Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Have a great holiday season and see you back here in 2014 with some new content! Can't wait.

Holiday Cards

We designed some holiday cards this year and are happy to present them here.  They are available for purchase in our store.  Each card comes with a matching white envelope and they measure 4"x6" (105mm x 148mm).  They are printed on a very nice thick cardstock and are perfect to send to friends!  The inside is blank for you to write a message and the back is printed with our logo.

Below are the images of the cards we have available:

Enjoy!

Advent Calendar Wrapping Ideas and a Sale!

Since I am on the topic of advent calendars, I thought I would put together some quick wrapping ideas for you using the paper favor bags we have in the store. And if you read through to the bottom, you'll find a nice surprise to make it easy for you to do too!

It's always takes some time to wrap 24 small gifts with wrapping paper, and that is just for one advent calendar.  If you need to make more, it takes even longer.  I used the paper favor bags we have in the store and it takes no time at all.  I put the gift inside and closed up the bags and I was done! And as a bonus, they look so nice inside my advent calendar.

The bags are fun and easy to decorate. These can be used for stocking stuffers or your Christmas gifts as well. Below are some ideas to help you get started:

Wrap a bag with twine or ribbon.

Add a mini clothespin and a gift tag.

Use a small paper favor bag and tie some twine around the middle to make a fun paper bow and attach it to a bigger bag.

Fold over the top of the bag and punch two holes.  Then thread ribbon through the holes and tie it in a bow.

Use washi tape to close the bag.

There really are so many ways you can decorate these bags. In order to help you make it easier this Christmas and for your advent calendars if you are still getting them ready, we're having a sale in the shop!  We're giving you 50% off all of our paper favor bags. Yes, you read that right...50%!  Type in the following code at checkout to receive the discount: BAG50. But hurry because you can only get this great deal for one week, until December 4th.

Click here to view these bags in our store.

Happy Wrapping!

8 Great Advent Calendar Ideas

It's that time of the year again.  Time to get your advent calendars ready! I am just working on the ones for my kids and thought I would share some of the great ideas I found. I like to fill my kids' calendars myself instead of purchasing the pre-made ones.  That way, I can put in notes, some family activities for us to do, and a few special presents. Many of you probably have them finished already, but if you're like me and December 1st is sneaking up on you, here are a few ideas to help you get started:

1. This is such a cute advent calendar and it's made out of cardboard toilet paper rolls! The idea comes from Pysselbolaget.se and if you go to their site, you can download the Santa templates for free.

2. Who wouldn't love to open up a pinata every day until Christmas?  I know I think it's fun! You can find the tutorial, and even a cool animated picture to see how they work at HandmadeCharlotte.com.

3.  This is an advent calendar decorated with plastic animals that are spray painted white and then a red pom pom is glued to their noses.  This is perfect if your child is crazy about animals.  They get a Christmas animal plus a treat every day! Visit ABubblyLife.com for the full tutorial.

4. I love these cone trees and they are so easy to make.  All you need is some green paper, form them into cones, glue them, and add a number on them.  Place your treats under the cones and you have a great advent calendar that looks like a Christmas tree forest.  This idea comes from Spoonful.com

5. This punch-out advent calendar is so creative.  Kelly, who blogs at StudioDIY.com, always has really great ideas.  I'm sure the kids would love to have this one.

6. This adorable advent calendar is perfect for the robot lover in your life.  Get the printables and the instructions on NextToNicx.com

7.  Make your own scratch-off calendar with a new activity for your family to do together every day. I love this idea! You can get the printables for this with pre-filled-in activities or blank ones for you to fill in yourself. Get the printables and the instructions on how to make the scratch-off part using contact paper and a mix of silver paint and dish soap here.

8.  This one is an adult version and involves a bottle of wine a day. I don't know about you, but I could not drink one whole bottle every day for 24 days straight. Perhaps instead of drinking a bottle every day until Christmas, you can look at it as a way to build your wine collection! There isn't a tutorial or printables for this one, but you can simply tie a gift tag around each bottle of wine or print out labels on sticker paper.

I hope a few of those ideas can help you.  Happy advent calendar creating!

Picture sources: 1. Pysselbolaget | 2. HandmadeCharlotte.com | 3. ABubblyLife.com | 4. Spoonful.com | 5. Studio DIY | 6. Next to Nicx | 7. Julep | 8. Style Me Pretty

Christmas Markets

We are participating in a couple of markets here in Switzerland this season and I hope you can join us!

The first one, called Christmas Market "Around the World", is this Saturday, November 23rd, from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. in Wädenswil at the Restaurant Neubühl. It is located at Alte Zugerstrasse 26, in Wädenswil. There are 12 companies participating in this market and it will include jewelry, bags, gift tags, style tips, and even cake! I will be there with all of our Holiday items and some gift items.  Come to the market and get some names crossed off your Christmas list!

