You know when you're just starting out on your own and you think "Oh nobody expects me to do stuff like cook real food, pay bills on time or send Christmas cards! That stuff's for real adults who have lives together." Well I passed that time probably 4 years ago but I still barely manage to send out holiday cards to more than 5 people. While I don't exactly have my life together yet, I figured a good step in the direction of adulthood would be to send Christmas cards this year.

For a few years now, my mom has included a little family newsletter with her cards. It updates everyone on what's been happening all year (sometimes good and bad news) and is great for the friends and family you don't see that often. I also love the idea of a photo card since it's doubles as a nice little keepsake. I've put together a collection of my favourite holiday cards from Minted. I'm having trouble deciding on which design I want!

You want your card to stand out from the rest! All of these colourful cards are so beautiful and eyecatching.

1. Make It Merry 2. Let's Be Jolly 3. Happiest Holiday

Infographics are such a cool way to incorporate the family news and milestones into your card. What a fun way to recap the year.

1. Family Year In Review 2. Ticket To Joy 3. Year In A Nutshell

If you really want to impress your friends mom, then check out these cute holiday DIY's from the Minted blog Julep :

I've been dying to try a scratch card DIY for a while and this advent calendar is insanely cute. The free download looks great and makes it super easy to create.

Whip a couple of these paper party balls up in some Christmas colours and you got yourself some pretty festive decorations!

What about you? Are you doing anything this year to step up your holiday game?

Hey guys, it's been a while hasn't it? Without really planning it, I ended up taking a much needed 3 month break from blogging. I guess I just needed some time away! It's been a tough year for me for a lot of reasons and it's also been one of the craziest in terms of doing new things. I had a couple deaths in the family and at the same time I've been working like crazy on CourseCraft. Between family and CourseCraft, I just felt like I had nothing left to give. CourseCraft has been an incredibly exciting project for me and full of learning experiences. Running your own business (as a lot of you know) is full of ups and downs. If what you're working on is from the heart, those downs can be really tough. Everytime you get a rejection or something does pan out, it feels really personal. If your business isn't moving at the pace you think it should be, it can feel like you're a big fat failure sometimes!

I don't have any secret trick for getting rid of those feelings of doubt or a magic potion to give you more energy, I'm just trying to take things one day at a time now. Staying focused on my long term goals helps me a lot. If there's a day where I'm not feeling particularly ambitious, I try to focus on the overall goals for my life. I'm talking dream goals like, eventually upgrading to a bigger house, going on a fancy vacation, being written about in a major news publication, or being able to hire an employee. When I think about those wildest dreams I just know that I have to do at least one thing today that will help me get there. If I can do something every single day to further my progress towards my goals, I know that one day I'll eventually get there. Even if it's been baby steps the whole way!

As a thank you for sticking around (or coming here for the first time!) I created a little free printable. I've been fooling around with patterns lately and while it's not perfect, I think this little mushroom pattern is pretty darn cute! I used it on a card with a little space for a personalized message. Say thanks, happy birthday, thinking of you or anything else. I hope you like it!

Download the PDF

Wow, it's been so long since I've posted a DIY project that I forgot how much WORK it is to photograph a post like this and then edit all the photos. I also forgot how much fun it is to come up with these posts. My photography skills are certainly a little rusty but hopefully I got some good shots for ya and you enjoy this little project because I had a great time making it. It truly is a 5 minute DIY and it's probably a $5 DIY too.

These little push pins look like mini balls of yarn and they look really adorable on a cork board. You could even cooridinate the colours to match your office decor. I really think they'd make a great addition to a gift for someone. Put together a little box with a set of stationery, some pretty pens, a notebook and these cute push pins and you're set.

First the supplies: You'll need push pins with a flat head, small foam balls (mine were 15/16 in.), some yarn scraps (better to stay away from really chuncky yarn), a hot glue gun and some scissors. I had all this lying around my house already so all I had to buy was the foam balls for like $2.

So it's seriously easy. Just start wrapping a foam ball with the yarn. Try to go slow and use as little yarn as possible or you'll end up with giant balls (hee hee giant balls -- sorry, I'm a child). Once you've just covered all the foam, secure the end with a tiny dot of hot glue. If you find that the ball is lumpy in some parts just give it a light squeeze (hah!) to compress the foam. After that, I tucked a push pin in behind the yarn and secured it with another little dap of glue.

And that's it! Wasn't that insanely easy? And look how cute they look on my bulletin board. Sorry you had to put up with all my ball jokes, but I mean come on how could I resist??

Hey there, I'm back with Part 2 of my post on how I developed the new CourseCraft logo! If you haven't read Part 1 yet, you should check it out. Let's just get into it: I left off with a couple pages of rough, ugly sketches... So what did I do next?

I started creating simple prototypes of each logo design using Illustrator. If you don't have Illustrator, any vector design program will do just fine. Just so I wasn't swayed in one direction by the colour of the logo, I kept each prototype grey. That way I wasn't wasting time on colouring a logo that I didn't want either.

After putting together 6 of my favourite designs, I walked away from the computer and just gave myself time to think about. (Another great piece of advice from Laurie!) Over the next couple days, I came back to the designs several times and tried to figure out which one would be best for us. I eventually settled on the one in the bottom right corner. To me, it symbolizes 'bring poeple together' and 'making connections' (remember the list of words from part 1?) but not in a hand-holding obvious way. But it wasn't quite right yet.

Looking to make the logo a bit more fun I changed the plain squares to these wonky pebble shapes and added some colour. Immediately, all I could think of was babies and children. It would be a cute logo for a daycare, but not for CourseCraft. This is when going back to the list I made about the logos I liked came in handy. One of the items on the list was 'two-tone' so I changed the colours to something a little more mature adjusted the square shape again so they weren't just boring squares but also didn't remind me of a kid's cereal.

Now I could feel I was getting a lot closer, but although I liked the two-tone design it was going in the direction of a very corporate looking logo. Again, I consulted my list and realized I was leaving out one of my favourite attributes: the line drawing style. I re-jiggered the design again and came up with a few more concepts and really started to like the last one.

And there you have it, the new logo was born! Maybe I'm just really hesitant when it comes to changes, but you can probably guess what I did next. Yep, sat on it for another week. Changing the whole site's branding was going to be a lot of work, so I didn't want to rush into something too soon. If you're just changing the logo on your blog I don't think you need to be this snail-paced. Not only did I have change the logo everywhere on the site, but also in emails, screenshots, the help section, about a dozen ads, our Twitter avatar, etc. It was no small feat, so I'm happy to present you with the final logo now!

So here's a bit about the new logo and why it is the way it is. I ended up going with a blue and green colour scheme because I liked how it was a colour combo found in nature and I think it's easy on the eye and not too trendy. The colours are also light enough that they look good on a white background and a dark background. I also wanted to make sure it was low-key and not too crazy because CourseCraft isn't about me, it's about your courses and I wanted your courses to be the main feature on the page not a crazy logo and colour scheme.

When it came to the text of the logo, I tried about a million different fonts. I won't bore you with that since I think it's more about what looks good to you. Again, I just tried to keep it simple and not too trendy. Since CourseCraft is two words, I used colour and a fun small caps style for 'craft' to make it easy to read.

If you made it through that whole post without falling asleep, I applaud you. And if you made it through and found it interesting, let's be friends ok? I'd love to hear about your logo triumphs and failures. Let's chat in the comments. :)