VDay giveaway

I love Valentines day! I know there are some bah humbugs who say it's just a retailer's excuse to encourage money spending, but what a wonderful opportunity to share your love with those around you!

My favorite gifts are small, inexpensive and meaningful- which is exactly what our giveaway is all about. I printed out a version of these last year just for my family, then left them taped to each member's bedroom door along with little cut-out hearts (a heart attack, if you will :), and a small bag of candy.

I enjoyed filling them out so much that I didn't really think much about how my family members would react receiving them but was astounded at the response! Listing the reasons why I loved each person meant so much more than just saying, "I love you." Each person individually approached me with a tender "thank you" and a great big hug. Definitely my favorite Valentines day to date! Which is why this year I wanted to design the same thing for you, my lovely readers!

If you take the time to print them out and give them to those you love, I can promise you wont regret it.

Click here for the download and don't forget to share it!

2013 Goals

We had the most wonderful holiday season at the Walker home! You can't beat quality time spent with friends and family, good food, and lots of relaxation.

We spent Christmas with my husband's family this year and one of their traditions is to do a money grab. It starts off in the new year with setting goals. Then, after keeping track of them all year long we compile a percentage at the end of the year. Mine this year was 65%. That may sound awful to some of you but I am pretty proud of keeping the majority of my new year's resolutions!

Anyways, I digress. Back to the money grab. After we figure out our percentage, we get to keep that percentage of the money we grab- which is a big bowl full of coins. The coins all represent different amounts of money- there's even one coin that represents $300! I might embarrass my mother-in-law by sharing how much I grabbed, but let's just say I am very motivated to get 100% on my goals this year!

I am feeling so motivated by my new year's resolutions that I made a sheet to keep by the side of my bed where I can track my progress. I thought I would share for any of you who haven't had a chance to set goals, or just want a place to keep track of them.

To download: enlarge the photo, right click and "save as"

I love having the categories listed out in this way because it helps me think of goals in areas I would have overlooked. 

Here are some tips to setting goals:

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes by George Eliot. Sometimes we are hard on ourselves for the things we never do. It's all too easy to kick yourself for never becoming a dancer, or choosing not to finish school, or for not losing those 10 pounds. But we need to remember that it's never too late! Set small, attainable goals and slowly, slowly work towards becoming the person you wish you were!

How do you set and work towards goals?

Oh, and don't forget to Pin!

Printable Quiet Book

After designing a printable quiet book for my son, I decided as an afterthought to post it on Pinterest. My thought was that if I had taken the time to put it together, I might as well let others enjoy it too! I never expected it to go viral. I have had almost 30,000 views on the Quiet Book page alone!  I am delighted that so many will use it.

The quiet book, as I mentioned, was for my son and was quite boyish. Not wanting to leave out all those girlie girls, I've now designed a girlie quiet book for them as well! 

The download is 100% FREE. Click here to download it.

These pages are wonderful for hand-eye coordination, visual recognition, number recognition, color

 recognition, and a whole slew of other benefits. Not to mention a wonderful way to keep your little 

one(s) busy during church or any other time or place when you need peace and quiet. 

"Like" our facebook page and you'll also receive 8 free printable cards.

Thank you to everyone who has made our Quiet Book a success!

Christmas giveaway

We had the most wonderful Thanksgiving! Remember the thankful cards we gave away for Thanksgiving? Well, I printed them out and had my family fill them out. Everyone didn't seem too excited about it - especially my older brothers, but when we sat down to go around and tell what we had written, the most magical thing happened! The mood turned incredibly tender and we shared some wonderfully thankful moments together. 

If you didn't print out the thankful cards this year, make sure to do it next year! You wont regret it.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it seems Christmas is just around the corner. This giveaway is perfect for Christmas card tags! Add them to neighbor gifts, work gifts, friend gifts...

Click here for the PDF download.

Also, remember this Christmas card giveaway from last year? Also, if you haven't done your Christmas cards, you're in luck! Check out my custom Christmas card design deal here.

