Looking for a great way to spread some holiday cheer? We thought we’d put your song knowledge to the test with this fun, free printable Christmas carol quiz! Pass a set around the Christmas table this year and see who comes out king or queen of the candy canes!
Ready to rock around the Christmas tree? Check out our top 10 list of the greatest classic Christmas songs of all time!
This week, we are just bursting with gratitude for all of the blessings we’ve received throughout the year and excited to get to spend the holiday weekend in the company of family and friends. In honor of Thanksgiving, we pulled together some amazing, crafty (but simple!) ways to express your gratitude this year.
This beautiful set of place setting cards from our sister site, BlueMountain.com, offers 4 different designs to choose from to customize to your Thanksgiving tablescape design. Visit their blog to view and print their free “I am Thankful For…” printables.
We loved this idea from Simply Vintagegirl to cut out various patterns of scrapbook paper into small circular designs and use a hole-punch to create the hanging hook. Gather some branches from the yard and have your guests write what they’re thankful for this year and place their happy sentiment on the tree.
With these free Thanksgiving printables from another one of our sister sites, Cardstore.com, you can customize and print your entire Thanksgiving menu, as well as a place card and thankful card. They’ve also included a napkin ring and feather detail that you can print!
We loved reading about this twist on the wedding thumbprint trend. While doing leaf prints with her kids, Little Page Turners decided to make a thumbprint thankful tree with her kids. Have your guests add their thumbprints upon their arrival for Thanksgiving dinner and you’ll have an amazing keepsake to remind you of the happy holiday you spent together!
This simple construction paper craft from The Moffatt Girls doesn’t take a lot of time, but the results is an adorable 3-D design that can also double as a dinner placecard!
This thankful jar from Anne at One She Two She is a simple way to collect what everyone is grateful this year and display it throughout the year. We loved not only the design on the jar, but how pretty the metallic river rocks looked inside of it!
The countdown to Christmas is ON! We are eyeballs-deep into Pinterest, looking at all of the creative ways our fans and followers are counting down to Christmas in their homes. In the spirit of the season of sharing, we wanted to share some of our favorite Christmas countdown calendar ideas!
The beautiful French blog, Kesi’Art, created a flip advent calendar using colorful papers, wood cut-outs, and other fabulous embellishments–all hung on a binder ring! You can snag a TOLSBY frame by Ikea for only 99 cents and even reuse favorite Christmas cards to recreate this handmade calendar. Using Christmas cards you’ve received over the years can bring you additional joy as you revisit each warm message from friends and family!
This Christmas Countdown charger plate is a fast and easy way to dress up an inexpensive platter for the holidays. Using paint pens and chalkboard paint, you can creatively decorate a simple charger plate and then place it into a plate display frame.
Do you have kids or grandkids? If so, you’re going to love this Book Advent Countdown to Christmas from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails. The simple act of unwrapping a book not only adds to the excitement of the holiday season, but it can help instill the love of reading into children’s hearts. Pour a mug of hot cocoa, snuggle up, and read to each other!
This handmade Countdown to Christmas pallet from Too Much Time on My Hands brings together everything we love–chalkboard paint, wood pallets, and a warm, handmade touch! It’s big enough to make a great statement on a mantel or to provide a focal point if you don’t have a fireplace to adorn. The old springs used in the corner provides the perfect place to proudly display this year’s Christmas cards–or favorite ones from years gone by!
What better way to give back this season than to involve the whole family in 25 days of service? We loved this idea from I Heart Nap Time, where rather than receiving a gift each day leading up to Christmas, you are committed to doing an act of service each day. Another fun twist could be to use last year’s Christmas cards as the artwork for your daily tags and identify 25 friends and family members who you’d like to call or do something nice for each day!
We loved Abi’s admission of not having chalkboard-perfect handwriting, so she pulled this awesome wall hanging together from tracing chalkboard fonts she found online and other fun chalkboard-inspired touches. She’s used this same wall hanging for other holidays, so be sure to check out her archives, too. Our personal favorite is her Countdown to Christmas Chalkboard, though!
