Land of Nod + Ampersand Design Studio Holiday Party

We are officially in the holiday spirit over here! We had the amazing opportunity to kick of the season in style on Thursday when we co-hosted a party and trunk show with The Land of Nod! We have long been in love with everything Nod and jumped at the chance to deck our studio out with their holiday decor and have a fun shindig.We had a blast catching up with our blogging friends! What made the evening even more fun was that at the same time that our event was happening here in Kansas City, eight other parties were also taking place across the country hosted by many of our favorite bloggers. Be sure to hop over to their blogs for more party pics and holiday inspiration. The other hosts were: Joni Lay of Lay Baby Lay in Atlanta // Kirsten Grove of Simply Grove in Boise // Chassity Evans of Look Linger Love in Charleston // Darcy Troutman of No Monsters in My Bed and Rebecca + Suzanne of A Feteful Lifein D.C. // Kelly Lanza of Studio DIY and The Honest Company in Los Angeles // Raechel Meyers of Finding My Feet in Nashville // Kirsten Krason of 6th Street Design School and Small Fry Blog in Salt Lake City/ Provo // Cristin Bisbee Priest of Simplified Bee, Michaela Warner of Michaela Noelle Design, and Mary Heffernin, at her business, The Makery in San Francisco. Everyone used the hashtag, #nodevents to instagram, tweet and Facebook their events so we were able to feel like we were party-hopping our way across the country.

We loved transforming our space into a cheerful wintery wonderland and the only difficult thing was deciding which Land of Nod items we wanted to use. We threw in some Christmas trees in white, hot pink and gold metallic and several strings of lights overhead for good measure. We thought they looked quite nice decked out with Nod ornaments, tree skirts and a doily decals. We also decided we needed a mantle to hang our stockings on and had a blast painting one to do the job. Since we spend so much of our time on the computer, it was a nice change of pace to do some painting and crafting. We pulled out the glitter, yarn and paintbrushes and got all DIY.

Everyone at the party got to get in on the crafting, too, at a table all set up with Crepe paper flower kits to put together.

Our guests were thrilled to find out that there were a bunch of awesome giveaways to be had. A teepee, a Nod chair, a pig rocker, an intergalactic playset and two animal sleeping bags were up for grabs to name just a few, and every guest got to go home with a darling tote filled with a set of 12 days of Christmas ornaments. Our awesome Land of Nod representative, Jason (who we decided is our new bestie), did the honors of pulling the lucky winners from a box.

While we did not enter ourselves in the drawing, we each got to decorate (and keep, yay!) cottage dollhouses. Each party host got to personalize their dollhouse however they wanted and post photos of them at #noddollhouse. Some people were so creative with theirs!

Of course we had some treats & drinks! Doughnut holes, French macarons from Au Bon Macaron and some herb and cheese gougeres from a brand new bakery in downtown Kansas City, called Sasha's Baking Co! And really, what's a party without a photo booth to capture the memories? We glitzed ours out in dots made from pink, gold glitter and metallic paper in front of hot pink wrapping paper.

We want to send a million thanks to our super-talented friends, Emily and Corie (below) of Peep Toe Photography (how cute are they?!) for being our photographers for the night. We love how they captured all the fun of the event!

Now, the best part is that we get to bring all of you in on the action with a special 15% off promo code to The Land of Nod! Just use AMPGALS at checkout to receive your discount through November 27th. Happy shopping!!!!

We can't go without thanking our studio mates, Wirken Photography, for being so patient us turning the studio into an early holiday wonderland!

Biggest THANK YOU to The Land of Nod, for helping us host the best party ever!!!! Let's do it again sometime, shall we?!