The second market I am participating in is the Horgen Christmas Market on December 7th and 8th. This should be fun to attend with kids as there will be face painting and crafts for the kids to make. And some of the stalls, including mine, are inside, so you can enjoy it even if there is bad weather.  It will be nice and cozy in the Schinzenhof in Horgen.

Hope to meet some of you at one (or both) of these markets!

Paper & Party Love Voucher Giveaway on LausanneMom.com

We are participating in LausanneMom.com's End of 2013 Holiday Giveaways by offering a 100 CHF voucher to our shop! All you have to do to enter to win is go to this link and add a comment answering the question : “What is the most stressful part of organizing a party?”.  The winner will be chosen on Sunday, the 24th of November. 

This will be perfect to order all of the items you'll need for a Holiday party.  Good luck!

Halloween Decorating Ideas

Happy October! Since it's only a month until Halloween, I thought I would share some home and/or party decorating ideas that I found.  It's not that easy to find Halloween items in Switzerland, since it's not a highly celebrated holiday here.  However, it seems to have gotten more popular in the last couple of years, with more stores offering Halloween items, but the selection is often limited.  One thing you can always find at this time of year are pumpkins.  I love going to the roadside stands or to the local farmer in my town to get them. And of course, they are in all of the grocery stores too. They make great decorations not just for Halloween but for Fall as well. And pumpkin soup is good too!

Since it's not always so easy to find things here, I found some simple DIY decorating ideas that are possible to make with supplies that are easily found.  Check out the ideas and links to tutorials below:

1. Spray paint pumpkins.  This is one that I made last year.  I took pumpkins and spray painted them black and silver and stacked them on top of each other.  I also found some plastic spiders and spray painted a few of them silver.  I then glued them onto the pumpkins. So easy!  You can view the pumpkins and the rest of the decorations from that party here.

2. I love this idea and have actually done it before.  Cut out mice silhouettes from black construction paper and tape them onto your steps.  Download the mice templates and see the full tutorial here.

3.  Make spooky pinwheels.  These would make a fun centerpiece on your dining room table. Make a few and put them in a vase and you have a fun decoration. I'm sure the kids will enjoy making these with you.  See the full tutorial here. And if you need striped straws, you can find them in our shop :-).

4. I love these ghostly dresses made out of chicken wire. I wish I had a yard so that I could try this out (I live in an apartment).  I think these are great! Follow the link to see the ghost that was also made out of chicken wire and placed in a forest setting. I know I would be very spooked if I saw that while walking in the forest!

5. Wrap your front door with streamers (or maybe even toilet paper would work) and cut out some eyes with regular paper to make a mummy.  This would be fun for the trick-or-treaters that come to your door.

6. Make pumpkin and ghost decorations out of balloons. This is an easy one for the kids to make.  It would be fun to make a few of these to hang around the house.  And as a bonus, they last a lot longer than real pumpkins. You can make these now and they will still be around for Halloween.  Here is the tutorial with downloadable printables for the face.

7. These are such cute painted jars.  I have lots of spaghetti sauce jars that I could use to make these. It's one of those decorations that are not spooky and I wouldn't mind having around the house for a month. At night, you could put candles inside them.  Check out how to make them here.

8. This rat and spider wreath is so creepy, but it's also pretty stylish.  Go here to find out how it's done.

I hope you enjoy making some of these projects.  I know I'm going to give a few of them a try!

Picture sources: 1. Paper & Party Love | 2. MarthaStewart | 3. Smart School House | 4. Be Different, Act Normal | 5. Honey & Fitz | 6. Catch My Party Blog | 7. Eighteen25 | 8. Catch My Party Blog

Striped Paper Straws :: Not Just For Drinking

I love the look of these paper straws. They come in all kinds of different colors and are perfect for parties.  But did you know they are as versatile as they are cute? There are so many uses for them other than drinking. Here are a few ideas:

Use them instead of a lollipop stick for cake pops

Use them to hold up your photo booth props

Make a magic wand with them, or use them to make cupcake toppers

Add a printable flag to the straw to make your drinks a bit more special. OK, this one is related to drinking, but it's still something a bit different!

Can you tell we're getting ready for Christmas over here? ;-)

Do you have any other ideas?  I'd love to hear them!

P.S. If you want to purchase some of these straws, we have lots of colors in our shop!

Paper & Party Love Happenings

Since we just got back from our summer vacation, I thought I would write a post to update everyone on what's been happening here at Paper & Party Love.

Vacation was lovely and spent in the south of France by the sea with my family. Our days were spent paddleboarding (my new favorite sport), swimming, soaking up the sun and just being together. It was great to reconnect with my family without all of the distractions of daily life.

