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Christmas

Holiday Guest Comfort Kit + Free Printable

December 11, 2018 No Comments Christmas

I don’t know about you, but I will happily be hosting several guests this holiday season and am searching for ideas to help make them feel more comfortable and welcomed in my home. One fun way to make guests feel loved this holiday season is by creating a DIY Holiday Guest Comfort Kit! Use my free printable below to tie your gift together and make it feel extra special.

This is the eleventh post of my 12 Days of Christmas DIYs for 2018. I’ve committed to sharing 12 posts in December where I share DIY projects, recipes, entertainment, and more, that you can incorporate into your holiday season.

Put together a guest comfort kit

The great thing about these kits is that you can truly mix it up to fit the needs of your guest. I like making sure that my guests have some of the things I know that they’ll need on-hand so that they don’t have to ask or search for them.

Ideas for crafting your guest comfort kit:

Towel and Washcloth
Shampoo, Conditioner, Body Wash
Lotion
Chapstick
Earplugs
Sleep Mask
Water Bottle & Glass
Fuzzy Socks or Slippers
Travel Hairdryer
Tissues
Razor
Sweet Snacks
Savory Snacks
Assortment of Tea
Extra blankets/pillows, etc.
And, the most important in my opinion…the WiFi Password!

For a recent guest I created a small basket filled with:

a pair of fuzzy socks tagged with a tag that reads, “Stay Cozy”
a washcloth and towel tagged with a tag that reads “so fresh & so clean”
tissues
water bottle with a tag that reads, “Stay Hydrated” and a water glass
both sweet snacks and savory snacks with tags that read “Something Sweet” and “Something Savory”
a sign that has our wifi network name and password. The free printable is a fillable printable so that you can type in your information or just print it off and write in the information.

Free Printables for your holiday guest comfort kit

To use the free printable download the Holiday Guest Comfort Kit printable, fill in your WiFi information, and print on white cardstock in full color. Then simply cut out following the crop lines on the rectangle items and around the black outer line on the circles. You can then punch a hole in the circle tags or use tape to attach to your comfort items.

How do you make your guests comfortable when they visit?

A Well Crafted Home

DIY Table Runner for Thanksgiving Table

November 22, 2016 3 Comments A Well Crafted Home

I have been looking for ways to incorporate my son into my hobbies (aka parties) so that we are spending more time together and so that I nurture his creativity. We had a ton of fun together creating the paintings for our Halloween party. When thinking about how I was going to decorate the Thanksgiving table this year I wanted to work on something together that would give him a little ownership to the meal and table. A little paper and paint and we had a plan– a DIY Table Runner! Paper table runners are a great way to set the holiday table because you don’t really have to worry about spills ruining your good linens. Kids can draw on the runner when bored and waiting for the rest of the party to finish their food. It is just a win win.

DIY Table Runner with Watercolor Paints & Paper

I have a pretty good selection of every day craft supplies in my house. However, the one supply that I like to keep in stock that may not be in the average household is a large roll of butcher paper. I currently have a large roll of white paper and a large roll of black paper. I often find a use for large paper rolls whether it be a craft project or a last minute wrapping need. Below is a short list of supplies that I used when my son and I created this watercolor DIY table runner.

Supplies:

(Links below are affiliate links to products I use and would suggest!)

Watercolor palette (you don’t really need both liquid and solid water color paint, but I did use both for this project)
Liquid water colors
Paint mixing palette
Paint brushes in various sizes
Paper cut to the length of my table

Directions:

This was such an easy project and it really didn’t take too much time or effort. Use the steps below to create your own DIY Table Runner.

Cut paper to length of table or desired length/width (you could also make great little place mats or wrapping paper with this same method!)
Decide on a color scheme for this project. If you choose a lot of different colors then you are likely to get a pretty muddy mess. I like to choose colors that are shade variations. This project we took blue, green, white, and black paints to create different shades of blue-green. NOTE: Test out your desired color scheme on a scrap piece of paper so that you don’t have to waste the larger sheet if you don’t like the final look.
Paint in varying directions in large swatches. We really wanted the runner to look organic and a tad messy. This makes this project great for kids as it doesn’t require a lot of precision. Vary the amount of water on your brush to mix up the water color look with a bolder dry brush effect. My son really could have done this whole thing by himself with just me guiding him on when to switch colors so that they didn’t clump up all in one area.
Once you have the amount of coverage that you like let the paper dry. Water colors dry extremely fast. I think ours took about 10 minutes to dry once completed.
Fold the sides of the paper under for a seamless look.
DONE! Set your table and enjoy!

What else could you use this method of painting for in your home?

Gifts

Guest Welcome Gift

August 16, 2016 No Comments Gifts

In putting together our event guest welcome gift we were excited to be able to include a few wonderful, complimentary items from Dr. Teal’s and Nature’s Gate. All opinions are my own.For more information about my sponsored content please visit my policies page. This post contains affiliate links which are marked with an *.

Our anniversary party was very similar to a wedding with guests coming in from other states to help celebrate. We didn’t have the opportunity to make wedding welcome baskets. (A tradition that really became popular sometime in the past 10 years after our wedding.) I love the thoughtfulness of the idea to welcome those who took the time and money to fly or drive a long distance with a small gift. So, when we invited family out to join us in celebrating I knew I wanted to have some gifts for them.

Guest Welcome Gifts

We rented a local AirBnB for my family to stay in during their stay. I didn’t want them worrying about food or toiletries when they first arrived so my guest welcome gift was put together with that in mind.

I’m giving you a bit of sneak peek into the bags that were created for our anniversary party favors, but I had extras so I used it for the welcome gift as well.

What is in our welcome gift?

In the bag we put some basic groceries to help them have necessities for the first day at the AirBnB. We included some local items as well including Franz Bagels. We had cereal, milk, bagels, cream cheese, coffee, and half and half.

We added in some toiletries into a box that would both help them feel more at home and also help them destress a little. Come on… family is always a little stressful wether for a wedding or a 10 year anniversary party. 😉

We included shampoo, conditioner, body wash, kids body wash, some Dr. Teal’s Body Oil* & Dr. Teal’s Body Lotion* and Nature’s Gate Sport Sunscreen*. I figured that the oil and body lotion would go a long way in de-stressing them after a long day of family fun. The sunscreen is something I’ve started to give to EVERYONE because I believe healthy skin protectants are one of the best gifts to give after going through skin cancer surgery twice now.