It’s A Valentine’s Tablescape

Hello!  I hope you are all ready because this blog post is going to be a fun one!  So hold onto your hats and hold on until the end!  I promise you won’t be disappointed.

*This blog post contains sponsored content from Oriental Trading Company*

So it’s becoming that time again for all of the love.  You know what I’m talking about.  Hearts in red and pink all over the stores shelves.  And not only in the stores, but also online as well.  And Oriental Trading is all about the holidays.

And after much deliberation on what to pick from their website, I finally decided on doing a tablescape.  So after doing a lot of shopping around and putting things in my cart and taking them out, I finally ordered my things and started my tablescape.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Full

And here it is!  I love how it turned out and love each piece that I picked out.  So lets see what I picked.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Center

The first thing is this cute candy jar.  It has a small chalkboard on the front so you can write what kind of candy is in it.  Or, you can draw a heart on it like I did.  But it fits quite a bit of candy in it, so go bananas!

Valentine's Day Tablescape Across

The next thing is the heart tree, if that’s what you want to call it.  It’s a tree in a small pot that you can bend and shape however you want to.  It’s only about 18 inches tall, so it won’t block your view of your loved one.

There’s also the rose garland in the middle of the table.  I added the pink puffball garland and the white puffball garland as well, just to add some stuff to the middle.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Diamonds

And these jewels?  Yep, bought them from Oriental.  I bought a pink, black, and clear pack so I had a variety to spread around the table.  Each color came in a pack of 25 diamonds, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Plates

The plates were also purchased from Oriental.  And the silver place mats!  Okay, the place mats were from mom from the last time we worked with Oriental, but they looked great with the rest of the tablescape.  I bought the small candy baking cups from the 99 Cent Store, but they looked so good with the plates.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Overtop

So this is what the table looks like from above!  It’s so cute!

Valentine's Day Tablescape Love

The last thing I got from Oriental was this pretty gold LOVE sign.  It sat so nicely on the cake plate in the background of the photos.  And I must say that I am very excited to put this on my gallery wall in my apartment.

Side note: out cat Kiara is extremely nosy and wants to be in the middle of EVERYTHING.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Kiara

And finally, we found some cute pet clothes for Valentine’s Day at the 99 Cent Store which we had to buy.  Repeat HAD TO.  So we had a little doggy (and kitty) photoshoot for the holiday!

Valentines Day Pets MaggieValentines Day Pets RozyValentines Day Pets EzzyValentines Day Pets SchmunchyValentines Day Pets Kiara

Obviously, Kiara looks annoyed that I took her photo, but I love her all the better!  And Ezzy is on a different couch because she is our senior citizen and I didn’t want to move her.

So that was my fun with Oriental.  I love how the table turned out, but I love the animals as well.  Have a good Wednesday!

Sparkle

Fun Christmas Activity for Kids

Good morning!  How has everyone’s week been?  I am so happy that today is Friday.  Not because it’s been a really long week, but it’s the weekend and I have a lot of fun stuff planned.  So I cannot wait for Friday to be over!

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Welcome to the 5th annual 12 Days of Holiday Ideas event, hosted by Shirley of Intelligent Domestications  and  Erlene of My Pinterventures Between Nov. 11th and December 6th there will be hundreds of new ideas shared by over 55 Co-host bloggers! 

Go here to see our kick-off collection of Holiday ideas as well as all of this years talented participating DIY and Foodie Blogs. Download this years November and December calendars with all of the topics and dates so you can make plans to watch for ideas!

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We are continuing on the 12 days of Christmas with a fun Kids Activity!  Or, a fun day for kids, whichever you prefer.  We decided to go with an afternoon of fun for the kids and Oriental Trading Company has helped us tremendously with this!  They were gracious enough to give us some of the supplies needed to complete our fun afternoon!

Christmas Centerpiece

My inspiration was a fun little girl Paris party.  We wanted to have some Eiffel Towers and lots of pink!  Of course this is my kind of party!  We wanted white, Eiffel Towers, pink, silver, gold, snacks, and a fun activity.  Thankfully, Oriental Trading was able to help us out with some of these things.

