4 Ways to Use a Scrapbook Paper for Easy Party Decorations

Hello! Today I thought I would follow up my post from last week where I shared photos from R's birthday party and talk about some easy and cheap ways to use scrapbook paper for decoration. I don't consider myself an expert in party decor, but maybe this will spark your imagination and give you a couple of simple ideas.

I bought the above pack of paper at Hobby Lobby, but I'm sure you can find something similar at any craft store. These giant packs of quality paper are great because there are so many options for nearly any color scheme or party theme! The pack is marked at $20, but often they run 50%-off sales, or you can use the 40% Hobby Lobby coupon and get this for $12. Here are a couple of ways you can use this paper:

1. Banners

Use scrapbook paper to make paper banners of all shapes and sizes! Cut out pendants or circles, squares... whatever you want that fits your vision. Last year for R's birthday party, I cut out circles and made a vertical wall backdrop.

2. Table Centerpiece

This is so easy! Just tear out a piece of paper from the pack and use it on the table as part of the centerpiece. You can also use full sheets of paper under serving plates on the food table. The best part is that if they don't get wrinkled or spilled on, they are ready to use again for something else!

3. Guest Book Page or Place Setting Cards

I made a "guest book" page for R's party this year. I had her paint on a white sheet of paper, and then I cut an R out of it and taped it to a piece of scrapbook paper. I left pens and a note so guests could sign the paper, which I will put in her baby book! She can have a record of who was at her party with a handwritten note from everyone, and using the scrapbook paper makes it easy to match the party colors.

If you were having a party where you had place settings, you could make cards or labels out of the scrapbook paper. And speaking of labels...

4. Use as Labels around Jars and Drink Pitchers

I used the scraps of paper leftover from cutting the wall banner for wrapping around mason jars and the drink pitchers. I left a jar of "kisses" next to the party favor photos and wrapped the pink paper around it. This is a super easy way to carry the party theme around the room without having to buy anything extra!

Like I said, this isn't anything too fancy or expensive, but hopefully this gives you some ideas for easy ways to decorate without spending a ton of money or time. I love using scrapbook paper in create ways, and the best part is that you can often reuse it for lots of other things too!

What's your favorite thing to decorate with?

Have you ever considered using scrapbook paper like this?

R's Mint & Pink 2nd Birthday Party

Hello! Happy Thursday, friends. Thank you for all the messages, emails, and texts after my last post. You all are so sweet, and I'm glad some of you were encouraged by what I shared. Just trying to take it one day at a time and find a new routine!

I wanted to share with you some pictures from R's second birthday party. It was a great time! Like I mentioned in a previous post, I didn't have a theme for this party, and I really only started planning a few weeks before. One afternoon I wandered around Hobby Lobby tossing random things into my cart that I liked, and I realized that everything I was grabbing was either the color mint or pink, so I decided to center the party around those colors. And because last year I did pink and gold for R's first birthday, I was able to reuse some of the things I had bought or made for her. I love how it all turned out!

We moved our kitchen table and set up two longer tables to create a little food/dessert area. Jordan grilled hot dogs, and we had chips, homemade trail mix (peanuts, m&ms, raisins, and corn nuts), baked beans, and grapes. For dessert I made a funfetti cake, and R had her own individual cupcake. I bought a gallon of ice cream, and there were cookies and mini cupcakes from a local bakery.

The week before I took R to the park and did a photoshoot! I printed out 3 copies of each photo and hung a banner up on the wall of all the photos. The remaining copies I put on the table as "party favors." Guests could choose a photo or two to take home with them. Since this was a party with mostly family, they loved it! The grandparents especially :)

^^^ I decided to make a cupcake just for R. That way she wouldn't have a giant slice of cake and would be able to eat this herself. I also put a picture from her first birthday. I found the Happy Birthday napkins and cupcake stand at the Target dollar spot. The plates are from Big Lots. I made the "2" flag for the cupcake.

