The Patriotic Holiday Shelf

First of all, Happy Memorial Day, all! For those who gave their lives, we are forever grateful. There is no way we could ever repay your sacrifice – so we do our best to live to make you proud. Thank you.

Second of all, fitting for today, it’s time for this year’s Patriotic Holiday Shelf!

I normally decorate the holiday shelf in a patriotic theme in time for Memorial Day, and leave it up through July 4. (That still leaves a little bit of a gap in between my Easter shelf and Memorial Day…but I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that yet!) So this year I kinda did an Easter/Spring shelf and it worked a little better. (Check it out HERE in case you missed it!)

But for now, here’s last year’s Patriotic Holiday Shelf (CLICK HERE!) and now…

This year’s!

A Winner… and the Spring-Easter Holiday Shelf!

You remember we were having a giveaway last week for some fantastic Van’s Natural Foods products, right? Well, we have a winner!

Calli Welsch! Calli, you are the winner! Congrats!!! Please shoot me an email at Kristen@theroadtodomestication.com and I’ll get you all set up! Thanks so much to everyone who participated!

And now…

I can hardly believe that it’s time to decorate my holiday shelf again! 2014 is much better than 2013, as far as holiday spacing on the calendar is concerned. I had a good amount of time for the St. Patricks’s Day decor to stay up, and now Easter and Spring are coinciding nicely! So, may I present, the Spring-Easter Holiday Shelf!

Now, I MAY be a bit willing to admit that I MIGHT have gone a little bit bright and colorful and cheerful on this one. I. DON’T. CARE. It’s SPRING, for goodness sake! And EASTER, too!

The Valentine’s Day Holiday Shelf!

Well, I’ve procrastinated a bit with the Valentine’s Day Holiday Shelf this time, due to the fact that I’m not even totally sure that’s it’s complete! Ever had one of those projects that you had a direction for, but you just couldn’t get it to come together in a satisfactory manner? Yeah. That’s me with this! So we’ll see what everyone thinks…maybe you can help me out a bit with it!

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about with a Holiday Shelf, CLICK HERE for my original post on the old blog on the matter. And if you want to see last year’s Valentine’s Day Holiday Shelf, over on the old blog, too, CLICK HERE!

My idea for the decor was that I wanted to combine strawberries and Valentine’s Day, because I’m from the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World, and we’re gearing up for berry season right now, which overlaps Valentine’s Day, too…so I wanted to do, “For the Love of Strawberries”. Here’s what I ended up with:

Let’s look at the details…

Holiday Sanity Savers

Today marks one week until Halloween. Can you believe that? 2013 has FLOWN by, as far as I’m concerned! As we draw closer to “the holidays”, I wanted to make sure that I take time to share with you my favorite “Holiday Sanity Savers”. Because, before you know it, you’ll need them! (And so will I!)

Sanity is highly-prized in our home, especially in the months of October, November and December. Why? Because that’s when I get REALLY busy…which means my hubby gets really busy, too.

You regular readers know that I work full time, but from October-December, I run a great sale with my part-time photography business, because lots of folks love getting family photos for their Christmas cards! So, between those three months, I have about 20 photo shoots booked (oh, and even a December wedding this year!), in addition to my full-time job…and the blogging…and the company coming for the holidays, and the Christmas production we are a part of at church…and the Christmas shopping…and the Christmas card mailing…and the Christmas decorating…and the Christmas baking…

Patriotic Holiday Shelf! (With links to TWO FREE PRINTABLES!)

Up until this past weekend, my Holiday Shelf had been decorated for Spring. I changed it for Memorial Day, but kept the chance patriotic-based, so I could keep it up until July 4!

I had the cool decorative ball from last year (I think I got it at Hobby Lobby) and the frame is one of my standard ones that I used for printables, but the cute bucket came from Target and the little “sparklers” came from Michael’s. (I also keep that crinkly paper “filling” on hand, because it’s great for gift-wrapping, flower-arranging, trinket-staging, cat amusing, etc.)