Paris Kids Table

So we started our afternoon by setting the table.  We had a beautiful faux fur table runner (I’ll just say that mom and I have really enjoyed petting it, it’s SOOO SOFT) and we used it as a faux snow for our centerpiece.  We had some white houses that we used to decorate last year and some Eiffel Towers that I have as decoration around my apartment.  And of course to make it Christmassy we added some cute sisal trees.  Honestly, how cute is it?

Paris Kids Table Top ViewFull View Tablescape

Since this is a kids party, we knew we had to have some fun activities.  We found these coloring page placemats on Oriental’s website and knew that these would be perfect for our party.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any kids who were there while setting up for our party, so mom and I got to color the placemats.  And Munchy helped!

 

Since every good party needs some snacks, we thought the coolest thing would to have a cupcake decorating station.  So we have some cupcakes that we decorated with pink and green sprinkles from Oriental Trading.  Who knew you could buy a whole pound of sprinkles from Oriental Trading?  We also got these cute cupcake carriers from Oriental Trading.  There are so many different designs of cupcake carriers so you can pick your favorites.  Of course, I picked the pink chevron design!  The carriers fit two cupcakes or a lot of cookies if you wanted.

 

The other fun activity we picked out for kids was making an ornament.  We found all of the items needed on Oriental Trading’s website.  We found these cute open face clear ornaments and I knew what I wanted.  I found fake snow, cute deer ornaments, and some tiny sisal trees.  Now, some of the deer were too big for the ornaments but the little fawns were perfect size.  So with a little hot glue, we were able to glue the deer and the trees into the ornaments before pouring the fake snow in the bottom.  How cute are they!  And even though the ornaments may require a little adult supervision but they would be cute gifts to take home.

Deer Ornament

And that’s it!  This is totally my kind of party.  How fun would this be for kids, or adults?  We had so much fun making everything for this party and we can’t wait to actually have a party with our nieces!  So thank you to Oriental Trading for helping us set up our Kid’s Activity Party.  And thank you for stopping by!  See you on Monday!

Don’t forget to check out the other kids activities in the inlinkz party! And enter the giveaway below!

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Sparkle

MEET OUR SPONSORS who have generously donated fabulous prizes for the Big Christmas Giveaway!

DecoArt  winner will receive a prize package valued at $100!

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12 Days of Holiday Ideas Event Sponsors 2019

Giveaway begins Nov. 8, 2019 and ends Dec. 6, 2019. Winners will be notified by December 13, 2019. Sponsors will ship each prize to the winner. There will be a total of seven winners, one for each prize. Drawing is by random selection using the Rafflecopter widget. 

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Valentine’s Day Tablescape

Hello!  I hope you have all had a wonderful start to 2019.  But as you know the year is flying by already and it’s almost Valentine’s Day!  I am reposting my tablescape from last year which was an awesome post thanks to Oriental Trading Company.  Now, everything is still available except for the candy jar.  But there are plenty of other options of candy jars to pick from.  So let your heart and dreams go wild!

*This blog post contains sponsored content from Oriental Trading Company*

So it’s becoming that time again for all of the love.  You know what I’m talking about.  Hearts in red and pink all over the stores shelves.  And not only in the stores, but also online as well.  And Oriental Trading is all about the holidays.

And after much deliberation on what to pick from their website, I finally decided on doing a tablescape.  So after doing a lot of shopping around and putting things in my cart and taking them out, I finally ordered my things and started my tablescape.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Full

And here it is!  I love how it turned out and love each piece that I picked out.  So lets see what I picked.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Center

The first thing is this cute candy jar.  It has a small chalkboard on the front so you can write what kind of candy is in it.  Or, you can draw a heart on it like I did.  But it fits quite a bit of candy in it, so go bananas!

Valentine's Day Tablescape Across

The next thing is the heart tree, if that’s what you want to call it.  It’s a tree in a small pot that you can bend and shape however you want to.  It’s only about 18 inches tall, so it won’t block your view of your loved one.

There’s also the rose garland in the middle of the table.  I added the pink puffball garland and the white puffball garland as well, just to add some stuff to the middle.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Diamonds

And these jewels?  Yep, bought them from Oriental.  I bought a pink, black, and clear pack so I had a variety to spread around the table.  Each color came in a pack of 25 diamonds, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Plates

The plates were also purchased from Oriental.  And the silver place mats!  Okay, the place mats were from mom from the last time we worked with Oriental, but they looked great with the rest of the tablescape.  I bought the small candy baking cups from the 99 Cent Store, but they looked so good with the plates.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Overtop

So this is what the table looks like from above!  It’s so cute!

