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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Yesterday CoolMomPicks (an awesome blog for all of us moms) featured a personalized gift guide on the Today Show. And boy were we surprised to see some of our products being featured! One of the companies she featured was Frecklebox.com and we have a variety of goodies on their site, like coloring books, journals, lunch boxes, etc. On the Today Show they featured our Cuddlebumps coloring book, so exciting! I love to buy friends and family personalized items for the holidays and it was great to see our stuff plus a bunch of other great ideas. So fun. If you haven’t finished Christmas shopping and want to get something special and personalized you better hurry not much time...
Each year my sister, myself and my best friend from elementary school host a cookie exchange party. We try to schedule it the week or two before Christmas so that we can give some of the cookies as gifts. The rest we just eat ourselves! It is a fun no pressure party, bring a lot of cookies or a little. We do not have rules like some parties-you do not need to make a certain amount, no labels required, no recipe cards either. We use evite to send out the invitation. We set up a table with pretty plates and put all of our cookies out, then we mingle, munch and have some fun. Towards the end of the evening we start going around the table filling whatever boxes/plates that we brought. I usually try to fill a couple for gifts and a big tray for home. Over the years we’ve had times when the party was small and intimate, times that it included our children and times where there was a huge group and custom martinis! We have been doing it now for 16 years and it is a great way to see your close friends around the holidays. I try to make a few treats each year. I always make fudge, peanut butter fudge is yummy and I found a great recipe several years ago. It is actually called Killer Crack Peanut Butter Fudge and I found it on the blog CookieBakerLynn. I would recommend that you only make it once or twice a year because as the name suggests if you do it more often they...
We are quickly approaching the holidays. Every year it flys by and I always say to myself that this year I will be super organized, holiday cards done by Thanksgiving, presents wrapped as they are bought, and all shopping done by mid-December. I assume I am like everyone else on the planet and this miracle never happens! I do have a small amount of shopping done, no presents wrapped and some Christmas cards ordered so I guess I am 1/4 of the way there. I hope to finish ordering my cards today. With all of the online options and quick shipping this is probably the easiest item on my list to cross off. We have been designing custom photo cards for over 5 years now and each year we add multiple online sites that we design for. You can find our cards on sites like TinyPrints, KodakGallery, Snapfish, Simply to Impress and many others. I have gathered a small sampling of some of our cards to get you inspired. It only takes a few minutes of your time to upload and personalize a card and within a week you get the finished product and a lot of happy smiles from all of your friends and family. Most sites are also running discounts so there is no excuse to sending a personalized card! You can get the above cards here: Harlequin Greetings Giftwrap Perfection Holiday News Jolly Christmas Christmas...
I love everything vintage and when I am shopping for Christmas I often try to find things that are unique. Vintage or retro fits the bill. I always check out Restoration Hardware for fun games and stocking stuffers. Although I mostly play Words with Friends on my phone now, the thought of sitting in front of the fire with a cup of hot cocoa and playing Scrabble with the family can’t be beat. They also carry several other vintage games I especially like the games that are housed in old books, they look great on the coffee table. Some other great ideas… PaperSource is also a great place to shop. So many fun things! During high school I took photography classes and worked on the school yearbook. I loved developing film and making prints and continued taking courses in college. Now a days everything is digital and my camera skills have slacked off. Since it is so easy to take pictures and delete what you don’t like, I don’t think so much about composition anymore. I found these super cute USB drives from PhotoJoJO so now I can reminisce while I backup my so-so photos. Can we introduce a whole new generation of girls to Love’s Baby Soft? It seems a bit more innocent compared to Britney Spears fragrance. Definitely check out Etsy, for great handmade and vintage gifts. You can search for an almost endless list of gift ideas. I try to fill my kids stockings with some fun retro candy as well. If you have a Powell’s shop nearby it is like a trip down memory lane....
