I have previously not been terribly sentimental about keeping Christmas cards – I have enjoyed them, displayed them through the holidays and tossed them (usually by February.) It’s not because I dislike the senders, don’t appreciate the time they put into them – I just didn’t know what to do with them other than filing them away where I wouldn’t see them again. However, now that I have children, it has become especially important for me to preserve these handwritten Christmas wishes to be passed down to them one day.

So, of course, Pinterest came to the rescue with the perfect idea for me -

I began by gathering our 2011 Christmas cards from their resting place on top of the dryer- where else would they be for 4 months? I moved the punches on my 3-hole punch to the 4 1/4 in. positions and began hole punching them individually to ensure even spacing and hopefully prevent punching a hole through someone’s head on the picture. Unfortunately, there were a couple of causalities - Sorry Tim!

Once I had each card hole punched, I realized I did not have any rings like the original blogger had suggested using, so I improvised with my ribbon rolls!

To help guide the ribbon through the holes, I attached a small safety pin to the end since not each card is the same size and therefore the holes do not easily line up.

Next, you can either choose the cutest card to place on top or create another card from cardstock with the year and maybe some scrapbooking elements for decoration. Sweet Davis won this year’s card topper for me! Don’t you agree?

Once you’ve strung the cards together, you can double-knot or otherwise tie off each hole. When you do so, leave enough room (a fingertip’s width) between the edge of the cards and the knot to allow room for the booklet to open smoothly. All done! Now you have an easy, reproducible solution for all of those cards, and as a bonus, you can continue to display your cards from years past in a compact, easy way.

We’ll call this a take off of a take off. I came across this recipe for Bunny Bait (a sweet popcorn trail mix) on Bake at 350, and she found a version of it at This Blessed Nest in the form of Valentine Confetti. As mentioned over there, this recipe can fit nearly any holiday with some seasonal candies and pretty ribbon. You could make Ghost Bait for Halloween, Leprechaun Bait for St. Patrick’s, etc.

I was picking up the necessities for this recipe and had the Orville Redenbacher Tender White popcorn in my cart when I spotted the Jolly Time Mallow Magic – no brainer, I had to switch!

Bunny Bait

• 1 Box of Jolly Time Mallow Magic popcorn (2 bags/box)
• 1 pkg of Vanilla Almond Bark or equivalent white chocolate melting chips
• Bunny Mix M&M’s (or equivalent holiday mix)
• Sprinkles/Jimmies

Growing up, my mom always had a garden in our backyard. Of course, she had a great combination of full sun, plenty of space and knowledge of the plants she was putting into the ground. While I was always her helper, right there to plant the seeds and pull the potatoes, I do not have a very green thumb and have killed more of my own plants than I’ve kept alive.

There is a list of things that have become a must in our next home, and a good garden space is pretty high on my list, as the home we live in now has a small yard (front and back) and the sun shines in all the wrong places. However, I am determined to make something grow. A couple of years ago, I successfully grew tomatoes in planters in the front yard. This year, my amazing/awesome/thoughtful husband helped me bring my garden dream to life. I pinned this on Pinterest 25 weeks ago and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it ever since. This is a picture from a book that is out of print as far as I can tell, so there were no instructions to be had.

Knowing what we had to work with, this was a little too big and too complicated, and could have turned into too expensive easily. After a trip to the local big box lumber store, we found ourselves a bit bewildered by how to build something all-weather without being costly. Pressure-treated lumber fit the bill, except it can leach chemicals into the vegetables. Cedar seemed best, but the price on nice milled cedar was 2-3 times the cost of pressure treated. The answer came in the fencing department (which, despite being made of wood, is at the opposite end of the store from lumber). All weather, while being low-cost, cedar pickets cost under $4 each. We chose 9 8-ft long 6″ pickets (1 to cut end pieces from), 1 2×4 for the base and metal L-shaped support brackets. A full frame wasn’t needed as the whole structure leans against the fence. The rest is pretty self explanatory in the pictures below.

I lined the bottom with landscaping material to keep soil from slipping through the cracks but still allow water to drain properly – no drowning the plants. Eight feet off of a roll of landscaping fabric split into 4ths lengthwise did nicely.

Then I picked up my plants from Grogg’s Green Barn and the Depot of Homes and stuck them all in the planters at random. Ha, no, really I meticulously planted them in an order that probably only makes sense in my mind. Finally, I took the only thing I had (clothes pins) and wrote what plant and where it came from on each. Next post, my equally crazy charting system for when to expect harvest on all of these plants. I hope this helps someone else with their gardening visions!