We returned home and I had an email saying that one of our parties was featured on Catchmyparty.com's homepage.  Yay! Very exciting and great news to come home to.

I also recently joined Instagram and am enjoying it.  Have you signed up yet?  If so, follow us.  My username is paperandpartylove.  I hope to give you more of a "behind the scenes" view of the parties we are involved in and the running of the online shop there.  Right now, there are pictures of our vacation :-).

And for those of you in Zurich, we are going to be at the Expat Expo on September 1st. Admission is free and it will be held from 11am - 5pm at the Kongresshaus. I'll bring lots of party products for you to see. I hope to meet some of you there!

To celebrate coming home and school starting soon, I am offering 10% off all orders in the shop between now and September 1st.  This will also work for our Etsy shop.  You can get 10% off by typing in the code WELCOMEBACK.  Happy shopping everyone!

Flamingo Party Ideas

Have you noticed flamingos everywhere lately? They are mentioned in many of the blogs I read and I have seen a lot of products around with flamingos printed on them. I thought it would be fun to put together an idea board for a party featuring flamingos.  This theme would be great for a summer party, a little girls pool party, or even a girls night in with your closest friends.  I can see the pink drinks now. Yummy! 

Picture Sources

1. DIY your flamingo invitation like these from Jacinda Haye-Leah.

2. Snack on beautiful pink and turquoise macarons like these from Sweet Style Blog.

3. Put pink popcorn in these polka dot bags and write a message in gold. By 100 Layer Cake.

4. Serve your drinks in these cute flamingo cups from Ikea.

5. Why not match your phone case to your party? From ShopLaBellaVia on Etsy.

6. Give your guests something to take home in these favor bags from Oh Happy Day.

7. Eat off of these pink and white striped paper plates from our shop.

8. Decorate around your house with these yard ornaments from Oriental Trading.

For more ideas, take a look at my flamingo party ideas Pinterest board.

Enjoy!

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone! How are you celebrating today? We are having some friends over and we are firing up the grill for a traditional barbecue.  To celebrate some more, I made this snack for my daughters today.  It's watermelon cut in a star shape on a striped straw, and some blueberries.  Hope you get to enjoy this holiday!

And The Winner Is...

Comment number 2 from LisaD! I used Random.org to get number 2.  Congratulations Lisa! You will be receiving the set above shortly.  Hope you have a great ice cream get-together!

An Ice Cream Get-Together & A Giveaway!

Now that the sun is out and it feels like summer, you probably want to get together with your friends and enjoy the nice summer evenings. However, it's not always easy to find the time to cook dinner for so many people. Invite them over for ice cream instead!  I just recently did this with my friends and it was great.  I haven't seen my friends in a while and it was so nice to get together and catch up.  We sat on my balcony on a beautiful Saturday evening and ate ice cream with toppings.  Everyone was relaxed and the kids had a great time playing outside together. Best of all, it was so easy.  All you have to do is buy some ice cream and some toppings such as sprinkles and chocolate chips and you're done! Your guests will love piling up their ice cream just like when they were kids. You can even put ice in a cooler or a bucket and use it to bring your ice cream with you and meet everyone at the lake for an after-dinner treat.

I used these ice cream cups and spoons that I sell in the shop and although it was something small, it made it just a little bit more special. It would also be great to use these cups on a normal weeknight and have ice cream and toppings for dessert. The kids will love it! The set comes with two small wooden scoops that are perfect for picking up sprinkles.

And so that you can enjoy a nice summer evening with ice cream, I am giving away one set of these ice cream cups and spoons.  It includes 10 ice cream cups, 10 mini wooden spoons, and 2 wooden scoops for your toppings.  There are a couple of ways to enter the giveaway:

1. Leave a comment here.
2. Leave a comment on our facebook post about this giveaway.

You can enter twice by posting a comment in both places.

That's all! I will pick a winner randomly next Thursday, June 20 2013 at 9am my time (GMT+1). The winner will be announced in a blog post and will also be notified personally if possible.

Good luck!

This giveaway is now closed.

New Look and Online Store

Some of you may have noticed that we have a new look around here.  That's because we updated our logo and colors to match those of our new online shop!  It's taken months, but it is finally live.  I wanted to make available the pretty party supplies that I love.  We are also selling our party printables there. So you can get everything you need for your party in one place!

You can get to the shop by going to www.shoppaperandpartylove.com, or by clicking on the shop banner on the right of this page.

At this time, the shop is available to those of you that live in Switzerland, as we can't ship internationally yet. You can still purchase our party printables from Etsy if you live outside of Switzerland.

I hope you enjoy it and check back often for new items!

