Homemade Holiday Coupon Book For The Boss!

My sister wanted to make a present for her boss today. And, what do you a get a man who can afford to have everything? A homemade gift. She was really excited about it and asked for my help. She decided on a Christmas Coupon Book and I did some searching on Pinterest to find some options. Most of the options were for spouses or parents, so we had to do a bit of digging to go beyond finding a template that was already a complete coupon book with the coupons already written out. I'm pretty sure her boss would NOT have wanted a coupon for a massage given by my sister...well, maybe he would've, but it would be inappropriate to say the least. :) We decided on making one similar to one made on http://sarahsinkspot.com/blog/coupon-book's bog. She even had a sheet of coupons to just print. But, my sister wanted to type them out, so we did some master copy and pasting into a Word Document and tweaked and edited it to fit our needs. We put a colorful border around each one and she wrote her message. I think she ended up with 5 different messages and made 4 of each of them. Creative idea, not having to think of a bazillion ideas. We printed them on cardstock and cut them out.

After cutting them out, we cut down a 12x12 piece of scrapbook paper down to 8.5x11 for the cover and back and printed out our cover.  I highly recommend printing on a scratch paper first to make sure it's the right size and coloring that you'd like. Plus, then you can be certain you are putting your paper in the correct way. After you have printed it, cut it down to size and remember to cut enough for the back of the book as well.

Don't mind the cookies in the corner of the picture...yum! :) 

Once it's cut down to size, make certain (one more time) that your coupons fit in just right. Take them out, and put one extra one (we had a few extra just-in-case coupons laying around) inside and go to town with your hole puncher. We did two holes.

 After you have punched holes in your cover (and back) and your extra coupon, take your extra coupon and one or two of your real coupons and line up the holes. Continue doing this until you have hole punched all your coupons.

 Put your coupon book together and thread some ribbon through. 

And, lastly, be proud of the beautiful hand-made gift you've made for your boss. :) 

Side note: We did add stickers to each page and I forgot to post pictures with that, but it just made it that much more festive. We've decided that, my sister will right "VOID" after the use of each coupon, or, (if she chose to use it more than once) put a hole punch on the coupon so you can see how many times it's been used. I'm excited for her boss to see this awesome gift!

I would definitely make this again. It was a fun idea, a fun project and with the template, it wasn't nearly as time consuming as it could've been if we had designed each "coupon on our own. Fun, definitely fun! :)

The Spouse Christmas Countdown!

Last year, I worked on The Spouse Christmas Countdown Advent Calendar from http://www.thedatingdivas.com/tara/the-spouse-christmas-countdown/. It was a fun little project that  took me about 4-6 hours(ish) to complete start to finish. I worked on it over the course of a few days. The best thing to do is find a friend who would like to do it with you! That's what I did, and we had a blast.

Between my friend, Christina, and myself - we made 50 cards (obviously) and had them all a standard size to simplify it. We went with 4x6. Basically, we treated it like we were making a normal card, with a decorative back. I do not believe I'm much of an artsy person without VERY specific instructions, so this was a bit of a challenge to me to be creative. And, I was quite impressed with myself! Once got all the cards made, we laid them out on a table and each took 25. This is what they all looked like laid out:

After we picked our cards, our work together was done. I went home and cut out numbers using red cardstock on my Silhouette Cameo. I used a sticker maker to stick the numbers on the cards (although glue would've worked fine too.) After that, all I had left was writing out the messages on the back! The dating divas' blog recommends that you do 2/3 compliments, 1/3 services and a half of a 1/3 for Christmas activities. That came out to 14 compliments, 7 services and 4 activities. Christina and I wrote that out and shared some of them with each other so the brainstorming wasn't as difficult either. :) I decided to type out my messages because would it be fun to do this again a different  year? And how much more fun would it be if you could change up the messages and NOT remake the cards?! YEAH!! That's my kind of project!! So, I typed them up, cut them out and taped them either just to the back of the card, or onto card stock and THEN cut them out. After that, all that was left was hanging the beautiful work that I'd done! And, here it is!

It was such a nice surprise for my husband to wake up and see on December 1st! Granted, he knew it was coming - I can't keep a surprise to myself when it comes to him. But, he doesn't know what's on the cards!! He'll get to discover that each day. 

Anyway, this was a fun project. I would recommend it, if you are the creative type or (like me) have a friend who is. :) It's a nice way to bless your spouse (or anybody that you want to make it for, for that matter). 

Yay or Nay for me on this project? Yay, indeed! It was a fun one and I love to spoil my husband! For more details on how to make this project (and even simplify it with a standard card you could use) go to the blog above! 

Until next time....