I reused the "R" I made for her first birthday, which is awesome because it took me so long to make! The tassel banner is from the Target dollar spot, and I printed off monthly chair pictures from 12 to 24 months.

She was so funny with her cupcake and ate it pretty daintily compared to last year when she went in with both fists. 

^^^ I bought a roll of pink wrapping paper and created a photo area. After opening gifts, we took family pictures in front of it! The banner is reused from last year. I swapped out a few of the pink circles for circles using scrapbook paper, and my sister wrote "Happy Birthday." The giant balloon from the park pictures the week before was still inflated, so we used it too!

Bumgarner, party of four! I thought getting pictures with a toddler was hard, but try a toddler and a newborn. It's a miracle there's one of all of us looking and with J's eyes open.

Funny story, I legitimately kept forgetting about J since there were so many family members around who wanted to hold him. I would randomly panic and realize I hadn't seen him in a while and had no idea where he was, but he was always just sleeping on someone. I am obviously still getting used to having two kids. Ha!

We had such a great time celebrating our TWO-year-old! Thanks to everyone for loving on my sweet girl so well! Maybe for her party next year I'll keep the pink theme going and do pink + another color and just rotate all my crafts again ;)

See also: R's Pink + Gold 1st Birthday Party

Projects: Documenting Life

My sister-in-law calls me a "life documenter." I've always enjoyed making scrapbooks and taking pictures, and of course my latest discovery of putting together home video collages, which I think are so much fun. 

Lately I've been feeling the desire to work on a couple of "life documenting" projects and wanted to share them with you! I really don't think doing stuff like this has to be as overwhelming as it might seem at first. The beauty of something like scrapbooking is that you can make it as complicated or as simple as you want! And no one can make anything like what you make, so each one turns out totally unique to you. 

1. Pregnancy Journal for Baby Boy Bum

I made a pregnancy journal with R, and I've loved being able to compare weeks with this baby. I knew that I wanted to make another journal this time, but I wasn't sure what form it would take. I have been writing weekly updates and taking weekly bump pictures, but until recently I haven't been able to find the perfect book to keep it all together. I took R with me to Hobby Lobby one day after work, and back in the scrapbooking section I found this little booklet! I used the 40% off coupon, so it was I think less than $5.

I put a picture of Baby Bum's first ultrasound in the front and used stickers to put the number of weeks at the top of each of the pages. I am working on transferring over all of my notes! Since there are only 30 pages in the book and 40 weeks of pregnancy, I am combining a few of the weeks where I didn't have much to report. I'm so happy with how it's turning out!

2. R's Baby Book

I kind of wish I had just gotten one of those fill-in-the-blank books for R, but for whatever reason I liked the idea of having a blank book and making it my own. This is a Creative Memories book with blank pages, and I am adding things as I think of them. 

It's not extremely detailed, but I plan on using this as a scrapbook just for her and adding pages as she grows. There are a couple of pages of her first birthday, plus the "guest book" page where I had everyone who attended her first birthday party sign a page with her handprint on it. I saved some of her art projects from daycare and a few other things. I hadn't worked on it in a while, but recently I added a couple of pages, so it's coming along. I'm referring to my blog a lot to fill in some of the stats and monthly updates, which has been really handy!

3. Simplified Project Life Album

Some of you veterans of this blog might remember that in 2015 I made a Project Life album. (You can see all those pages here.) I loved the process and love how my book turned out, but I found it to be too time consuming to keep up with once the year ended. I decided to start a new album using a much more simplified version of the Project Life idea. Basically it's more photos and less art cards and embellishments. It's turned out well and it's fun to have a reason to print out my photos! The pink and gold album is from Hobby Lobby.

I am trying to do things that I don't feel like will be too much work to keep up with even after Baby Boy Bum gets here. I also really want to be aware of the old saying that first children get all the baby books and memories and subsequent children don't have as much. Obviously I do see why that is, but I also feel like that doesn't necessarily have to be the case if you're intentional about it. I already bought this baby journal for Baby Boy Bum and hope to be intentional about filling it out during his first year! I also plan on making a week-by-week scrapbook for Baby Boy's first three month like I did with R. But of course we will see. Those are just my thoughts at this point.