Mexican Fiesta

Since Cinco de Mayo is on Sunday, I wanted to share a recent Mexican Fiesta dinner party that I had at my house a few weeks ago.  We've had such a long winter in Switzerland, with many months of gray skies and cold weather, that I wanted to have a small dinner party with lots of color.  Since we love Mexican food and don't get it too often here, I thought it would be perfect to have a Mexican Fiesta!

To set the tone,  I made mini pinata invitations which the guests had to pull apart to get the information inside.  And to set the mood even more, when the guests arrived at our house, they could choose from a paper flower headband or a small sombrero to wear for the night. 

I made fringed streamers using tissue paper that I had left over from another project and strung them up on twine over the dining room table to bring in more of the fiesta feel.  I used the same streamers on the drinks table and over the taco bar to tie it all together.  I also made tissue paper flowers and designed some party printables to use as placecards and to make napkin rings. And, I re-used the bean cans as vases to bring in more color on the table.

On the drinks table, we had strawberry agua fresca, beers and margaritas. I served chips and three different kinds of salsa for an appetizer.  For the main course, I set up a taco bar with all of the fixings so that the guests could choose for themselves what they wanted on their tacos.  

Finally, for the dessert table, I used the leftover tissue paper again to make rosettes to hang on the wall behind it.  I covered a dresser with a hot pink tablecloth and used terra cotta pots and saucers to make a mexican style cupcake stand.  On the stand were the yummiest margarita cupcakes! I also made a tres leches trifle and laid out some chocolate balls.

It was such a fun night! The colors and the theme really helped us to feel like we were in warmer climates, even if it was for just a few hours.

If you would like to have the recipes or need any help planning your own Mexican Fiesta, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below!

Mini Piñata Invitations

It's almost time for Cinco de Mayo and I wanted to share these mini piñata invitations that I made for a Mexican Fiesta dinner party that I had at my house recently.  It was such a long, grey winter in Switzerland and Spring did not come early, so I decided to have a small dinner party with lots of colors.  What better way to do that than with a Mexican Fiesta!

To set the mood, I made these mini piñata invitations.  I used a cereal box to make them. I then designed an invitation and rolled it up, along with some confetti, and placed it inside the piñata. I added some ribbon to the invitation and placed a "pull me" tag at the other end of the ribbon to make sure that the invitation would come out easily. 

It turned out very cute and those that received it loved the idea.  I also designed a printable set that would be perfect for your next Mexican Fiesta.  Come back soon to see the pictures of the party!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you get to spend your day with loved ones!

Valentine's Day Ideas

Valentine's Day is two days away, but it's not too late to put together something meaningful for your loved ones.  I've rounded up a few of my favorite ideas from around the web for you.  These ideas are so sweet and will add a special touch to someone's day! Click through the links to get the instructions on how to make these.

First up is this heart backdrop from Hank & Hunt.  Gorgeous! This is used as a photo booth backdrop, but I can imagine making it and hanging it in front of my daughters' bedroom doors.  It would be great to have them wake up and have to go through a wall of hearts on Valentine's Day.

Image Source: Hank & Hunt

Next is this giant letter valentine from Oh Happy Day!  What a great idea and it's something that the kids can help you make.  All you'll need is some butcher paper.  It's now too late to send each letter through the mail one by one, but perhaps you can make the letters and hide them around the house for your loved ones to find throughout the day.  At the end of the day, they'll have a lovely (and large!) message from you.

Image Source: Oh Happy Day

I love this idea from Studio DIY.  It's a balloon surprise in a box.  The balloons float up out of the box when you open it. Don't worry, they won't fly away...the balloons are taped to the bottom of the box! It would be so much fun to receive this at your door.  I can imagine it with heart shaped balloons for Valentine's Day.  Great idea for birthdays too!

Image Source: Studio DIY

Finally, this idea from A Subtle Revelry adds a special touch to milk for Valentine's day.  These heart ice cubes made from milk and food coloring slowly turn your milk pink as they melt.  I love pink milk!

Image Source: A Subtle Revelry

I love how these things can all be easily handmade. It's often the little things like these that can show that you care about someone. Do you have any other ideas for things you can make for your family and friends? I would love to hear them!

Party DIY::Valentines Candy Pouches Part 2

On Monday, I wrote about Valentine's candy pouches and today, I was inspired to make more candy pouches, but this time, it's a heart-shaped pouch.  This one is even easier to make than Monday's cone-shaped pouch so I thought I would share it with you.  

To make this one, I simply cut out two hearts from scrapbook paper and used double-stick tape to put them together.  I left the top of the heart open and filled it with candy.  Then I used double-stick tape again to seal the top part closed.  I punched a hole and used it to attach the twine and printable tag (which you can download for free here).  And that's it! 

You can use any shape to make these pouches.  An egg-shaped one would be great for Easter or a square-shaped one would be great for a birthday party. Decorate them with ribbon or our printable tags to make them extra special!