Classroom Christmas Tour, 2025

 Hello! This is a really random post to share in January, but here is a quick tour of my classroom decorated for Christmas last year. 

Maybe it can provide some future inspiration for Christmas 2026. The lights came from both thrift stores and Amazon (specifically the star LED lights came from Amazon). The brown ribbon was bought in a huge bulk roll from Amazon. It was around $10, decorated my whole bedroom, classroom, was used to embellish gifts, used for hair bows, and I still have tons left! The bells came from Dollar Tree but I painted them to look vintage. The garlands and pine cones came from thrift stores. I probably paid a total of $5 or less for them. I did run out of those and buy one strand from Walmart, which is unreasonably expensive, as it turns out. The other decorations I had on hand from thrift stores or they were given to me as gifts in years past.  

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn 

Shona's Cats & Coffee Themed Birthday Party

 Happy Sunday! Today I am sharing yet another party from way back... again, I do not recall what year this was from, but I know it was early 2024 or before. This birthday party was themed around "Cats and Coffee" (the best combination, right?). 

I used a warm color palette, and tried to use mostly browns/comfort colors. Below are the details:

-The cat face was made with greenery (artificial or mixed with real branches) poked into the pegboard. 

-The draped orange-y cloth was cheesecloth I had on hand. All of the fabrics I had on hand, and the gold one was actually a golden dress.

-I used printed pictures assembled onto string for the cat banner. 

-I also printed a Google image for the coffee sign. 

-For the party favors, I  cut out cats from recycled cardboard, drew faces and paws with a pen, and taped Dollar Tree heart lollipops onto them. I was very fortunate, Dollar General was having a great sale. The plastic coffee cups are typically 3 for $1, and then the glass mugs were half off so they were around $1 each. 

-The little handwritten signs read "Shona's Birthday Pawty" and for favors, "Please take one. Thank you for helping make Shona's birthday party Purrfect."

Thanks for visiting! 

-Lauryn

Jacob's Nutcracker Birthday Party

As my last Christmas post, I present a Nutcracker birthday party. This was a boyish Nutcracker party I did for my brother's 17th birthday in mid-November. I wanted it to have an adult-style simple elegance. I used wood, pine and dark reds inspired by the toy soldiers, Christmas tree, toys, candy and other themes in the story. We set up a hot cocoa bar, and served cookies and cake among other foods. I decorated a Walmart cake with some red icing from the store by looking at silhouettes online. The wreath was just an embroidery hoop with a Leland Cypress branch tied on. I gathered more branches from the yard and painted some gold for the centerpiece. The clocks were painted thrift-store plates. The trumpets, banner/soldier-like trim (? I don't know what to call it), and candles were also thrift-store finds. The nutcrackers came from Dollar Tree. For other favors, I made some rather useless thing-a-bobs made of hot glue painted with nail polish, I guess to craft with. I placed Christmas pencils with mini notebooks that were around a quarter each, which I painted black and white with Nutcracker silhouettes. It was a lot of fun! 

This theme is easy to do, so if your searching for a theme next winter, you could try your own twist on the Nutcracker. Please visit again soon for gift ideas and crafts!

-Lauryn