HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Photo by Amanda Haddow Photography

Just like that...another year comes to a close. WINTER DAISY will be closed through the end of this year and will be back January 15th, 2018.

If you're looking for some inspiration for your kids spaces over the holiday, please sit back and read some of my favourite posts from this year!!!

Rooms:

1. Rafa + Leo’s Shared Baby and Toddler Room
2. Ella’s Big Girl Room
3. A Neutral Nursery (staged to sell)
4. Christmas Playhouse

Décor for Kids Rooms:

1. 10 of the cutest night lights
2. Super cute hooks for kids
3. Pillows!
4. Baby Cribs
5. 6 wooden playhouses

Books:

1. My Color is Rainbow
2. Mindful 1, 2, 3
3. Over and Under the Snow
4. Tap the Magic Tree
5. Bee
6. It Starts with a Seed
7. Holiday Books for Kids

2017 has been such a great year juggling the blog, designing client spaces and being a hands on Mama to my three little ones. I can't wait to show you some of the spaces that are in their final stages that I will be revealing next year. As always, thank you so much for being here! Happy holidays from our family to yours; I hope you enjoy celebrating in whatever way makes you happy. 

KIDS CHRISTMAS WOODEN PLAYHOUSE

GET THE LOOK…

Our little wooden playhouse is all decorated for Christmas!!! You may remember the summer makeover of this cubby house from last year and I finally got a few things together to decorate it for the holidays. I had this idea to surprise the kids with a fun afternoon outside eating shortbread cookies and drinking hot cocoa and I am so thankful we did it before the crazy rain started because they LOVED it!

The white lit birch trees were such a fun addition that I will move inside later; one for the girls' room and one for Xavier's.

We swapped summer lemonade for hot cocoa and the menu changed to include cookies, brownies and candy canes (kids dream menu!). All three kids wanted to take turns 'serving' the others and the shortbread cookies were gobbled up nearly instantly.

I just love the unexpected colours in the peppermint garland from Pearl and Jane. It's so cute for the playhouse and would be equally as adorable as holiday decoration in a children's room!

I adore the little details in our playhouse: the tiny HO HO HO banner, gold drop garland and JOY banner are all from Etsy. So many creative makers that I love to support! I just had to include this photo of our youngest smiling broadly and poking over the door. 

If you missed the original makeover, you can find that post here. I hope you find inspiration and a little fun from our holiday playhouse.

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SUMMER PLAYHOUSE

OUR CHRISTMAS CARDS {WITH MINTED}

*Thank you to Minted for sponsoring this post. All wording, photos and opinions are my own. 

CHRISTMAS PHOTO BY Amanda Haddow Photography

I am SO excited to share this year's annual Christmas cards with you all, my favourite yet! These simple and classic holiday cards from MINTED are absolutely perfect; I couldn't be happier with them. The moment I opened the box and saw them, I knew I chose the right photo and template. A couple of weeks ago I shared an outtake from the actual shoot and when I saw this shot, I knew right away that this was the one of the kids I would use for our cards. Isn't it just the sweetest?!

Last year, I shared tips on how to how to get your Christmas cards done early and this year, I want to tell you the steps and thoughts that I considered when setting up for the photoshoot and then ordering our holiday cards online.

For the shoot:

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE: the important thing is making the experience fun and getting the kids excited for the upcoming season! Put on Christmas music and pull out your best knock knock jokes...they still work perfectly for photoshoots with our kids! Here's one our kids think is hilarious:
   

   "Knock knock"

   "Who's there?"

   "Mary"

   "Mary who?"

   "Mary Christmas!
    

2. CHOOSE COORDINATING COLOURS: When I pulled out outfits for the kids, I knew I wanted to keep things classic this year and so we chose light grey, red and added a hint of green with the wreath. I love how the gold foil-pressed lettering pops with the simplicity of the card. Gold is my favourite metallic for the holidays and I add it in wherever I can!

3. PLAY HOLIDAY MUSIC: Our kids LOVE Christmas tunes year round and when I tell them we can put a little Michael Buble on early when we take the photos for the cards, they are always VERY excited!!! It secretly gets me in the mood for the holidays a little early too.

4. CHOOSE A BRIGHTLY LIT ENVIRONMENT: If weather permits, an outdoor shoot is the best! This year, the rain was pouring down on photoshoot day and so we choose a well lit wall next to the brightest window in the house to snap a few photos of the little ones. Good lighting goes a very long way to capturing a great photo!

That's it! Follow those four steps and you are set to capture your cuties in a shot that will be the feature of your holiday card.