Looking to curl up at home tonight with the best Halloween movies for any age to get your entire family in the “spirit”? This season is full of ghost-tingling fun for all ages ranging from the friendliest ghost tales to full-on horror thrillers.
Taking into account the level of bravery of those wishing to join you on the couch, here are some hauntingly perfect Halloween titles to check out—including some old favorites that you may have forgotten about!
There are a ton of fun, non-frightening, PG-rated monster movies like “Monster House,” “Monsters, Inc.” and the “Halloweentown” series. However, digging back a little further into the movie catalogue reveals some classic fun for the whole family, including “E.T.,” “Casper,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” and the beloved “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
If you’re craving a little more adventure, but not a lot of gore, checking out family-friendly titles like “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “The Addams Family,” “Hocus Pocus,” “Beetlejuice,” ”Labyrinth,” “Practical Magic” and “Young Frankenstein” to deliver a lot of laughs (without having to cover your eyes for the scary parts!)
If you want to host your own horror movie marathon, look into a classic movie series like “Halloween,” “Scream,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” ‘Friday the 13th,” “Final Destination,” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Or for a little scary movie satire, check out the “Scary Movie” series.
Looking for a spine-tingler that will leave you breathless? The true bravehearts may want to take a gander at some of the top-rated horror flicks of all time, including “Saw,” “The Ring,” “The Exorcist,” “Children of the Corn,” “Carrie,” “Hellraiser,” “The Shining,” “Psycho,” and “The Omen.”
No matter what your final film selection is, don’t forget to pair it with an appropriate seasonal snack—roasted pumpkin seeds, caramel popcorn balls, candied apples, and gummy snacks in scary shapes are always good places to start.
Looking for a fun way to spice up your Halloween decor? While perusing some of our favorite Pinterest boards and blogs, we couldn’t help but pause to enjoy this understated, elegant trend towards black and white Halloween decorations. It’s a bold, simple look that anyone can pull off with just a few simple touches.
1. DIY Halloween Front Door Mummy by Honey and Fitz
2. Spider Web Halloween Cupcakes by Pizzazzerie
3. Halloween Pumpkin Centerpiece by Busy Mommy
4. Fun Halloween Pumpkins by FLT on DIY Network
5. DIY Marshmallow Cobweb Cake by The Cake Blog
6. Bats Flying Across a Pumpkin by It All Stated with Paint
7. DIY Halloween Wreath by Blooming Homestead
8.“Poison” Toffee Apples for Halloween by Simply Delicious by Alida Ryder
We hope this inspires you to create a try a trendy Halloween look that’s positively diabolical!
For more awesome Halloween ideas and inspirations, check out our Halloween Pinterest Board!
Are you enjoying these last, beautiful days of summer? We certainly are! As flowers continue to bloom and sunlight begins to get more and more golden each evening, we have become positively romanced by the warmth emanating from the sky.
To bring this feeling to your social networks, we’ve created this Facebook cover photo to capture the warmth of the setting summer sun so that you can jazz up your profile with the beauty of the season… Enjoy!
To save this image and upload it as your new Facebook Cover Photo:
1. Click the the cover photo.
2. Right click (ctrl + click on a Mac) on the image to save it to your computer.
3. Go to your Facebook profile and upload the image to your profile.
4. Select “make cover photo” from your image options
4. Enjoy your new Facebook cover photo!
Do you love to change your profile picture with new, beautiful images? Tell us about it in the comments and we’ll make more for the upcoming season!
There’s something about summer that inspires us to connect with family to celebrate the unique bond that unites us. The joy of sharing not only a cultural heritage, but a family history makes these multi-generational gatherings a time-honored tradition.
Whether it’s an elaborate gathering of the entire network of extended relatives or just your immediate family, here are some great ideas for get-togethers that will have everyone enjoying the day together and creating some special memories.
