A sneaky peek of the fully personalised Christmas cards we provided for Annabel of the incredibly inspirational Love My Dress wedding blog (www.lovemydress.net) – honestly, if you are a Bride/Groom to be, or a fellow supplier to the wedding industry and you haven’t checked out Love My Dress before, head over there now for some serious swooning! Annabel is one of the most influential people in the wedding world and so as you can imagine, we were delighted to provide her Christmas cards this year. When someone who showcases the best in terms of design to a nation of Brides on a daily basis, sends out In the Treehouse cards to their own friends & family at Christmas, it’s definitely a good feeling!

We’re getting into the Christmas spirit here, and want to share this festive little addition to our Free Printables Library – how many of us have family traditions of playing scrabble, charades, pictionary & other such games on Christmas day? Use our free printable rosette centres to make your own little prizes to give to winners – there’s hopefully something for everyone with ‘Mum in a Million’, ‘Champion Dad’ & ‘Christmas Wrap Star) in there too. (In my house, I’ll be going for the title of Scrabble Star (Watch out sis!), and no doubt my little one will be competing with her new cousin Tiago in the ‘Messiest Eater’ stakes!

For more info on how to join our Free Printables Library visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-The-Treehouse/147194918669981#!/photo.php?fbid=271083882947750&set=a.264525436936928.65424.147194918669981&type=1&theater - We’d love to see you photos of how you use them too – email them to us at info@inthetreehouse.co.uk - Happy Christmas! x

Hi all, hope you’re feeling full of festive, Tuesday cheer today! We’re winding things down for Christmas week, but still have a few more exciting blog features to bring you this week including another Christmassy Free Printables launch – so watch this space.

A quick note today to let you know we’ve been featured on the lovely & inspiring ‘Alice in Weddingland’ blog. Head on over to see lots of stationery and some quotes from me. http://www.aliceinweddingland.co.uk/unique-wedding-stationery-by-in-the-treehouse-colourful-retro-and-full-of-fun

Mmmmmm. Peppermint Creams – I have such fond memories of making these with my lovely mum & sister as a child. I think I’ll make some next week with my little one & neices…

(Recipe & pic is courtesy of ‘Christmas Cooking with Kids’ by Anne Rigg)

Ingredients:   (Makes 20-30)

1 ¾ cup icing sugar

4-6 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

green food coloring paste (optional)

mini star-shaped cutter

Instructions:

1. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl. Gradually add the condensed milk and peppermint extract, mixing with a wooden spoon. The mixture should come together like dough, and you may need to use your hands towards the end of the mixing.

2. To knead the dough, sprinkle a little icing sugar on a clean work surface. Shape the dough into a ball and push on it and press it onto the work surface, turning it around often. Do this for just a minute or so until smooth.

3. If you like, you can divide the dough in half and tint one half green using a little of the food coloring. Knead the dough again until it is evenly green.

4. On the work surface, roll the dough out to a thickness of ¼-inch using a rolling pin. Stamp out stars with your cookie cutter and arrange them on a sheet of baking parchment.

5. Leave to dry out overnight before packing into pretty boxes

Hi all – firstly apologies that the blog’s been a bit barren of new posts over the weekend – life is just GO GO GO at the moment with lots of last minute orders in the run up to Christmas, all the exciting adventures that we’re embarking on in 2012 (and preparing for now) - not to mention family life at this time of year!… My little one & I did a spot of Christmas shopping this week - we bought her dad a present (he’s notoriously hard to buy for, and I usually get it a bit wrong to be honest!). Anyway we got home, wrapped it up straight away so he wouldn’t peek, and then as soon as he walked through the door after work, she said ‘Daddy, I wrapped up your special slippers!’ Eeeek! The true gent that he is, he pretended not to hear! (if you’re thinking that slippers isn’t the most exciting present anyway, well let me tell you, these are VERY manly sheepskin-on-the-inside, suade-on-the-outside jobbies, and at the very least they should stop him sneakily wearing my pink ones!

So anyway, I’ll get to the point – we’re offering some cute FREE printable Christmas gift tags fo all our clients, facebook likers & twitter followers:

You could either print these yourself at home, or take the file into your local print shop & ask them to use some thick cream card (275gsm+) – they may also have recycled card stock as standard, in which case – even better! We’d love to see your pics of how you choose to use the tags, be it to wrap your presents, decorate the tree or in any other resourceful ways you choose! Please send photos in to info@inthetreehouse.co.uk & we’ll feature them on our blog & facebook page.