Valentine's Day Tablescape Love

The last thing I got from Oriental was this pretty gold LOVE sign.  It sat so nicely on the cake plate in the background of the photos.  And I must say that I am very excited to put this on my gallery wall in my apartment.

Side note: out cat Kiara is extremely nosy and wants to be in the middle of EVERYTHING.

Valentine's Day Tablescape Kiara

And finally, we found some cute pet clothes for Valentine’s Day at the 99 Cent Store which we had to buy.  Repeat HAD TO.  So we had a little doggy (and kitty) photoshoot for the holiday!

Valentines Day Pets MaggieValentines Day Pets RozyValentines Day Pets EzzyValentines Day Pets SchmunchyValentines Day Pets Kiara

Obviously, Kiara looks annoyed that I took her photo, but I love her all the better!  And Ezzy is on a different couch because she is our senior citizen and I didn’t want to move her.

So that was my fun with Oriental.  I love how the table turned out, but I love the animals as well.  Have a good Wednesday!

Sparkle

Beachy Christmas in the Dining Room

Good morning! I don’t usually show up on a Wednesday, but I wanted to finish the tour of my living room/dining room! You can see my entryway and living room here. I just love having these rooms to decorate! It was so much fun to put it all together.

*This post has affiliate links. To find more of Oriental Trading decor, click the link.*   http://www.orientaltrading.com/holidays/christmas/christmas-decorations-a1-553184.fltr

I received several of my items from Oriental Trading. It felt like an early Christmas when I opened up the box! I knew everything would look great in my turquoise and white dining room!

christmas 2017 turquoise and white dining room

I found these very cool ombre’ turquoise and white trees at Hobby Lobby and I knew they would be perfect for my table! I almost waited too long, but snagged the last two!

christmas 2017 dining room turquoise and white tablescape and hutch

I used my white dishes and layered them on top of these silver placemats from Oriental Trading. They added the perfect touch! I just checked the website and I don’t see the silver ones, but they do have gold. I also added little silver and white candy boxes to each place-setting to give as little gifts to my guests.

christmas 2017 dining room tablescape turquoise and white silver and gold

I added dark goblets, white fabric napkins, and a silver bowl filled with tiny ornaments.

christmas 2017 dining room table centerpiece

Down the middle of the table, I placed some silver faux leaves, candles, pointsettias, wooden beads and silver deer.

christmas 2017 dining room silver deer candlelight

I almost forgot about the pretty feathers! I added these to each place-setting and also some to my tree. There are lots of different colors and they add the perfect touch.

christmas 2017 dining room place settingchristmas 2017 dining room silver bowl of ornaments

I added a few Christmas touches to my white hutch too. I found the boxwood tree at a thrift store and added some tiny turquoise berries to the little pitcher. Here is one more of my cute little hedgehogs!

christmas 2017 dining room white hutch turquoise ornaments starfishchristmas 2017 dining room white hutch disheschristmas 2017 dining room silverware hedgehog starfish

I have been collecting these Shiny Brite ornaments for a few years now. Anytime I see them at thrift store, I pick them up. I was able to fill this driftwood bowl with them.

christmas 2017 dining room shiny brite ornaments

My turquoise and gold bar cart holds a couple of lanterns and my last little hedgehog! I stored some of my extra candy boxes on the bottom shelf.

christmas 2017 dining room bar cart lanterns turquoisechristmas 2017 dining room silver hedgehog

My shelves stayed pretty much the same, just added in some Christmas touches. By keeping the background neutral I can add any other colors and it still looks great! I also added some white Christmas lights to add a little more sparkle!

christmas 2017 dining room shelves dishes turquoise and whitechristmas 2017 dining room white plates farmhouse birdchristmas 2017 dining room gold bowls turquoise ornaments

I found these turquoise glittery snowflakes at Oriental Trading too. They come apart so they are really easy to store.

christmas 2017 dining room turquoise snowflake

I have a box of Shiny Brite ornaments that once belonged to my dad’s mom. I love having these little special heirlooms to add to my rooms. This Merry Christmas ball is just one of them, so I figured it needed a place of honor.

christmas 2017 dining room christmas ornament in cloche

I really enjoyed giving you a little tour and so glad you came by! I will be back with more next week!

sunshine-and-blessings-picmonkey

Something Sweet Valentine Tablescape

something-sweet-valentines-tablescape-and-hutch-title

Hello! Can you believe there are only 2 more days until February?! Valentines is just around the corner, so I thought I would share a Valentines tablescape and my ‘formal’ living room and dining room. I am making the most progress on this room so far.

