Last year, my son made "tiger" cub scout ornaments. This year, he's a wolf. He wanted to give something to the kids in his den so he made wolf ornaments. Thank goodness, A Muse came out with a wolf stamp!
I thought he did a great job coloring (remember this is the boy that *hates* doing ART!). He put some Martha Stewart Snow Glitter under the wolf, too.
All stamps by A Muse Artstamps: (Wolf and Classic Number set; Copic Markers, MS Glitter, Silver Cord, Accucut tag dies
Happy Halloween! Let the eating season begin... Halloween to Easter! ;)
Just to catch up... I went to Seattle last weekend for A Muse instructor training. It was a blast! Got to see lots of the A Muse gals... always fun, inspiring and generally an all-around great time! I flew up a day earlier because of the way the flights worked out, etc. My dear friend, Edye flew up with me and we shopped all day Friday. All day. We hit a lot of stamp stores and paper stores and even made it down to Pikes Market for lunch. It was so much fun. On Sunday after training, I got to visit my niece Sara, who lives near Seattle and attends then University there. That was fun to catch up with her. More about the Instructor Training later... but I learned some cool tricks and I can't wait to try them in some classes!
Okay, back to Halloween... since I got back Monday evening, it's been a whirlwind of school activities, meetings, and getting geared up for Halloween. Yesterday my preschooler had a small party in his class sans mommies... he said it was fun! We made some treats for him to share with his classmates:
It's a little die cut box (made from my Accucut machine). Inside contains a little playdoh and a halloween shaped cookie cutter ($2.99 for 20 (I think) from Hobby Lobby). The pumpkin cutout is a Martha Stewart big punch (which punches well on A Muse cardstock but nothing else! - the Orange Polka Dot cardstock is from A Muse's Kitchen line)
I'll post teacher gifts soon.
Hope you have a SAFE and fun Halloween! Don't forget to set your clocks (YAY!). More time to stamp ;)
Okay, well I couldn't just make something for the teachers and nothing for the kids, right? Well, what do you make for 2nd graders when you don't know the class yet. I mean I have a class list and I know most of the kids in there but still, what if there is some last minute switching around, etc.
So, I wanted to make something:
Hmm, up for the challenge? Sure, why not. I know. How about trusty old bookmarks? Okay, so I didn't say "fun" was one of the criteria but bookmarks can be fun. Right?
These bookmarks are laminated so as to last until at least the end of this week ;).
All stamps by A Muse Artstamps. *Did I mention that I love, *LOVE* the back to school release! :)
What do you think?
Happy Tuesday! And happy first day of school to everyone else that I know that got that one extra day of summer!
Now, you'll have that song in your head all day!
Gotta love it when you can get 10 invitations done from start to mailbox in an hour - um, ESPECIALLY when the party is 10 days away! ACK! Luckily, it's a family party so everyone already knows about it! Whew.
My youngest turns 3 on March 7th! YAY! For this past year, Mickey Mouse clubhouse was big in our live! So, simple and quick is the name of these invitations. I've had the design floating in my head for a while, just no time to actually get it done.
So, I suppose the old Mickey Mouse song was the "M-I-C" version and the new hip, happening one is the Hot Dog song. And Toodles... you probably don't know who Toodles is if you haven't seen this version of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But my son likes it. :)
I'm a bit of an electronics gadget freak (go figure). So I got myself a new printer the other day. One for my stamp room. We have one of those HP does everything already but I wanted a invitation printer that I could feed paper in without it getting bent. My dear friend, Edye, who owns LMNOPeople, is in the business of making invitations and personalized notecards (at an AFFORDABLE price!) told me about her Canon printer. So, I researched and researched and found a little mobile Canon that is SUHWEET. I like it. And made this invitations super simple. I just fed the A Muse notecards directly in and voila! I use MS Publisher. Oh, since I'm mentioning Edye... one of my most FAVORITE things she makes is the itty bitty people books with 12 pictures in it... GREAT GIFT for grandparents or teachers! OMG. Remember that.