Good luck getting ready for Christmas :)

Turkey killing and a freebie

I may or may not have accidentally killed a turkey and two cats when I was a little girl. I grew up on a farm in Orem, Utah. It was just a really small family farm and all we really did was raise a few animals and an abundance of dogs, but as you can imagine it was a very eventful childhood and there was always some kind of crisis going on, one of which I will tell you about now :)

We'll save the killing-of-the-cats story for another time. But as for the turkey, let's just say I thought he really really needed a bath. Looking back, it's really quite amazing that the bath itself didn't kill the turkey. I mean, I was quite talented to be able to give a turkey a bath period, but then to not drown it is another thing entirely. It was after the bath that was the problem. I don't really remember what time of year it was, but it was cold and my around-7-year-old-brain couldn't think through the fact that Mr. Turkey should be dried off really well before he was sent back to his barnyard home (where were my parents?! really :). It suffice to say that his death was probably a slow and unpleasant one. May Mr. Turkey rest in peace.

In honor of Mr. Turkey, I have a Thanksgiving giveaway! Remember this post from last year? Here are some new "thankful" tags for this year. What a wonderful way to record what your family is thankful for from year to year.

You can download the PDF here.

Check out this freebie from last year as well!

Or all of these Thanksgiving posts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Freebie Friday: Being happy in the journey

My husband and I have been spending a large portion of our free time putting together house plans and looking for building lots. It's been oh-so-much work already and we haven't purchased a thing! Despite that, though, it has been such a pleasure to daydream about our someday home. The designer side of me is so very excited for tall ceilings and layout and finishes of my choosing; the mother and wife in me is sentimental about the memories that will be made within the walls of this home and the inches my children will grow, and the practical side of me feels incredibly guilty for the whole thing.

This process has caused me to give a great deal of thought to the conveniences we enjoy as a culture. What a blessing to have all that we could need and want. How is it fair to enjoy so much excess when there are millions of people in the world that get by with a fraction of what we have? Suddenly, building a home with all the best finishes seems like indulgence to the max! But more than that, I've realized in a very sure way that having a nicer home is not going to make me happier than I already am. Sure, it will be nice to pull into a garage instead of parking outside- but I have a car! It will be amazing to welcome guests into a perfectly put-together living room and have the mess beyond the entry be invisible - but we have a warm home and an abundance of toys for my children to make messes with! 

It is so easy to think of the next step in life and believe, "When this happens I will be happy." But I have come to know in a very real way that finding joy and happiness in the journey is the mark of a grateful, humble person. And that living with this perspective, we can each find that we are more abundantly blessed than we had ever realized. 

Of course it's ok to enjoy the luxuries in life, we just need to be sure our hearts

are in the right place and that we aren't waiting for the next big thing to bring

us happiness. 

We will still be planning our dream home, but in the meantime I will look for

ways to make our current home more beautiful - not just in finishes and decor,

but in the time and love shared with my family here.

To download the "joy in the journey" PDF, click here.

*****

I found a wonderful article on this very subject as it pertains to your home. 

You can read it here.  She gives some wonderful tips on loving your home now, 

even if it's not perfectly the way you want it to be.

You can also find a wonderfully inspiring speech on the topic here.

Happy Friday!

Freebie Friday

In an effort to get ready for baby girl, we moved the furniture in the nursery 

around. It left this wall right when you walk in completely empty so I set out to

create a print to hang on the wall. 

I inherited the frame when my grandpa passed away. With just a simple coat

of gold spray paint, and a custom cut matte from Hobby Lobby (about $4),

I am so pleased with how it turned out and how it looks in the room!

I want my children to always know that they are children of a loving

Heavenly Father - and what better way to remind them of this than to have

it hanging on their wall?

Click here to download the free PDF!

How Sweet

This lovely little print is framed right next to my bed and I still love seeing it every day. 

I promised it would soon be a freebie and here it is in either blue or pink! Simply open it, then 

right click to save to anywhere on your computer.

I printed mine on a white linen card stock because I love the texture. As you can see, mine is in a square frame but because of the size of the print, you can also choose to have it in a regular frame as well.

Happy Wednesday!

Joy In a Jar

This year we did Thanksgiving in Utah at my little brother's new house. I was asked to bring the desert and I wanted to do something a little different and unique! Although I know that pumpkin is a big part of Thanksgiving, I am not really a big fan of pumpkin pie. I only wanted to do one dessert and of course you cant have thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, so I decided to do allrecipe.com's pumpkin cheesecake. My real motivation for doing this was my excitement to cook and serve them in these cute mason jars. The moment I laid my eyes on them I knew I had to find more uses for these empty jars filled with potential.

