some of Brooke's Pinterest boards. I tell ya, she's a smart one. 

After clicking around on Brooke's Pinterest pages, we picked a few things that we really liked:

A photographer assistant onesie {as Brooke is a new aspiring photographer}

source

Dr. Seuss inspired art....

source

.... and embroidery hoops- clearly not girly ones, but just the idea in general. 

source

So we decided at the least we wanted to make these things and maybe a few others if we could.

Since we were visiting my parents, we didn't have many things on hand so off to Michael's we went. This was my first time setting foot in crafting heaven since I came back to America a week before, so I went a little crazy. Feel free to come visit my blog soon to see the loot. 

The "Oh The Places You'll Go" painting on her Pinterest page is so super cute. Ours didn't quite turn out how we intended, but our lack of patience got the best of us and we decided to just free-hand it. 

Little Finn's nursery is gray, so we decided to just paint it gray with the yellow and ended up with this:

a little wonky, but cute nonetheless. 

Then the embroidery hoop..... 

This trend started when I was in East Asia this year, and so I'd been dying to buy a bunch of them and insisted that we make at least one for her. We decided that we'd make an Africa one since Finn will eventually have a brother from Ethiopia {they're currently in the process of adopting as well}. We thought this would be just one more fun way to anticipate his brother's arrival. 

We chose this cute striped fabric Jamie had and then decided on thread colors. Then Jamie did a ballin job freehand sketching a picture of Africa on a piece of paper. Then she poked holes in the paper, and then made a little "connect-the-dot" pattern on the fabric. She did the embroidering and then topped it off with a heart in Ethiopia. 

I was impressed to say the least. 

I think this is my favorite of everything we made. It turned out so well! 

Then onto the onesies. We sent my helpful mama to Wal-Mart while we were working on the first 2 projects to buy the onesies for us, and she came back with a 3 pack, so we decided we needed to use all 3. Jamie brought some SUPER fun fabric to use with her.
She seriously finds such great stuff. 

First I really wanted to make one with his name. We used that interfusing stuff. We cut out the letters, ironed it all on and then hand stitched around the boarder of the letters. The only mistake that we made was using the "don't sew with this kind" of interfusing and went ahead and sewed with it anyway... and bent needles and created hand cramps in the process. Next time, we'll follow the instructions.

Then we decided to make a sail boat, as it is a hobby of their family's. Jamie did a fantastic job on it. 

And finally the "Assistant" onesie

I think it's so stinkin cute. Hopefully Brooke can shoot

 some fun things with her little assistant next spring!!

And finally for a little something extra, I made a paper frame. I have a slight obsession with making these and have a made a few for different people in the last year. They're super easy and fun. 

I just painted the edges of the frame, cut paper to fit,

 and mod-podged it on the front. 

Then, I painted this little monkey and gave him paper body parts, and filled in the features with a sharpie. 

And then I painted the letters and stuck them on there. 

Such a simple, but fun little craft that anyone can make. 

Here is everything we got done during our time together. It was so fun to get to craft together after quite the hiatus.... and for such a special friend. I was glad that I could do something for her as I wasn't able to go to the shower. 

I hope that you have enjoyed our little blog swap.
Please do come over to my blog to see Jamie's highlights from Brooke's shower! Let me know you came over from here to say "Hey!" It'll make my day! So head on over to check it out!!!

Blog Swap

I'm doing a blog swap with my bestest at
The Joys of Life with Lucy tomorrow....

celebrating our 

sweet friend Brooke

Haley, Me, & Brooke

Brooke & I 

So come back and show some love!!

& become a follower too!

April Showers Bring....

We have known Danielle and Steven through our church at home and its softball league (while the men play, the women "watch" and talk) for the past almost 2 years. They are graduates of The University of Georgia (where they met) and are huge Bulldogs fans! They were married on July 18, 2008 and are now expecting their first child!

Here are some photos of the lovely couple & friends:

David, Ryan, Matt, Ben, Steven, & Brandon

 Dancing @ our wedding

 @ Jenn & Ben's wedding

Danielle, Joy, Me, Elisa, Jennifer, & Livia

Crossings Men's Softball Team

@ Elisa & Ryan's wedding

Whew- what a busy summer of weddings!......   ;)

OK, so 

{March 26, 2010} The main goal for the shower was for it to be relaxing. We had a wonderful cookout spread with yummy burgers and a baby pool of drinks :) Despite the rain, the boys spent their time playing ping-pong and darts. They had a great time hanging out and I think everyone enjoyed filling out their Wishes for the Wish Tree (where I got my awesome inspiration- over at Aubrey's blog)!! The company was great and fellowship even better.

The super cute diaper cake Joy made!

While the men were playing, the women had a wonderful time opening the gifts. Afterwards, we spent some time sharing tidbits about life, marriage, and our wedding stories. I had a fun time catching up with all the girls. 

Danielle & Steven received many wonderful gifts and advice.

The cute baby blanket made by Mama Pepin

I'm sure we can all guess what this gift is....

Natalie & Greg labeled their gifts w/ directions (& great Dr. advice)

 Baby bear hat and Pee Pee Teepees that Lauren made

I really enjoy receiving hand-made gifts. They are way more personal than anything store bought (although I love getting those too!!) But, I know that the time, energy, and thought spent on making the gift is what makes it so so precious!
Basically, I had an excuse to use my new sewing machine & because I love to make stuff!!!
I chose to make some fun gifts and cute decor:

One of the gifts can be bought on my ETSY

AND

 another gift was featured in a tutorial over at Frugalista Find!! 

So go check How To Make a Wish Tree!!!!!

1. 

2. 3.

                                      4. 5.

1. Cute Paper Banner
2. Wish Tree
3. Snugglebug
4. Diapers & Wipes Case
5. Brown Paper Lunch Bag Guest Book

Me, Jennifer, Danielle, & Joy (the Hostesses w/ the momma-to-be)

Congratulations! We are so happy and excited for you! 

We look forward to meeting baby Ethan James! 

Only a few more weeks! :)

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