The Project Hero Mail challenge/contest ends today with all items needing to be postmarked by today to be sent to me. So, I'm on the lookout for them. I've received quite a few already and can't wait to see how many cards we've made for the troops! More soon!
My son's first grade class is a big "do work all day" (his words, not mine) kinda class. I thought it would be fun to make personalized bookmarks for all of the kids to help make reading fun. The real question: Stamp them or design them on the computer? Well, truth be told that I was running outta time. These were due Wednesday morning and as of the cub scout meeting on Tuesday night, I didn't even have a design in my head! ACK! So, the computer won out for sheer speediness. I did stamp one part and color that. Can't not stamp, right? Finally at the end I cranked up the laminator and laminated them for good measure. Have you seen how hard kids are on their bookmarks?
I printed a cute poem I found on the net about first graders:
I thought the poem was cute! It reads:
Now That I Can Read
I used to need somebody
To sit and read to me.
I'd look at every page they read
and listen carefully.
But now that I'm in 1st grade,
I'm filling up a shelf
with stories, poems, and other books
That I can read myself.
How are your holidays going? I think I've finished the shopping except for one inlaw, which my DH will take care of. I pretty much ordered everything online this year. I signed up my son's school as a non profit organization that receives money back from online merchants (like the big ones... amazon, ebay, b&n, eddie bauer, etc, etc.) so for every purchase I make up to 37% (yes, 37% - of course depends on where, etc... but the avg is 3%) of my purchase goes back to my school. Isn't that cool? I signed us up a couple of months ago and it's been fun watching the "free" money add up. Anyway, I'm happy to not go out and shop. I *don't* like to shop. Of course the hard part is figuring out what to give! I haven't started my holiday cards yet but they are on *the* list. So, soon. :) I'm well into the *party* part of the season and have a few more to go to this weekend. But pretty much it's smooth sailing from here on out... YIPPEE!
Happy Friday!
Tuesday was our last cub scout meeting until after the holidays. Back in the beginning, the boys came up with a list of what a good scout is. We wrote those on a poster board for them so see at each meeting. We light a candle at each meeting. The candle burns until one or more of the boys do something that is not what a good scout is. When the candle burns down, the boys get a pizza party! So, long story even longer... the boys got their pizza party on Tuesday night. How appropriate to have the pizza party the last day before the break!
I wasn't certain we were going to the party because 1) the weather was awful that day 2) my son is a non-pizza eater (REALLY! I know! WEIRD!) 3) well, honestly I didn't feel like going. But, um, well, yeah, we - he and I did go. So hours (LITERALLY... at 3:30pm Tuesday), we start making gifts for his cub scout friends. *We* decided to make cub scout ornaments.
We are the tiger cubs this year. You would not believe how much time I've spent looking at very, many manufacturers for a tiger die. Seriously. Well, wouldn't you know it... one of the Cricut cartridges I *ahem* already own has a tiger! (an aside... I am seriously loving that I get to pull out some of my tools/stuff to do all of these projects! So fun to use some stuff I haven't in a while!) And the colors this year are blue and orange. So, 2 hours later, we had 10 of these made. I hope them like them. I did handwrite the year, den and pack numbers (although that's hidden in the picture).
The ornaments are actually the medium weight square coaster that I cut to 3.5x3.5. Then we covered them with SU! Brilliant Blue CS on both sides. I used my Apricot Copic to color the coaster edges so that they wouldn't be white.
Not too bad for 10 in 2 ho
urs, right? I was really thinking we weren't going otherwise I would have punted on this project and saved it for something else in the Spring.
But hey, I'm happy that I had a tiger die in my *stash* of stuff. Maybe I should shop more in my studio! LOL!
Happy *last* day of school for us and I hope you, too! Seven more days ... WOHOO!
