ahead of schedule

In an attempt to be ahead of schedule when the holidays roll around six months from now, I thought  I would spend this week sharing with you some simple, and quick, ideas that you can do now before the crazy days of November and December arrive. Welcome to Christmas in July!

Oh, believe I know that your days are crazy right now, too, and so are ours. We only have 2 more weeks of Summer Vacation before school begins. Registration day is this Friday, Isabella's birthday is on August 2nd, her party is on the 5th and the first day of school is August 6th. It's all good, though.

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There are 16 items specially priced in the I Love It All Etsy shop, no coupon codes needed, for the weeklong Christmas in July celebration!

First up are notepads covered with double sided patterned cardstock and embellished with baker's twine in the newest shades from The Twinery, Ocean and Strawberry. I adhered my cardstock to the chipboard backing of the notepad with a gluestick and scored two lines so that they would fold over the notepad. Be sure not to glue the cover to the notepad spine, which makes tearing the pages off the notepad difficult. Here's another notepad tutorial I've done for the blog.

We'll gift these to the truly awesome support staff at the girls' school. I have two already made and will be making more today, since I have all my supplies out and I have the time. Victoria was worried that they were Christmas gifts but these did not look Christmas-y to her. Okay, Victoria...let's add them to a bag and see what you think now.

Okay, still not traditional Christmas patterns, but there are green and red in the paper. I just thought it would be fun to show how you can use your everyday papers and make them appear more holiday-ish. Don't you love that green baker's twine. It's the new color, Seaweed.

I used some SRM stickers to embellish basic manila shipping tags leaving room for the girls to add To and From info and sign their own names once we know to whom we'll be gifting the notepads. 

And nothing says Christmas like fudge, right? I used this super simple, easy to follow Peanut Butter Fudge recipe. Yum-o! If you have a fudge recipe you love, please leave me a link in the comments, I'd love to try it out, too!