First and foremost: If you haven’t already, make sure you VOTE today!! It is an honor and an obligation!

Believe it or not, I’m starting to think about Christmas cards! In the past we’ve sent out handmade cards (which I loved doing — see here, here, and here!), but I’m excited to send out our first photo card this year! Minted was the obvious choice, and today I’m rounding up a few of our favorites for y’all to give your thoughts on! Here are our top five choices:

Yep, there’s another wedding photo peek, this time by Tanja Lippert! Above:

1. A Wonderful Life | 2. Big Joy | 3. Merriest | 4. Joyful Season | 5. Simple Joy

Clearly, I have a prejudice towards typographic designs! I love that Minted’s “filter by style” tool is actually useful, with categories like hand drawn, monogram, modern, etc. – AND they’ve categorized the designs well, too! If you’re into such things, make sure you check out the new die-cut shapes available this year, as well.

Minted is also running a Holiday Inspiration Board Challenge right now (fun!), and since I’ll take any excuse to make an inspiration board, I put this one together:

Contest Board board by Emily. See more Minted.com

Credits:
Blue and green Christmas by Tobi Fairley, pretty ornaments + wrapping from Matchbook Magazine, Minted Rainbow Wish card, ornament wreath by Eddie Ross, sparkly party photo by Jill Thomas, coastal Christmas tree by Martha Stewart Living

You can find details for entering your own inspiration board here!

We’ve still got a bit of tweaking to do, but tell me: which Christmas card design is your favorite? I’d love to hear!

Minted has graciously gifted us our Christmas cards, but I chose to write this post, and the opinions are my own! I have loved everything about Minted — especially their crowd-sourced designs — for many years, and I love sharing what they’re up to with y’all.

I truly apologize for discussing anything Christmas-related before Thanksgiving, and especially before Halloween, but I do have a legit reason for the timing of this post. For a few years (as I mentioned here), I’ve wanted a basket to hold the base of our Christmas tree – I prefer the look to a skirt or a plain stand. Examples:

From top to bottom and left to right: Country Living, Country Living, Country Living, unknown, Yvestown Blog, Country Living, Country Living. Clearly Country Living feels the same way about Christmas trees in baskets that I do.

True story: Last year, I attempted to buy a peach-basket type thing off of the employees at Carolina Pottery. Granted, the baskets were not for sale (they were being used to display other things that were for sale), but don’t you think they should have sold one to me regardless??

Moving on. From my research over the last few days, I found three online companies — Wisteria, Pottery Barn, and Crate & Barrel — that have a basket similar to what I’m envisioning.

1. Large woven seagrass basket from Wisteria (22″ high, 23″ wide — $105) | 2. Extra-large round beachcomber basket from PB (23″ high, 21″ wide — $129, or $150 with S&H) | 3. Basay basket from C&B (23 1/4″ high, 20 3/4″ wide — $70 (only in stores)) | 4. Basket tree skirt from Terrain (10″ high, 24″ wide at base — $49.30 with Cup of Jo discounts through October 31) | 5. 8 gallon round galvanized wash tub (8 1/4″ high, 17 1/4″ wide at top, 14 5/8″ wide at bottom — $26.06) | 6. Galvanized round wash pan (5 1/4″ high, 17 3/8″ wide at top, 13 1/4″ wide at bottom — $19.96)

If you like the look of the galvanized tubs, I’d recommend trying to find a feed store in your town. I think that look is a little too rustic for me, and besides, I like the idea of being able to use the woven basket year round to hold other things besides a Christmas tree.

More great options for Christmas trees in baskets available this year!
Woven tree basket in natural or gray
Beachy woven tree basket
Woven basket (GREAT price!)
White rope tree collar (also great price!)
Rattan Christmas tree basket

Affiliate links are used in this post!

I did it! We braved the corn maze last Friday, and picked up a few small pumpkins at the same time. I started the transformation by applying a base coat with some spraypaint I already had in the house. It wasn’t the perfect color (a silvery gold, not the rich metallic I was going for), but it worked to tone down the orange!

I let them dry overnight, then painted on a rough coat of liquid gilding I picked up at Michael’s (with a 50% off coupon, it was about $3.50). The gilding was extremely forgiving — it kind of melded into a smooth coat all on its own, and only one coat was needed. The only bad thing about it was that it needed to be cleaned up with turpentine, which, if you haven’t used that stuff in a while, let me remind you — it stinks HORRIBLY. So much so, that I’d recommend one of the following two courses of action to myself if I were to repeat this project:

1) Buy the correct color of gold spray paint and forgo the gilding all together.
2) Use a paintbrush that you don’t mind throwing away at the end of the project.

In the end, though, the outcome was so cute for so little effort and expense! Highly recommended.

Of all the options out there for decorating with pumpkins, adding gold accents is my top pick. Five of my favorite examples:

Top to bottom: Country Living | Martha Stewart | Martha Stewart | Twig & Thistle | Martha Stewart

I particularly love when they’re mixed with cream and natural pumpkins — gives a little earthiness to this glam look! If you’re interested in trying this (I am!), I think the key is to get a darker, more yellow gold than white gold spray paint. I found some tips for gilding here, too, if you choose to go that route!

Have you picked out/embellished pumpkins this year? We’re hoping to get ours this weekend — since we don’t carve, they might last through Thanksgiving!