The Polar Express... it is such a good movie. And a great book, too. :D
Yeah, so okay, this is a similar rendition of a thing I did last year for my son's kinder class. I got the idea from a friend that did something like this for her daughter when the movie came out back in 2004. And I've loved it ever since. I'm going to drag out the belief as long as I can... and I'm sure you know... people out there are just plain mean and tell your kids things that they shouldn't about what is real and what isn't. Already this year, two different people have tried to tell my DS about the man in the red suit and his reindeer. Humpf. Don't do that. But I've been lucky to guide him where I think his heart wants to be. The time from when they get the whole concept to the time they start disbelieving is incredibly (!!!) short. I didn't think I would have the conversations I've had this year about this already.
ANYWAY, so I made some bells (30) with the tag that says:
One thing I got *smarter* at doing this year is color coding my boys' stuff... so one kid got all red and the other green. Makes it MUCH easier to sort out and deliver. They are coded because their "from name" is on the back of the tags. Novel idea, eh? Only took me a couple of YEARS to think of that. <insert rolling eyes!>
See you tomorrow.
Just under the wire... whew.... I know y'all are just waiting by your computers on a Friday night during a busy time of year at 11:42 pm (my time) to see if I post today for my 25 days of projects! I just know it! LOL. I certainly do not believe this.
So, I'm soooo close to being done on so many things and yet not close enough to finish anything. Ho Hum.
Magic Reindeer Food is the project today. The boys and I actually made a mess the reindeer food on Wednesday, when it was too cold to go outside after school. Magic Reindeer Food, for those of you that don't know about it, is food that we sprinkle on our lawn for the reindeer on Christmas Eve so that they can find their way to our house... and have a little snack while Santa is *working*. We got them all packaged the other day but today we (and by we, I mean the boys *helped* on um, a couple and then they were done!) finished the tags and the snowflakes on top.
Recipe for Magic Reindeer Food: (we didn't measure ANYTHING):Quick Oats
Shiny, Sparkly Glitter
Snow Glitter (Martha Stewart - just a little)
Red & Green Sprinkles
Snowflake Sprinkles (from Target)
Mix all together.
So, guess what we packaged them in???
TEST TUBES!! How did you guess? So these test tubes had the blue lids. I didn't want to paint these like I did on the others - mainly because of time... and okay, effort. :p We kept them blue and went with a snowflake theme! We punched snowflakes (using a newly acquired Martha Stewart snowflake punch!) and ran them through my xyron to make them sticky. Stuck those to the tops of the lids. Voila
. Dressed up.Remember our target audience: 15 2-3 year olds and 25 6-7 year olds. Too much effort is just not worth it. And I mean that in the practical sense. Then on to the tags...
used those shipping tags from Office Depot again. Scored them and used the SU! Slit punch to make it stay closed. Stamped Blitzen on the outside, put the poem on the inside, and signed the appropriate child's name.
That's it, 40 Magic Reindeer Food ready for delivery to the preschool and 1st grade!
Finally, the first week of first grade has passed. What a rough week that was. In our house, this is a MUCH harder transition than Kinder was. It'll be alright though. So many new things for him and me. And he has to actually work now. Ah, the torture of it all!
The first day of school, both my DH and I put notes in our son's lunch box. I had bought a book of "lunch notes" for ideas a year ago or something and I gave DH it to use. I had to make a card. I decided I need to do more of these. Um, isn't that why I bought that little preprinted pack - for ideas??
So, I think I like the 3x3 size for lunch notes. My son likes green these days. And I've already done the rock star for him for a quite a few things. This time I decided to use the treasure chest... he likes TREASURE :) Don't we all? And well, hey, we have this new Pirate stamp.. and he hasn't been inked up yet! Ah, gotta fix that!
I only inked up the "i treasure you" part of the I treasure your friendship stamp. And the jewels are sparkly courtesy of my AtYou Spica pens and the new Uniball Gold pen.
His response to the cards when he got home from school, "Those were okay. <WHAT???> Would you give me one everyday in my lunch?" I'd have to say that we scored... um, I think.
Happy Saturday!
