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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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Maternity Leave + Minted

September 30, 2016

Hey guys, Minted sponsored this post and we also teamed up to gift one reader a $250 credit towards a future purchase at Minted.com! I couldn’t make this easier if I tried. The contest has since ended, but keep on reading. I’ve used affiliate links to redirect you to some related products.

Our summer, and our transition into becoming a family of five included lots of playground days, amusement park trips, picnics in the treehouse, and lazy evenings spent on our new patio, but as any of you who have birthed a child can attest, it has mostly been about finding time to buy more milk, and making an earnest effort to shower at least every 3 days. As we emerge from the fog of having a newborn (Sam is 10 weeks old now!), I’ve been able to get down and conquer all kinds of things, like digitally organizing the last 6-months of family photos, and making/freezing all of the recipes I bookmarked to make the most of our seasonal veggies. I also rewatched all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls in anticipation of the Netflix episodes that release this fall, learned why everyone loves Fixer Upper (it’s shiplap… you may have seen it here first), and now we’re cranking through Friends, which Pete somehow managed to avoid in the mid-’90s to early 2000s when he was too cool to be watching primetime network television.

Between all of that, I ordered our boy these sweet birth announcements via Minted.

Sam's Birth Announcement from Minted.com

Minted contacted me last winter to see if I would like to help them promote Valentine’s Day ideas, and while it wasn’t the right fit for me at the time, I did counter and ask if they would be interested in printing our baby announcements once we were ready to do so – they said yes, and then suggested that I offer one of you guys the chance to win $250 too. :) It’s been a long time since I voluntarily hosted a giveaway because frankly it has to be a *great* giveaway to pique my interest. $250 on Minted goes a long way, and I hope the lucky winner finds something fun.

The site has 700 birth announcement templates available for customization – among thousands of other customizable holiday/birthday/all-occasion stationary, home accessories, fabrics, and high-quality art prints. It’s all well-curated with designs from independent artists, and perusing the possibilities is a nice escape. Minted is an awesome wormhole on the internet.

We did our own photo shoot of Sam when he was about 7-weeks old, post-baby acne and about the time that his cheeks rounded out to be as large as peaches. I uploaded that photo to Minted and engaged the find it fast feature to take the guesswork out of determining which template worked with our photo, using the filters to make it easy to narrow down the options… Boy vs. Girl, Portrait vs. Landscape, 1-image vs. 4-images, $ vs. $$$, moveable text vs. locked-in-place, color theme selection, etc.

Minted Birth Announcement Ordering.

Our printed cards shown up above include a foil-pressed detail in the word “introducing,” but the real luxury I embraced was having the envelopes printed with recipient addresses (it was a free promotional offer at the time I ordered). It saved me hours of time hand-addressing envelopes when they arrived, and frankly, they’re the best looking envelopes I’ve ever had the opportunity to stick in the mail… even better than our wedding invites. Stoked! Totally doing this for our Christmas cards in a few months too; it’s a life changing perk, perfect for a busy parent.

Custom printed envelopes for our Baby's Birth Announcement from Minted.com

This post contains affiliate links; I’ll only get a compensation credit if you purchase from Minted. I was not compensated for this post, only given free product.

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For the Kids  / Supporting Sponsors

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

3 Comments


Staci
October 3, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Reply

Welcome back! Such a cute baby <3



Stephanie B
November 22, 2016 at 1:09 pm
Reply

Hi Emily,
I just wanted to say thank you, I won the $250 for Minted. I ordered my Christmas cards and received them last week. They came out great! I loved all of the options and it was nice to splurge with the gift code!



    Emily
    November 22, 2016 at 1:22 pm

    Hurray hurray! Thank you for participating in the giveaway!

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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    Merrypad by Emily Fazio
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    Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️ Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️
    Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garl Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garlic went into the home garden: 10 rows [L>R] 6 whole Nootka Rose as an experiment, 3x8 Mennonite-grown cloves from Aman’s, and 6x8 (and, I think, total 112? notes are cryptic) “normal.”
#gardennotes #growinggarlic #garden2023 #whatisnormal #merrypadathome
    Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of mind! #garden2024 kicks off with my favorite biennial: elephant garlic! 15 cloves planted from small, to medium, to enormous. #gardennotes
    Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this i Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this is getting ooc, and I love it. 👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾

🧄 65% of the planting is in a new plot in the country. 🧄 Seeing if NR grows bigger with more sunlight. 🧄 Big @chasefarms cloves from 2021 were really productive in our home garden; can’t wait to see how they can show up next year in the new space. 🧄

Hand-turned a small bed, but big thanks to my sister, who rolled into town just in time to help me double its size (and did not complain once).
    One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stal One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stalks and 7 scapes, and I can’t wait to see this mammoth looks like when it’s pulled next month. #garlic2022 

Also, fierce springtime performance by parsley, chamomile, and self-seeded cilantro.
    Annual garlic notes #garden2022 ~315 cloves total Annual garlic notes #garden2022
~315 cloves total
50 in new, unfenced garden
Still need thick mulch on everything
Did a terrible job tracking varieties when I harvested, so it’s all a mix of hardneck now 😒
Added some big cloves from @chasefarms and look forward to adding some @fruition_seeds in #garden2023 when @porterfarmscsa delivers.
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