I've had this comment come up among friends and customers alike, and thought it would be something interesting to address. I've heard time and time again about parties that suffer from having used only an online invitation via social media, email or a digital invitation site. People get the invitation alert months or weeks in advance and either reply immediately or never remember to RSVP. 

One instance I heard of a Backyard BBQ for a significant number of guests. The invitation sent via a social media site in which most of the guests replied "yes" almost immediately. The main course was being provided by the hosts, in this case, quite a substantial portion of BBQ from a local restaurant, and the guests were to bring the sides. On the evening of the party only a fraction of the guests showed. Among the comments of those who replied yes but didn't attend, "We forgot, we haven't seen the invitation since you sent it and didn't put it on the calendar." And "We didn't know it was such a big deal to miss." One of the guests from this party, who actually replied yes and didn't attend told me of the situation. She admitted that had a paper invitation been sent, visible to her in a prominent place, she'd have thought this to be a more than just a casual cook-out and likely would have been more inclined to go.

When you put this into perspective and think about how many emails you get a day, how many status updates and alerts you receive via social media or your smart phone, its a wonder we make it to anything or get anything done!

As usual, First Dinner was amazing. We are truly blessed to fill our dining room table with such wonderful people. I wanted to share a few photos from the event. I am the master of budget parties (okay, self-proclaimed, but I love finding simple and inexpensive ideas to make even the simplest of ideas look grand!) First the invitations: a simple design that won my heart this year among the new cards I designed - I added a touch of red glitter for pizzazz. I carried the same design into the place cards and favor boxes. Each place tag was a circle mounted to red cardstock and tied to a candycane with blue ribbon. Foam snowflakes adorned the plates and under the vases, (found in the $1 bin at Target). I'm a bit partial to polka-dots and I seem to somehow work them in to just about every party I do! Here, in the napkins. 

The kid's table was fun to set up. My husband built a bench to give it more seating. Each place setting had a fun red snowflake cup with a twisty straw and an ornament they could color and take home. They enjoyed decorating the ornaments even more than I anticipated.

Of course, I can send no one home empty handed. My son and I baked and decorated buttery spritz cookies with red and blue sprinkles as a sweet little gift for each family. I found the perfect little boxes and bags by Martha Stewart (she has everything!) and added my own labels to match the invitation and place tags. 

Dinner this year was a huge success, and as always I am looking forward to this year and what it has to bring. Without a doubt, it will involve these 20 special people and even some who were unable to attend this year's First Dinner. Happy New Year!

Seven years ago, my husband and I came up with the idea of having a dinner party on New Year's Day - we call it First Dinner. It's a sit-down, pot-luck style dinner for our absolute closest friends to start the year off on a good note, with people we love, and delicious food. 

Each year, we invite a limited number of guests to join us in our home for this special dinner. And each year, its harder and harder to squeeze just "one more" chair around the dining table, but we do it. It's one of the toughest invitation lists we make – I have a hard time leaving people out, but I know they understand. As the kids get bigger and our circle grows, I am sure we'll have to update our format a bit, and we're okay with that too. One of the best parts about this dinner is just that it is just that, a sit-down dinner.

My husband makes the ham, the last couple years smoked in his awesome hand-made smoker. I make about 10 pounds of my delicious buttery mashed potatoes and gravy, and each family is asked to bring a salad, vegetable or dessert. Sometimes we get lots of vegetables, sometimes lots of desserts, but it always works out just fine!! 

Some years we write new year's wishes for the coming year, seal them up, then read them the next year, that is always fun! Some years we clear away the plates and pull out the board games. No matter what we do, we're happy to be surrounded by, and start the new year off with our dearest friends! 

I don't know about you, but I can hardly believe another year has whizzed by us! How on earth has Christmas gone already and we're prepping for New Year's and dare I say, Valentine's day! 

As I look back on the year, I am so thankful for all of the new opportunities and adventures I (and the Speckled Duck) have been able to do with the support and love from family, friends and customers. I am very much looking forward to 2012 and a new list of goals! 

Thanks to the Speckled Duck's new website, and our Etsy Shop, SD customers range from coast to coast in the US and Canada! 

We attended our first bazaar in November, the Cowgirl Handmade Bazaar. Thankful for the help of my dear friend, Jen. Looking forward to many more craft shows and fairs next year! 

A wonderful partnership with a dear college friend and her letterpress boutique, inviting. Working together gives us both a little boost and a helping hand.  

And of course my fabulous and supportive family. 

We've had our tree up for about a week now at the Speckled Duck household. This tree is debuting its seventh Christmas in our home, and every time I set it up I think, "Gosh, I love this tree." Last year I finally perfected my color scheme. I've been a huge fan of the light blue / red combo for a couple of years now, last years find of blue ornaments really amplified that love. (You'll notice plenty of my Christmas designs in red and blue.) 

Seeing everyone's tree photos on Facebook really shows how Christmas trees are a sort of memory book and history of a family. When we got married, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Rey gave us a set of Bride's Tree Ornaments from the Inge Christmas collection. Since then, I have kept all of my ornaments to the blown glass style, adding a few each year to remind us of milestones and memories, our tree has become a bit of our own family history. 

This angel, part of my original 12 Bride's Tree Ornaments, still hangs on our tree. I love that even with so many different ornaments, I can change up the "theme" by adding solid color balls. You can see one of my newest loves, the red and white polkadots!

Santa with a blue hat from the year my son was born. 