What special things does your family do in order to stay in touch? We’d love to hear in the comments!
It should come as no surprise that holidays are a big deal at a greeting card company. From individual associates decorating their cubes to entire departments turning on holiday tunes and decking the halls together, Christmas and the holiday season in general is a festive affair at American Greetings.
One of the most lovely centerpieces to the season is the official holiday trees throughout the building. However, this year something caught our eyes on the largest tree in our Town Square area that we wanted to share with you.
See those scrolls throughout the tree? They’re simple scrolls of wrapping paper! We thought they gave a festive, on-trend dash of style to the tree. It’s a look you can certainly recreate at home, even if you’re not super crafty. Here’s a close-up:
They also carried this look over to the wreaths on the doors of our store…
What do you think? Is this something that might work on your tree? Share with us your favorite holiday decor ideas!
Happy National Candy Corn Day!
Whether you find it terrifyingly gross or totally tasty, candy corn season is upon us and there’s quite the heated debate over this little triangled gob of goo. There seems to be no middle ground here—candy corn is either loved or loathed, but no matter what corner of this sugared kernel you stand in, there’s one truth that stays constant year after year—we wouldn’t have Halloween without it.
This unassuming tri-colored tidbit has been voted the Most Traditional Candy of Halloween Least Loved by Consumers. However, the National Confectioners Association reports that 35 million pounds are produced annually. That’s 9 billion pieces. So…someone’s got to be eating it, right?
Made primarily from sugar, corn syrup, wax, artificial coloring and binders, you either savor this happy-colored, sugary corn confection, or pass it by on your way to the Reese’s.
So, which side of the debate do you stand on? Do you happily graze on these sugary kernels, savoring the quintessential taste of all things fall, or do you equate it more with drinking a bottle of Karo syrup and eating a candle, exclaiming, “Fall doesn’t want to taste like that!”
We can’t take credit for this one, folks! This annual holiday was created by Ruth and Thomas Roy of Wellcat Hollidays in Lebanon, PA in honor of all the complaining and just plain cranky coworkers you have to endure all year–this is the day to let them go with it and enjoy their miseries.So, if the lady next to you is always cursing up a storm or the guy in cubicle B is always banging his head on the keyboard, here’s your chance to let loose and get in the action and stir up some crankiness of your own:
All kidding aside, our vote is to always kill ‘em with kindness—if you’re up to it, try some reverse psychology and do something nice. Buy some coffee or chocolate and give them to your curmudgeonly coworker. It’s sure to put a smile on their face—even if just for a day.
Good luck out there!
If the very thought of Friday the 13th sends chills up your spine, you may have paraskevidekatriaphobics (say that 3 times fast!) An irrational fear of Friday the 13th influences millions of people in the U.S., causing U.S companies to lose an estimated $800 to $900 million in business due to workers who refuse to travel or go to work on Friday the13th!
Whether you’ve bravely hauled yourself to work or are huddled under the covers watching Dr. Phil today, we thought we’d help calm your nerves and offer you 13 tips on how to make it to Saturday…
Good luck out there, friends!
Top o’ the mornin’ to you! It’s almost St. Paddy’s Day—a time when everybody’s Irish! The Emerald Isle is filled with wisdom, and the blessings and sayings reflect a country that is warm and welcoming. Even though there have been many times in Ireland’s history when there were no rainbows in sight, the people stayed practical, positive and faithful, and their words reflect that. In fact, there’s a wee bit o’ wisdom for everything—it really is an Irish tradition! Aye, it’s hard to pick just five, but a little Leprechaun told us these are his favorite Irish sayings!
These wise words have been handed down through history, and of course were meant to be shared. But why not spread some old-fashioned Irish cheer the modern way and post your favorite blessings and sayings on Facebook or Pinterest. And for some added blarney, why not send this Toadally Irish Talking Card and let the adorable toad say it for you–it’ll make your friends crack up or should we say, croak up!
