Harper’s Christmas Outfit

Thanks to Klever Kids for providing Harper’s Christmas day outfit. She wore the Happy Days Long Sleeve Crew Neck & the acid green Bubble Hem Skirt.

The Klever Kids line is designed for boys and girls ages 2 – 8 years. The entire collection is made from 100% Peruvian pima cotton, making the clothes ultra-soft, comfortable & stylish. Be sure to check them out!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

I spent the morning & evening wrapping presents… & now I’m just waiting to put them under the tree. I’m not sure that Harper will ever go to sleep tonight. She knows that Santa will come only if she goes to sleep but she still keeps checking to see if he’s arrived!

We also left Santa a note + cookie! (only 1 cookie so he doesn’t get a tummy ache!) Merry Christmas!

Ice Cream Cone Christmas Trees

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it would be really fun to make a bunch of these for dessert table decor. If I did it again I would probably melt white chocolate chips instead of frosting because the frosting never fully dries.

& be sure to slide a clean piece of paper under the cones before you shake the sprinkles on. A lot of sprinkles will fall off & this way you can re-sprinkle using the ones you collect on the paper.

I prefer my cones with simple glitter sprinkles, but the decorating methods are endless!

Christmas Shopping Done

We are officially done Christmas shopping! I just picked out the final 3 things for Harper (above) from The Land of Nod. I am taking the rest of the day to rest in bed. I got really sick on Sunday and hoping this passes quickly! Have a good one, shari

Here Comes Baby Christmas Gifts Guide – Day Twelve

Christmas Gifts Guide – Day Twelve (One for Mom!)

Cath Kidston’s new shape changing bag in their lovely Pinny Flowers print contains everything you need for a day out with baby. Includes changing mat, bottle insulator, baby flannel and large zip pouch, perfect for storing dummies, baby wipes and other bits and bobs. A fabulous gift for a new mother.

Purchase from: Cath Kidston

Price: £75

Want more inspiration for Christmas gifts for the little ones in your life? Then come on over to Here Come Baby Blog and see more from our Christmas gift guide, bringing you style and inspiration from the UK and Europe.

Kirsty xxx

Kids Christmas Gifts Guide from Here Comes Baby

Kids Christmas Gifts Guide – Day Five

Ingela Arrhenius’s nesting animal dolls are a joy to behold. Each little animal has such an appealing character and personality. The six nesting animals are made for art, design, and toy lovers of all ages. Display, collect, enjoy and play with them!

Purchase from: Hus and Hem

Price: £19.95

Want more inspiration for Christmas gifts for the little ones in your life? Then come on over to Here Come Baby Blog and see more from our Christmas gift guide, bringing you style and inspiration from the UK and Europe.

Kirsty xxx

Colorful Christmas Trees

This year we wanted to jump on the colored Christmas Tree trend. Initially, we were going to get Harper a small PINK tree for her own room. Her birthday is 5 days before Christmas and we thought she could be her own little tree decorator. BUT after talking about it, she recommended a HUGE PURPLE tree.

We partnered up with Treetopia.com this year to bring home the brightest purple Christmas tree we could find! It was a bit too large for her room so we are using it as our living room tree. The kids LOVE it, & I have to admit I really like it too. At Treetopia you’ll find pretty much any COLOR tree you can imagine:

Some COLORFUL Christmas Tree decoring inspiration:

P.S. Treetopia.com is having a HUGE sale through December 6th. Up to 60% off + FREE shipping on orders over $100.

Holiday Cards – Minted.

I’m super excited to team up with Minted.com for our family’s holiday cards this year. Be sure to check them out. They make high quality, beautifully designed cards for the holidays…(+ weddings, baby showers, birth announcements…you name it!)

After spending hours trying to decide on our favorite design, my husband & I decided to go with the festive joy holiday photo cards. We were able to include each of our smiley kids + pup without stressing about getting a “perfect” photo. I just love how the cards turned out.

Our holiday cards: festive joy holiday photo cards (rounded corners, patterned back, & speckletone kraft envelopes), Chalkboard Typography Happy Holidays Stamps, Christmas Wishes Address Labels

some of my other favorite design options:

P.S. my cards arrived 3 days after placing my order!

Christmas Wishlist:: Coats, Hats and Wooden Toys

Knitted Toddlers Hat by Sweet Meadow Street, $25
Blue eyed cat A4 print by lukaluka, $16.06
Wild Grey Wolf Coat by Little Good All, $165 
Girl’s Dress Coat PDF pattern by BurdaStyle, $5.40 
Children’s Puzzle, Rocking Horse Toy by Berkshire Bowls, $19.99
Children’s Neighborhood Chair by Paloma’s Nest, $228
Zu cloud cushion by Petit Home, UK 35

 Even though my husband is a grinch who hates holidays, I can’t stop browsing the internet for cute Christmas stuff for kids. I post my favorites on Pinterest (here is my “baby” board) to organize, and revisit the board later to see what I really want to buy. Etsy is also a great place to search for gifts for your little one. I like browsing their treasuries, which are small collections of items curated by etsy sellers each having different themes. For instance, if I’m looking for something pink to decorate my daughter’s room, I would search the treasuries by typing “pink, girl, room”.