The sun, because my favorite song to sing to my son is "You Are My Sunshine."

These big graphic snowflakes are my new favorite - I like to add some ornaments that tie the whole tree together. There's lots of these! Plus, I have a slight snowflake addiction! 

We like to get some silly reminders too. One year our fish tank became infested with snails, and we didn't know where they came from! This is the only snail surviving! We also have an ambulance, for the midnight ride my hubby took after a serious allergic reaction to ant-bites. He LOVES that there is a reminder of that incident on our tree. 

I love taking these ornaments out each year, remembering the event behind each one makes setting up our tree that much more special. 

This weekend you can find us a Fox Run Elementary in San Antonio for the first Annual Cowgirl Handmade Bazaar! We'll be there with lots of cards for gifts and thank you's, and we're offering free shipping on orders placed at the Bazaar! What a great way to get a jump on your Christmas shopping with over 30 vendors! Support your local artisans and buy local. Small business is best for the economy, see you there!! 

Okay, okay. I know you want to have a cookie party of your own, but you're just not sure. You're not ready to commit. Well, here is your chance to WIN a FREE Hollie Jollie Cookie Party collection to host your very own cookie party! Time is of the essence, so you need to get to planning very soon! You have until Wednesday, November 2nd at 8 pm CST to post a favorite cookie recipe right here on the Polka-blog for your chance to win a complete party collection. One winner will be chosen at random November 2nd after 8 pm for this fabulous prize worth $30!! 

The Hollie Jollie Cookie Party complete collection includes 12 fill-in invitations with envelopes, 12 recipe cards, 12 place cards, and 4 cookie awards! Find your favorite cookie recipe and leave it for us as a comment on this post to win. One entry per person, please. While you're at it, make sure you're a friend of ours on Facebook! 

This weekend my family hosted our first pumpkin carving party. Yes, I said first... we will definitely be doing this again! We invited a bunch of our friends to join us for an evening of carving from 5-8. We figured this would give us enough sunlight to carve and a little darkness to get photos of our creations all lit up. I prepared some dinner and snacks, just a few simple items. I made some delicious tortilla soup, mummy hotdogs and some brownies. Friends brought festive drinks and an amazing 7-layer dip, along with their pumpkins to carve.  

We laid out a big tarp in the grass for carving. It kept little bits of pumpkin out of the grass and gave everyone a good place to sit and carve with their families. We purchased some carving kits to share and this fabulous new scoop I found this year with a serrated edge (highly recommended!). It made pulling out goo so simple! We even tried Martha Stewart's tip of using metal cookie cutters to punch shapes into pumpkins and it worked like a charm! We set out a few buckets to collect all of the pumpkin goo, and there was plenty! My husband and a friend kindly sorted through buckets of muck to pull out the seeds for roasting. All of the rest of the pumpkin innards went into our composter and will make some great dirt for our spring garden. 

If you have young kids, and a lot of friends with young kids, I highly recommend hosting a pumpkin carving party! Okay, you don't even need young kids! The adults had just as much fun! This was a great fall party, and required little planning. The best part is doing something fun with your family and people you love to be around.

You've probably noticed the flood of pink this month. Not only is October the month of costumes and candy, it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an annual campaign to promote education, detection, early diagnosis and support to survivors of breast cancer. I have all to many a personal connection to those battling cancer, not just breast cancer, that I felt moved to design a special set of notecards for the occasion. Whether you give the set as a gift, or mail handwritten notes to a loved one battling cancer, and even a survivor, these notes of hope and love are sure to make the battle just a little easier. You'll find that the quotes I chose are not cancer specific, so don't feel limited, there are lots of others just in need of some encouraging words!

Choose from a mixed box of 5 quotes, or 10 of one quote. Each set of 10 is packaged in a clear gift box with matching pink envelopes. The Speckled Duck will donate $3 from each set sold to The National Breast Cancer Foundation. I hope you'll help us make a generous donation to this cause, and just as importantly, send an encouraging note to someone who needs it. See our Featured page for all of our available cards for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You'll find these under our Featured tab and in our Etsy Shop.

Links to Breast Cancer Awareness Organizations:
The National Breast Cancer Foundation
Susan G. Komen for the Cure
The American Cancer Society

Last Friday, my husband and I attended Dave Ramsey's one-day EntreLeadership summit in Dallas. (It was his idea to sport Speckled Duck Pink!) We've been big Dave fans for almost 4 years. Without his program, Financial Peace University, I'd still be working for someone else and undoubtedly we'd have furniture on credit and probably another car loan. Thanks to his program, we're nearly debt free, have an emergency fund and big plans for our future with much brighter heads on our shoulders. We're such believers in his program that we volunteer to coordinate a Financial Peace class once a year at our church to help others turn their lives around too.
     We attended EntreLeadership, his one day crash course on being a strong leader and taking your business to the next level. I left there very inspired with an even better sense of "I can do this!" I got to meet him, after standing in line for nearly two hours to get my book signed, and I'd do it again. I'm not one to be a follower of fashion trends, labels and celebrities, but I have a deep respect and appreciation for Dave Ramsey and the knowledge that he has given me to change things for myself and my family–and now my business. As I sat and listened to him that day, all I could think was "That is the kind of leader I want to be and the kind of company I want to have." 

Yes, I had to be the ultimate nerd and get my picture by the bus too!

I know better than to leave paparazzi moments to my hubby... but I love him anyway!