*The contents of this blog are sponsored by Oriental Trading.*

I was contacted by Oriental Trading to put together something Valentine related and since I love dressing up my table, that’s what I went with. I’m so excited how this turned out! I can’t wait to show you, so here we go! Warning-there are a lot of pictures!

I started out with a layered place setting for each person. The little clear favor box holds some treats and is layered on top of a pink confetti plate. Next comes a silver chevron printed  scalloped edge plate and then a silver charger. I added a birch design gold and white napkin and a silvertone feather place card holder. I love these feathers! They look so elegant! For the place cards, I printed out the names on the computer and then layered them over some pink scrapbook paper.

something-sweet-valentines-place-setting-oriental-trading

I also received these silver metal lanterns from Oriental Trading. I love lanterns, so these were an obvious choice. I added warm white fairy lights inside to add a little romance.

sweet-something-valentines-i-love-you-more-than-chocolate

I absolutely love how the centerpiece/runner came together! I was inspired by a couple of other blogs I looked at and couldn’t wait to try it myself. I started out with orange branches from in my yard. I layered in some eucalyptus from Michaels and then added the beautiful pink silk peonies. I love how full it looks and the greenery is the perfect touch.

something-sweet-valentines-pink-peonies-eucalyptis

Here is the table looking back to my hutch. I had a built-in hutch at my last house that was probably 3 times this size. I was able to go through all my dishes and get rid of a lot, but I also added shelves in here to display the rest of the dishes.

something-sweet-valentines-tablescape-and-hutch

I added these fun garlands to the shelves too. I had the pink pom-pom garland and then added the silver flutterball garland too. The pink tulle pom-poms add just the little touch of pink to the decor.

sweet-somethings-valentines-dining-room-shelves-garland

I added some yummy sweets to my beverage cart. You can see its makeover here. I added some different layers with the cake plates and some cute little straws in the mason jar.

something-sweet-valentines-sweet-and-drinks

I found these cute little bottles of Martinellis and covered the label with a Valentine one I found over at How to Nest for Less. The pink and turquoise were the perfect colors!

something-sweet-valentines-drinks-and-straws

I made some sweets too. They don’t look the prettiest, but they sure taste good!

something-sweet-valentines-cake-balls-and-desserts

I love having this capiz shell chandelier over the table! It adds the best beach look to the room. The metallic lily hanging paper lanterns make it look like a party! The gold and silver were the perfect accents to the rest of the decor.

something-sweet-valentines-capiz-chandelier-and-lanterns

Here is a wider view so you can see a little bit how the room is laid out. This would be the back part of the room. To the left is an entrance into the kitchen and table area. The wicker chairs at the bottom of the picture face the front window where the daybed is.

something-sweet-valentines-dining-room-oriental-trading

I have my faux fireplace in here since the family room already has a fireplace. I made this mantle from an old headboard and I love how it turned out!

sweet-something-valentines-dining-room-and-living-room

something-sweet-valentines-beach-fireplace-mantel

sweet-something-valentines-chalkboard-even-the-winds

The daybed used to be Haley’s and worked perfect here in the living room. Do you see who is hiding among the pillows? She loves it here because she can see what is going on in the neighborhood.

sweet-something-valentines-living-room-daybed-red-heart-rozy

Mom, do you remember this little heart pillow? You made it for me way back when I was in grade school! It must be an antique!

something-sweet-valentines-daybed

Here are a few more favorites.

something-sweet-valentines-basket-of-hydrangeassweet-somethings-valentines-white-hutchsweet-something-valentines-lantern-and-peony-centerpiece

sweet-somethings-valentines-lanterns-and-flowers-centerpiecesweet-something-valentines-piony-euclyptus-table-runnersomething-sweet-valentines-pink-peonies-eucalyptis

I just had to show you my helpers too.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

sunshine-and-blessings-picmonkey

IMG_2512   IMG_2378  silver gum and heart candy valentine box