I thought this girl’s dress coat pattern by BurdaStyle was a great gift for yourself or your craftsy friends. I can’t imagine how expensive it would be to buy a dressy coat like this at a store. With less than two yards of wool fabric and some sewing skills, you can make this on your own!

~ Chie  {find me elsewhere: blog, shop, facebook, etsy, twitter, pinterest}

Paint the nursery red! From Here Comes Baby

Red Nursery Idea from Colora Belgium

With Christmas coming closer we found this red nursery inspirational photo from a Belgium paint company called Colora. I love the creature on the wall although I am not sure if it is a aardvark or reindeer, who knows! The painted white dots break up the bright red colour and match with the bright white nursery furniture. The idea to hang the sleep sack on the wall when not in use is a nice touch as well as a few red accessories and toys to tie it together.

Red nursery – love it or hate it? Let us know what your thoughts…

Want to see more European style then why not pop on over to our blog: Here Comes Baby

Kirsty xxx

Butterscotch Blankees

Good Morning! Hope you enjoyed a relaxing holiday. We are back from a fabulous almost 2 week vacation to MN & AZ. I’ll be posting pics over on Spearmint Decor this week.

For the next few weeks I’ll be posting some of the things that will be under our tree on Christmas morning. Today I wanted to share a fun store to purchase cozy personalized things for your girl/guy/or maybe even your own bedroom. Butterscotch Blankees sells darling pillows and blankets that you can personalize with initials/names in colors to match your nursery/bedroom. They also sell hats, scarfs, & dresses.

The pillows and blankets are SUPER soft and cozy. (no itchy fabrics here!) This year Rexy will be getting a cute new pillow for his big boy bed which I am hoping to switch him to in Jan/Feb. I picked out my favorite design, the single border 15 X 15 pillow in black & white. Check it out below.  (I am also eyeing the LOVE and ♥ pillows for Harper!)

**PURPLE Christmas Tree from Treetopia.com

Christmas Wishlist:: Little Girl’s Edition

1. SALE hello acrylic sign, $10

2. Custom Initial with a Floral Wreath- hand embroidered 3 inch hoop, $30

3. Butterfly Garland Spring/Summer Palate Yellow Thread, $7.50

4. Wall Decals Horses (Reusable and removable fabric stickers, not vinyl) – Pretty Horses, $105

5. Dollhouse pdf pattern/tutorial, $18.50

Clip art courtesy of A Lovely Lark, free download here.

Hello! It’s Chie from Vivat Veritas again. Since we don’t have Thanksgiving holiday in Japan, as soon as the Halloween is over, the stores are all about selling Christmas items. Many Christmas decorations and light-ups are all over Tokyo now.

For Christmas, I’ve started to compile a list of items I want for my 18 month old daughter, Kiko’s room. Her room is a Japanese style room with tatami floor, and I personally find it very hard to decorate. It also has very low ceiling and the ceiling is made out of fake wood, and it’s very ugly…sign. Since we are renting, we can’t do a drastic makeover, so I found small decoration that’s friendly to renters, like removable decals, light weight paper bunting (don’t need to make a hole in a wall) etc.

~ Chie  {find me elsewhere: blog, shop, facebook, etsy, twitter}

Holiday Gift Guide Sneak Peek + a Big Giveaway!

Hi there! I’m Lauren from A Lovely Lark and I’m guest posting for Shari while she’s on her road trip. I thought it would be fun to share one of my gift guides here on Spearmint Baby with all of you today. I’ll be posting one or two gift guides each day up until Thanksgiving over on my blog, A Lovely Lark. Here’s an exclusive sneak peek of one that I’ll be posting later today for the babes:

 

DIY Playdough Gift Box

The holidays are coming up and it’s time to start thinking about gifts! It’s always extra fun to give something you’ve made yourself. Here is a play dough gift set we recently put together for Little A’s friend Rebecka when she turned two:

We filled our gift box with homemade playdough (see recipe below), the mat, some plastic cookie cutters and molds, a little rolling pin and a butter knife (which is Alec’s tool of choice when he is “working” with playdough).

This is a really doable project with a fun end result.

Alec was proud to hand over our homemade play dough gift set to Rebecka and we hope she has had a great time playing with it!

