We are very into origami bookmarks over here lately. If you purchase anything from Write With Moxie, you will see that up close and personal. ;) I just used a larger piece of paper to make a little “pouch” to hold the card and a little piece of candy. I even included illustrated directions for you! I just used a sucker but there is enough room to stuff it with all kinds of goodies.

Since most Valentine’s are pink and red, I thought I would make something for the boys as well. Both color palettes are included in the PDF!

And if that wasn’t enough, I also made little pillowboxes in the same print and colors.

You can download a PDF for each one below (or over there on the sidebar). Hope you enjoy!

<< WHALE VALENTINE CARD FREEBIE – BOY & GIRL >>
<< WHALE VALENTINE PILLOWBOX FREEBIE – BOY & GIRL >>

For the snowman poop, I used mini marshmallows. This is one of my favorite stocking stuffers for the kids. For the magic reindeer food, just mix together some quick oats and glitter. Hope you enjoy!

Ok, so back to my advent calendar. I love the way tree branches look so I knew I wanted that as my rustic base. We actually found this on a scavenger hunt at the lake in our neighborhood while looking for pinecones and other natural elements that could be used as decoration (free score). I dug into The Baconator’s tool box and found some white nails that would work to hang our goodies on (another free score). I spaced out the nails so that 24 would fit on the branch. This part was all done by eyeballing…I hate measuring things out (yes, I am lazy like that!).

After all of the nails were hammered into place I placed it on the mantle and hung little muslin drawstring bags, one for each day. I also had these in my craft stash so it didn’t cost me anything. To pretty them up a bit, I used a wood grain (faux bois if you will) stamp and brown ink to stamp every other bag. I loved the overall look but it still felt a little too country and not enough modern so I got to work on the computer and came up with a cute set of number tags in several bright colors. I used dyed jute twine that I had in my stash (yes, you should see my stash…I think you would be impressed, I’m just sayin) to hang each of the tags in front of the bags. Ta Da…a rustic, modern, colorful advent calendar!

I put the colorful number tags in a nifty PDF so you can print them out and use them for your own crafty projects. All you have to do is click here or on the sidebar banner. Happy Crafting!

I have also decided to promote other handmade business owners and have reached out to several of them that do offer product packaging goods. Hopefully, I will have some discounts and goodies I can send your way very soon.

Speaking of goodies, I didn’t want all of the coolness of my shop to disappear so I decided to offer a freebie for everyone out there. These are for the cake stands that I love so much (and were a huge hit). If you are a DIYer, you can now print them out yourself with a handy PDF. Just click on the link over on the sidebar to download.

I do ask that you please don’t sell them. You are more than happy to pass them along but I do ask that you send them here to download the PDF…I want them to see my lovely blog and hopefully follow along. :)

Ok, so onto some more fun things! Tiffany from Simply Modern Mom invited me to join in her “Tag You’re It” challenge on her blog and I think you guys are gonna love what I came up with. Here is a little sneak peek but to see more and download the freebie, visit Tiffany! Oh and leave a sweet comment!

The handmade holidays contest ended and the winner was Amy S.! I really wish it would have gone better with the comments, what’s up guys? Maybe it was just a weird time or no one wanted to hear me talk…who knows. I just wanted to give more exposure to handmade businesses and I thought this would be a great way to do it. We also planned on doing a weekly podcast all about the handmade community but with the lack of comments, I am thinking that my energy may be better spent on something else. I do hope it helped to showcase some of the awesome talent out there. I do plan on doing that more on the blog in the coming months.

….Indiana Jones is so dreamy…. ok concentrate Lisa….

Have you ever done a Plan of Action? I decided I needed to do one so I could organize my businesses a little more (I hate to be unorganized). Since I have more than one business now I wanted to figure out how I could organize them all together so that everything would run more efficiently.  When I first had the idea for Moxie Goods, it was just meant to be a hobby but more and more I want it to be something bigger so as they say “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. My biggest problem was trying to decide how to brand my businesses….it seems easy enough but I found that it really wasn’t. Did I want to do them all together? Did I want them to be completely separate? Did I want an umbrella company to put everything under? See, told ya…not so easy right? I knew that I didn’t want to change the logo for Moxie Pear since I have done that too much (in my own opinion) in the past. I also didn’t want to limit myself to staying with the same logo for Moxie Goods. It is afterall, it’s own entity. Then it came to the blog…did I want it to match Moxie Pear or stand out on it’s own?

After much deliberation…have I mentioned I am horrible at decision making for myself? I finally decided to treat each part of my business as it’s own. So Moxie Pear, Moxie Goods and A House Full of Moxie all have their own brand. I did leave my little asterisks in the logo because I love that little guy.  So that is what I have been doing this weekend, changing everything over. That and Christmas shopping. The Baconator and I went to IKEA and found some awesome things for Gia and for my office (doing a little reorganizing there as well). I also found some cute things for her on Etsy and I will be posting that soon.

….humorous and handsome…oh Dr. Jones….

Speaking of which, have I told you how much Gia loves Indiana? OMG She met his stunt double for the last movie at Disney World a few years ago and was so enthralled, it was so cute. Last night The Baconator was flipping channels and found an Indiana Jones marathon type thing on USA and Gia immediately told him to leave it on the channel. About 10 minutes later, he went to bed and she crawled into his recliner with her pillow pet (it’s a pillow, it’s a pet, it’s a pillowpet) and watched the whole movie. Every now and then she would say “don’t worry Mommy, he won’t die, he’s Indiana Jones!”. Tonight there was another one on and she actually chose to watch it over The Muppets. So funny.

And now, if you are tuned in this far I think you deserve a little something! So here you go…a few printable freebies for Christmas! You can find the links to the PDFs over on the sidebar but here are some photos on the finished projects that I played around with last week. I also updated the backgrounds a little from last year. There are so many things that you can do with these different bags and boxes. They are really good for putting together treats for little one’s Christmas parties at school.