How do you document life? Do you like scrapbooking? Did you make a pregnancy journal? I'm interested to know! I love talking about crafting projects like this. If you can't tell, scrapbooking and just saving memories in general is something I really enjoy. I hope that maybe I've given you some ideas about how you can start some easy projects to document your own life too.

I went to Lowe's and bought lumber and everything

^^^ Staining!

Over the past week, I completed a project! I'm typically not very handy with DIY-type stuff for our house, so I am really proud of myself right now. I actually went to Lowe's by myself and bought wood and stain and sandpaper and everything.

I repeat: I did this all by myself.

One of the selling points of our house for me was the laundry room. It's a good size with built-in cabinets and storage space in the back, and I'd never seen anything quite like it before. I knew the back wall would be a good place to put some kind of coat/purse rack, but I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted to do. (Related: See our house tour here!)

Right now I have my lunch bag, R's lunch bag, R's diaper bag, and my purse that I just pile on the floor, which obviously looks cluttered, not to mention we keep tripping on things, and R wants to dump out the contents of all the bags and put anything she finds into her mouth and draw with pens all over her face.

I pinned this forever ago and finally decided to try and make something like it.

It was a Saturday afternoon and R was sleeping, and I really wanted to get started on this project, so I asked Jordan what I needed and drove over to Lowe's. I found a worker and said, "I need to buy a one by four." And he said, "You just need lumber?" "Yes I do! I need lumber." And then I proudly marched around the store with my 1x4 over my shoulder like I was a member of Swiss Family Robinson going to build my tree house.

You think I'm kidding.

I need to get out more.

So I bought a 1x4, a small can of "Dark Walnut" stain, and some fine-grade sandpaper. I already had a paintbrush and a can of Polyurethane for our outdoor bench, so in total everything cost me about $10! I painted two coats of stain (letting the board dry in between), then painted polyurethane, let it dry, sanded it down, painted another polyurethane coat, and sanded it one final time.

*I normally do not condone apologizing for pictures I post on my blog, but I feel like I should tell you that the lighting in our laundry room is terrible and I wish there weren't such a yellow tint to these to really show off my project! Alas.

We added hooks I found at Hobby Lobby (they were half off and only $1.50 each!), and Jordan helped me find studs and hang it on the wall. (Side note: What is it with guys and stud finders? They all seem to like to say stuff like, "You don't need a stud finder. I'm right here." Good grief.)

The laundry room still needs some organization, maybe a cubby kind of thing like this? But for now I am in love with my new coat and purse rack! And it's even better because I made it all by myself for a total cost of less than $20! I don't know whether or not this is true, but I'm telling myself that something like this would cost double that at the actual store. It makes me love it even more.

What do you think? Have you ever made something like this before? 

R's Pink & Gold First Birthday Party

On August 6th we celebrated Miss R turning one! As I mentioned in a previous post, I did not originally have a theme planned. I walked around Hobby Lobby grabbing things I thought were cute, and when I came home I realized it was mainly pink and gold stuff. I searched Pinterest for "pink and gold first birthday" and realized that is a theme! I did Pinterest before Pinterest was cool, y'all.

My mom, brother, and sister-in-law came up a day early and helped me set up for the party, and I absolutely love how it turned out! I borrowed some decorations from a friend, made some stuff myself, and used things I already had around the house, so in total I spent maybe $40 on party decorations, which is pretty good!

First, I will share my inspiration from my one-year birthday Pinterest board, and then I'll share some pictures of how my inspiration came to life at the party!

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

I love how it all turned out. I feel like everything came to life just how I envisioned it, and it was cute and fun but not involved enough that I felt like there were a crazy amount of decorations to set up. I'm excited to share more about R's party, including cake eating pictures and maybe a video soon! If you have any questions about how I put anything together, feel free to let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.