DIY PLAYDOUGH

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 2 tbsp cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• gel food coloring

1. Mix all of your dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
2. Add your wet ingredients and mix well.
3. Divide into as many bowls as you have colors. We made four colors out of this recipe and actually gave away half of the playdough, so you will definitely have enough for 6-8 colors or more. Now add your food coloring. The end color will be pretty much the same as what you see now, so add as much color as you want to get really bright, saturated hues of playdough. Or use less color for soft pastels.
4. Place a small sauce pan your pan on the stove top over medium heat. Start with your lightest color (so you won’t have to clean out the sauce pan between colors). Pour the mixture into the pan and stir continuously until it starts to get chunky. Keep stirring until it forms a big dough ball. 
5. When all the wetness is gone, remove the dough from the pan and leave it to cool. Once cool, knead it a bit until it is soft and smooth.
6. Repeat for each color. I just did yellow first, then green, then blue then purple, without cleaning out the pan in between.
7. Store play dough in an airtight container at room temperature. We’ve been playing with the same batch for a few weeks now.

Holiday Cup Cozies

Very festive, don’t you think? & can you believe that they were made from $1 bin Christmas socks? (gosh, I love Target!) Get the DIY “how to” at party-wagon.com.

This darling project was found via A few of my favorite things…I love all of her fun finds!!

Holiday Cards

Happy Monday! Hope you had a nice weekend.

We finally did a little holiday decorating last night and to get in the mood we put on some holiday music & had a little dance party. Now we just need a tree -hopefully we’ll get to it on Saturday morning! It seems like the older I get, the faster the time goes (especially between Thanksgiving & Christmas!)

If you haven’t ordered your holiday cards yet, I wanted to share one of my favorites..aren’t these sweet by Jelli & Ink?

She also makes the sweetest Birthday invites!

Holiday food for children

The holiday season brings all kinds of fun food ideas. On my list is a colorful gingerbread house & these adorable reindeer faces made of cheese & pretzles!

Send your favorite holiday foods to: shari @ spearmintbaby@gmail.com

Our Christmas

a few highlights from our Christmas:

*Harper (who just turned 2) was more excited about unwrapping everyone’s presents than her actual presents. she LOVES her new Dora book from her grammy and her other fave. is her new big bird puppet.

*Harper also got 2 personalized CDs from her Aunt Keli from cyber-savvyshop.com. she thinks it is pretty funny that Elmo knows her name! the Fun Time Nursery Rhymes is really good too. i love how the guy sings songs and talks to Harper–so so funny!

*John and i got each other a new Blue Ray player that streams Netflix movies. this weekend we watched Food, Inc and Mongol. Mongol was fascinating…especially if you are into Genghis Khan. (we are!!) we plan to spend the next week laying in bed and watching movies.

*Rexford (almost 8 months) started crying whenever Harper would open a present. i really think he was jealous. he didn’t get much, but will probably get spoiled next year.

*we had super yummy lasagna and meatballs for our Christmas day dinner thanks to MIL! what did you have?

*it was my first Christmas in 2 years to NOT be pregnant and i drank 3/4 bottle of Pinot Noir on Christmas Eve!

Hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours. blogging will be sporadic this week. i am taking time to spend with family and possible going on a quick road trip up to New Hampshire to look at land!

xo, shari

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas! i hope you all have a wonderful celebration.

we are having Christmas Eve at our house tonight. here is a copy of my grocery list:

stockings hung!

the stockings i ordered from Pottery Barn arrived last week and they are so so soft! even better than what i imagined. i bought these chrome stocking holders at Target.

we hung the lights on the tree last night. you can see the photos HERE.

now, all i have left to do is wrap presents and make the tree skirt. i saw this faux fur white tree skirt at West Elm a few weeks ago, but i didn’t want to pay $55.

so, i got this fabric the other day from Jo Anne’s:

i hope to get it made by Christmas! (it is on my long “to do” list)

Glitter Trees!

i LOVE these glitter trees by Eighteen 25. harper is too young to help me with this project, but maybe we can make these together next year? (i am thinking of silver and gold!) found via oneprettything.com

personalized christmas stockings

i’ve been doing a lot of online shopping the past week. now that the main floor has been repainted i am changing up the decor just a bit. i ordered these fluffy white on white/ivory faux-sheepskin stockings from Pottery Barn. i had them personalized for the kids (Harper, Rexford, & Kaley). my next project is to sew a furry white tree skirt to match. i stopped over at Jo Anne Fabrics yesterday and i think i have the fabric picked out. now i just need to find a coupon because the fabric is $14.50/yard!

getting ready for Christmas

some pictures of my daughter trying on her new rhinestone tutu from littledivatutus.com. if i could get her to stand still for a second you could see how beautiful this tutu is! it has a satin bow and cute red rhinestones attached.
(santa hat is from the $1 bin at Target!)