So it's no surprise that for Lea's Sweet Sixteen, Jay's funeral and the three baby showers I'm hosting this month, I did a little research and put in a little tlc, which added up to big bucks saved!
Here are three share-worthy finds from those searches:
This link for a Martha Stewart Banner allows you to print off whatever letters you want to make a cute, personalized banner. Its design indicates its intended purpose is weddings, but I printed enough letters to do all three baby shower banners + Lea's sweet 16. I simply printed off the letters, used card stock for the background (about one inch larger than the letter cut-out), used a two-hole punch at the top of the letters/cardstock and weaved a coordinating ribbon through it.
Here's the one I did for Kaylynn's baby shower:
Another find for the baby showers was this FREE printable onesie's sticker template. These are, evidently, all the new rage in baby-growth documenting. I have to admit: I love the idea and am in more than a bit of envy that these weren't around when Kiera was a baby. If you don't want to take the 15 minutes to print and cut them out (I did them in the sticker version using Avery label sheets as opposed to the iron-on version), you can buy them online for about $10 (shipping and all). If you have a 4 inch hole punch (even better)--it'll take you about 2 minutes!
Lastly, I decided to take on a few tasks for Jay's memorial (as a side note, the memorial was perfect- I wouldn't change a thing about it), which included the creation/printing of the programs. Since funeral homes charge several hundred dollars for a substandard program, it seemed like the perfect task. There were a free templates online, but the best was actually on the Microsoft Office template site (no signups, no extra downloads, no gimmicks).
You can find the template I used right here. I even kept most of their formatting and their poem, since I thought it was fitting. I was going to print them at work, but I didn't want to abuse the company's resources (especially considering it's two full color pages), so I emailed them to Kinkos, used a friend's FedEx discount and had a slew of them done for about $15 total. And quite a few people remarked on how nicely they were done.
The best thing about all three of these is that none of the projects looked "home"made. I like personalized stuff, I like saving money, but I refuse to display or promote something that's sloppily done.
[Is "sloppily" a word? Hmmm]
Hope you find at least one of these helpful.
Although...on second thought...I hope you find at least one of the first two helpful. :)