When I went to the Minted site, I was blown away by the vast number of template options. Sit down with a glass of wine (or tea!) and take your time in choosing a template that works with your chosen photo. Since my photo was shot with white space at the top, it made sense to have text at the top of the card and therefore eliminated options where text was at the bottom (which helped to cut down the decision making). I loved so many templates and I knew I wanted to see the wreath on the card so although I love the middle one below, I decided not to go for it due to the wreath not fully showing. My favourites were Merry Scriptmas, Simply Shining, Simple Frame and of course the template I ordered, Merrier than Ever. It was a hard decision, I love them all!!!

One of the biggest differences this year is the system Minted has for addresses! In the past, I have struggled to get out cards sent out to everybody and this year, I had to collect all of our addresses at the time I ordered the cards so that they could be printed on the envelopes...how amazing is that!?!! It literally took a day to message everyone and get the addresses together, probably in part that I wasn't doing it late into December and when I opened the package to see all of the envelopes labelled and addressed, I almost feel this is the best part. I will write a Christmas greeting on the cards, pop a stamp on and head straight to the mailbox...SO much easier than having to write out all of the addresses! I love this system and now have all of our addresses in one place for future cards.

If you noticed the super cute cocktail napkins in some of my photos, I found those at Minted too. They have lots of fun holiday decor to add to your order so go take a look!

Right now and through the weekend enjoy 15% off holiday cards with code BEMERRY.

OUR SUMMER LEMONADE STAND (USING IKEA KIDS TABLES!)

They say it's a right of passage to have a lemonade stand as a child. I say throw two IKEA LATT kids tables together, paint them white and you're set to go!!!

Our daughter Noelle, who is 6, told me a few nights before school started that having a lemonade stand was on her list of 'must dos' for the summer and she seemed pretty set on it. Without having much time to think about it, we put the kids to bed, I found the two IKEA tables in the basement and a few pieces of scrap wood and set to work (big thanks to my hubby for screwing the wood into the tables enabling a stand to be made). 

Our IKEA kids tables mainly get used for parties or when kids come over for playdates and were definitely not in the best shape, so after finding the pieces of scrap wood to use as the 'stand', I used some leftover paint from my playhouse project last summer and quickly painted it all. You can see how dark it was when I snapped a photo once the paint was on. This is devoted parenting at its' best, right?! Ha!

BEFORE...

AFTER...

I made the 'LEMONADE' sign the next morning by cutting out large triangles from card stock and sticking some gold foil letter stickers on. I already owned the drinks dispenser that we use all the time for parties and playdates and apparently now lemonade stands too!!! The adorable silver star garland is from Pearl and Jane on Etsy. The girls and I walked up to the flower shop to choose some flowers for the stand and they picked out this sweet combination themselves. They also drew, coloured and cut out the lemons and stems to stick onto the stand for decoration. Aren't they the cutest?! This is definitely my favourite detail of all!!!

Everyone who came by commented that at 25 cents, our lemonade was the best deal around. I guess we wanted the stand to be about having fun and not making money and we even had a jar of quarters for anyone who came by who didn't happen to have change with them. This turned out to be a great idea as we could then give out free lemonade (therefore getting more 'customers') while the kids could transfer a quarter from our money jar to theirs. Watching the joy on their faces when their neighbourhood friends stopped by was priceless; such a great summer memory.A win win for everyone!

We have owned this little silver scale for years and it made a perfect accessory for the stand. The kids filled their own glasses up more times than I was willing to count but I suppose that's half the fun, isn't it??!!

So, there it is. A summer bucket list item ticked off for the kids and hours and hours of fun for us all. Who else has a couple of IKEA kids tables kicking around?

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GIVEAWAY {WITH LOST MY NAME BOOKS}

GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED...

It's GIVEAWAY time!!!

You know I love a good kids' book and these ones are INCREDIBLE. Lostmy.name is a company that creates magical books for children that incorporate a child's name and turns them into the centre of the story! You may have heard of the adventurous tale of The Boy Who Lost His Name, or The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home and The Kingdom of You and if not, head over to their site and check them out! 

When our kids saw their name in the books, they really were blown away. "How did you do that Mommy?", "How did the author know my name?" were a couple of questions that quickly followed. As a Mom, other than fascinating my kids, I love the story lines and the lovely quality of the pages.

Well, today we are GIVING away not one, but THREE of these beautiful stories to three lucky winners! Head over to my Instagram page to see all of the contest details and tag your friends!!!

Giveaway closes Friday June 30th. Winner will be announced on the blog and also on Instagram. Good luck friends!!!