Just a heads up that I changed the cooking time from 50-60 min to 30 min, and they came out perfect!

 Mason jars add a personal touch, great portion sizes, cook the food faster and eliminate the need for a bowl, plus whimsy place designed these stylish labels and made the dessert so special!

Here is a freebie label if you would like to make this recipe yourself. You could tie on the label with a ribbon too! I think it would make a great gift. I mean who says pumpkin isn't a Christmas food?

Don't stop with cheesecake in these cute jars. Pie is so adorable in here, with a little heart made out of crust on the top. I even think you could do individual pot pies! Let me know if you have any fun ideas for mason jars. Of course the decorating possibilities are endless but i would love to hear your ideas. Leave a comment, and then follow us in the top right corner to get all of Whimsy Place Blog's great ideas!

Warm Winter Wishes

I've had Christmas music playing for the last two days. I can't get enough of it! I'm usually not one to listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. But after getting back from Hawaii, where it felt like we were ages away from Christmas or even Thanksgiving, I felt an urge to get in the holiday spirit as much as possible! 

And so, to help you do the same, here is some winter stationery. Use it as a thank you to a friend, or as a tag to go along with your neighbor gifts. Everyone loves getting a pretty card!

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Baby Shower Freebie

Tonight I threw a baby shower for a neighbor and friend. It turned out to be a great success and I had so much fun that I didn't take a single picture. Figures. But I don't buy the blogging idea that if it doesn't get blogged, it didn't happen so we're good :)

Anyways, the shower was pretty low key as far as decorations go. I was keeping it simple yet sweet and on a whim I decided to add a place where guests could give their one piece of advice to the mother-to-be. After the last guest had left and the last decoration had been taken down, I sat down to read the notes. They touched me deeply and I realized that I had happened upon something that was invaluable. Here were women who had all gone through mothering: some had given birth just months before and others had children older than the mother-to-be! The advice was incredible. And the best part? Most of the advice told our mother-to-be to just trust in herself and her instincts.

Some of my favorites:

"Enjoy each stage and cherish the time you have with your new baby. And when things get tough, just remind yourself, 'This too will pass'."

"Let them be the reason for your day, not the interruption."

"Laugh with your kids. Don't be afraid to be silly. It makes you approachable when they need to talk. Read with them everyday."

I can only imagine how much she is going to love these! I hope she treasures them for a very long time.

Click here to download the free PDF

Thanksgiving Freebie

I have always loved Thanksgiving. There's a nice crisp feel in the air and the changing leaves are so beautiful. There is something unspeakably safe and warm about gathering with loved ones and eating lovely, yummy food. One of my favorite memories of Thanksgiving was the year we each went around the table and told what we were most thankful for. Maybe this sounds silly to some, because you do it every year, but for us it was a rarity and I appreciated it so much! 

Even if you do say what you are thankful for each year, what a better way to document it than with these thankful tags? They are the perfect way for each person to write down how they feel, then hold onto from year to year. 

Oh how excited I am to someday have a card, sloppily written by chubby little fingers, to show my grownup son. Cherished moments that if missed, you can never get back..... Anyways, I digress.

To celebrate getting 100 "likes" on our facebook page, we are giving everyone the tags as a freebie! You can download the PDF from our facebook page or you can simply click on the image to enlarge and Save As.

Enjoy!

Thank you

To me, there is something so special about saying thank you. I remember a church lesson when I was probably 14 about the importance of thanking others for what they do. The teacher also quoted Marjorie Hinkley who said that saying "thank you" is a mark of an educated person.

I have never forgotten that lesson and I feel like it has changed my life in a significant way. Since then, I have tried my hardest to be a thankful person: to thank my loved ones for acts of kindness, to thank acquaintances for a job well done, to thank a complete stranger for opening the door for me.

When Lance and I were married, I was overwhelmed at the amount of generous gifts we received from everyone. I insisted on writing each of the thank you cards by hand, not realizing that I would literally get blisters from writing so long. But it was worth it! I wanted each person to know how much their kindness meant to us. 

I also LOVE getting a thank you card in the mail-- or finding one lying on my pillow, placed lovingly  by a dear friend or a sweet husband. 

So, as you can see-- I really mean it when I say I get EXCITED about thank you cards :)

Here are some I've designed to print from home for personal use. Simply click on the image to make larger, and save to your desktop. Print and reprint at any time!