What’s not to love about the holidays – traffic, people fighting over the last Tickle Me Elmo doll, Grandma’s fruitcake, Uncle Joe’s drunken slurring – I digress. I love the holidays and can’t wait each year for them to arrive. Almost everyone will host family or friends during the holidays so why not make it a vintage holiday to remember. It’s easy to set the tone of the event with a great invitation mailed to all of your guests (no evites for this one). Picking the right invitation will help with the theme and color scheme. Adding food, decor and music is a lot easier with a theme. We used our vintage invitation above as our inspiration, it can be found at KodakGallery. You can use this invite for any festive holiday party, Christmas or New Years. Here are some tips to make sure your party goes off with a bang: 1. Add elegance to your soiree with a little glitter and shine, but keep it “vintage” with some weathered materials like galvanized metal or mercury glass. Try using a soft burlap runner on your food table with delicate candles. 2. Gather pinecones and spray paint them silver and gold–they don’t need to be perfect, the natural color coming through looks more aged. 3. Instead of a classic red and green color scheme, try a palette that includes browns and eggshell. 4. Use blank paper wine glass charms and write down reindeer names or holiday words like “peace,” “noel,” and “happy holidays” so your guests will know which glass belongs to them. 5. Use fringed burlap as a...
We recently designed personalized wrapping paper, just in time for the holidays. You can add whatever message you’d like, personalize it from Santa or buy a roll with your family name. Add a pretty bow and you are set to go. We designed two sets for Christmas and two sets for boy or girl birthday. You can find the gift wrap at Frecklebox.com. We also have an assortment of other personalized products on their site that would make great holiday gifts. We plan to highlight other gift wrapping ideas in the coming weeks. So be on the...
I know that it is July and the temperature has been hovering near 100 degrees, but here at Simon+Kabuki we’ve been finalizing holiday designs. We usually finish up our holiday stationery designs for some clients in May, but others are due in July and August. It is hard to get into the Christmas spirit when we just celebrated the red, white and blue! I take notes after each holiday season of hot trends or things we should work on next year. One of the things we noticed this last year is that more people are going back to the Merry Christmas sentiment versus Happy Holidays. Traditional colors are always hot and multiple photo cards are a hit. I would say that half of the cards I received were multi-photo. We always try to inject a little bit of S+K sass and style into all of our products and this year is no different. People always ask if we ever run out of ideas – it hasn’t happened yet! That is not to say that it can sometimes be a struggle to think up snow and santa when we just want to hit the beach with a good book or ride our beach cruiser over to Starbucks for a cool drink. You can find Simon+Kabuki stationery on a variety of sites, KodakGallery.com, Snapfish.com, Tinyprints.com, Invitationbox.com and many...
We are always hard at work on new designs so we thought we would showcase some of them on Wednesdays. We are working on some right now for the Licensing Show in Las Vegas. When we were in New York for Surtex we saw snowmen everywhere and one of our colleagues said you have to have snowmen. We love Christmas and definitely have lots of great holiday patterns they just don’t involve snowmen. We tend to try to be a little bit more original or modern, sometimes that backfires. We actually had someone come into our booth asking for snowmen. Really?? Isn’t it obvious from our more tastefully designed Christmas patterns that we could certainly handle snowmen? Guess not. No hating on the snowman/woman themes we just thought that it was overdone or at least done enough by other people. So we designed our own line of snowmen/women. Not sure where they could be used, (Jersey Shore how about a Christmas Card) but they sure were fun to think up! Some were inspired by our trip to New York while other are definitely California influenced, dude! Hope you like the Sneak Peak. Sneak...
I’m feeling pretty nostalgic these days. Holidays always do that to me. After I had kids, nostalgia took on a whole new meaning and I started remembering my childhood years and the things I looked forward to: leaving cookies and milk out for Santa, trying to stay up as late as I can. To this day, this guy still brings a smile to my face: I love the Heat Miser. If you don’t know who he is then you had a deprived childhood and must rent this movie or see this video immediately. Speaking of warmth, I also love a classic vintage feel for the holidays. It brings you that warm fuzzy feeling and takes you back in time. Red, brown, and shades of taupe create a warm color palette for a cozy vintage Christmas dinner or get together. If you haven’t yet finished your holiday card project, the Simon+Kabuki Vintage Christmas photo card is a great place to start. Pictured: Christmas Floral Display, Christmas Tree Cupcakes, Linzer Sandwiches, Cranberry Flower...
Well, almost. It is not officially winter, Santa is still on vacation and the Thanksgiving turkeys are still out there strutting their stuff. We, however, are getting in the spirit over here. We’ll leave the turkeys to their business but we have something to help you kick off the holdiays. It’s time to order those Holiday cards! We are really excited to announce our new lines. You can find them on Kodak by selecting Simon + Kabuki on the left hand side. See them also on Snapfish . Check out our collections and let us know what you think! Enjoy! Update: our “Believe” design is currently voted the most favorite holiday card design on Kodak. We are...