Our new Free Printables Library will be open to all our facebook clients (from past and present) as well as all facebook ‘likers’ and twitter followers. The fact that so many people follow our ventures really means a lot to us, and this is one of the ways we plan to say thank you. The library will be added to on a regular basis to include free printable stationery for weddings, celebrations & family life too. If you’d like to be invited to ‘join’ the library (and you’re a client/liker/follower), please email info@inthetreehouse.co.uk or use the contact form to the right with the subject ‘Free Printables Library’

Happy Christmas!

Afternoon all – hope everyone’s well today! A quick blog post to show you some invitations which left our studio last week – seeing the first order for our new Cicus Style invitation and RSVP in print was really exciting and I managed to take a few quick pics before they were posted:

Sarah & Lyndon are lucky enough to be tying the knot at the beautiful Villa Catignano in Sienna, which is why we added the cute little plane motif on the reverse. The invitation is in a Coral & Navy colour scheme which I think gives it a lovely vintage feel.

Sarah & Lyndon also had their RSVPs in the shape and style of our Save the Date from the same range – the corners are all individually cut to give it that authentic ticket look – the cutting is definitely a labour of love – but worth it in the end.

Designing this was sooo much fun – I love playing around with typography and funky wording, and I know if I was one of Sarah & Lyndon’s guests, I’d feel pretty excited to receive this in the post!

On the day their stationery arrived, Sarah sent me a lovely email saying:

“Hi Jenny, Just wanted to drop you a note to say we got the invites today and they are absolutely fab! I felt like it was xmas day! They were wrapped so beautifully and we can’t thank you enough for all the effort you put into making them just what we want. Thanks again and we will be back in touch soon, Take care and Happy Christmas! Sarah & Lyndon xx”

I’m so lucky! The Brides & Grooms I get to work with are just lovely…

You may have noticed that we’re bringing you loads of DIY projects at the moment – hope you’re enjoying them. Today, it’s a heart shaped fabric wreath – perfect for weddings, or just to brighten up your home. This one is going to live in my little one’s room:

I made this for £2.99 as I used completely recycled fabrics (namely old clothes, left over scraps and an old, redundant (and clean!) pillowcase…

For the frame of the wreath I used a wire place card holder which was £2.99 from The Range (find your nearest store at http://tinyurl.com/cevsgvc) -Although similar things seem pretty widely available on the highstreet now.

Shown above is a step by step guide to show you how simple it is! (slightly mind-numbing mind you – It takes around 2 hours so I put a rom-com on and made an evening of it!)…

As always, if you give this a go we’d love to hear from you & post a pic on our blog and facebook page! Good luck and happy crafting! x

We’re loving all the retro inspired gifts on the high street at the moment and with Christmas coming up, they make great gifts… We’ve selected a few of our favourites here – hopefully something for everyone.

(Clockwise from top left):
Nostalgia Monopoly – £29.99 at Waterstones: http://tinyurl.com/6rq4hq6

Retro Motoring Tin – £9.99 on Ebay: http://tinyurl.com/7c7kt4y       

Lunch Boxes – £7 from Notonthehighstreet.com: http://tinyurl.com/33n3kyy

Teas of the World Gift Set – £22 at Whittard: http://tinyurl.com/6n9le6y

Vintage Label Postcards -£6.98 from Waterstones: http://tinyurl.com/7dllb7w

Hope everyone’s had a great weekend… It’s all about Scrabble for today’s blog post, with a little inspiration board to give you some ideas of how you could incorporate the playful, nostalgic and rather romantic theme into your big day.

 For more details on these products you can click the following links.

‘Love in Letters’ wedding invitation & ‘save the date’ by In the Treehouse http://tiny.cc/ybf0d

Scrabble letter cufflinks from Notonthehighstreet.com http://tiny.cc/gd3yn

Scrabble wrapping paper from Notonthehightstreet.com http://tiny.cc/k2hmb

Scrabble cupcakes as seen at http://tiny.cc/m0k3g

Just letting you know about a new regular feature for our facebook page – ‘Shout it from the Treehouse’ where you can hopefully bounce off one another to get ideas (on weddings/celebrations/anything you like) from other like minded folk. Today’s question (and the first of many I hope) comes from Julia who’s marrying Tom in August 2012

 please put forward any suggestions you have by commenting on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=258859687503503&set=a.258859617503510.64711.147194918669981&type=1&theater I’m sure they’d be gratefully received. If you have a question and you’d like to ‘shout it from the Treehouse’, just email it to info@inthetreehouse.co.uk – many thanks, looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. x