Easy Christmas gift

I’ve been working on a xmas gift for Chloe’s great grandparents. I bought a brown faux leather scrapbook and will be filling it with 19 digital scrapbook pages. We did less as a sentimental value thing and more as an it was an easy thing to do kind of gift. I know, I sound horrible for admitting that. We really do hope that they love it. I’m on page 11 and hope to finish it within the next couple of days so that it can be ordered in time. Here’s some of the pages:

Chloe: House Designer

_________________________________________

Of course, tucked away in ACDSee are all of the many, “mom, seriously, stop taking pictures of me” and the “I’m not posing for you anymore” pictures.

Break From Thursday: Can You Feel the Spirit?

Chloe has been sick all week. She is down to just a cough, which is what woke her up and why I am up at 3am. To top it off, both myself and my husband has caught her cold and we have a masquerade ball to go to tonight after work. I really should be making our masks, but now I’m both sick AND tired. I need a break from the week, how about you?

Do you remember these altered wooden letters?

I made some new ones the same way, only with different letters. It’s easy, I’ll show you. Just as a side note: my crafting workspace isn’t normally a large green bin, but I did these on the couch relaxing with Chloe while she recovered.

Several stores carry wood letters to alter, both craft stores and stores that carry craft stuff. They range in price, but are all between $1-3 per letter.

Paint the letters. I used a foam brush and painted two coats of a metallic blue.

After you’re done painting the wood letters, mod podge some designer paper to the letters. I usually paint the glue onto the wood letters and place them onto the paper (instead of the other way around).

Next, cut them out. Make sure your 3-year-old doesn’t “help” with this part like she did with the paint and the glue.

Notice how scruffy the paper looks after having cut it out; you’ll want to sand down all the edges to make a clean look.

Last is the fun part. Add embellishments. Theme it to what you are doing. You can add all different kinds, such as ribbon, or wood cut outs, or stamped images, or buttons, or . . . whatever looks cute.

Hang it up and spread the Christmas spirit.

Break From Thursday – Care Packages

I like the thought of sending someone something just because or to show your support. Care packages are great and versatile. Every once in a while I like to send one out to someone. Care packages can be elaborate or simple, meaningful or light-hearted. When my best friend moved out to Missouri for her mission I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of wacky and fun stuff to send to her. In it we also included recent pictures of her girlfriends on our trip to the desert. It was a way to show that we were still thinking about her.

If you send out a care package, have fun with it. You can theme it or taylor it to the person’s needs or tastes.

My nieces live far away from me in Florida and I always miss them desperately. I like to send them a package every once in a while, not just on their birthday or Christmas to let them know that I think about them and miss them. The last package I sent was last summer and it contained very girlie (they’re now in their pre-teens) embellished school supplies. I hope to send out another one soon. This time I am theming it with stuff they can use to decorate in their room (my sister’s family just moved into a new home a few months ago).

Every once in a while before I pick Chloe up after work I go out and buy some cute goodies. I leave them on her carseat for her to find. It always cheers up her day and makes her feel special. I love watching her discover that special present left just for her just because.

I have a friend who will be going through chemotherapy starting next week and so I fixed up a care package to send to her this week. In the care package I’m including a book of inspirational quotes that I made. I found the quotes online, printed them out, then I cut them out and taped them onto designer paper. I put those into a scrapbook and I put alpha stickers on the front that spell out “FAITH.” I’m also including some bath salts and two lunchtins, one for each of her daughters. Her daughters are around my daughter’s age so in the lunchtins are a small stuffed animal, crayons, and a princess coloring book.

Break from Friday

This was originally supposed to be your crafty Break from Thursday, but that flew right by me and it’ll just have to be your crafty Break from Friday.

Next month is October and as I’ve said, we always do Halloween up big at our office. Last year I found out about BOO baskets and I started it over here. It was so much fun. The idea behind the BOO is you give someone some treats with a poem and picture of a ghost. They then give to two (or however many) other people, and so on. A lot of people do this with their neighbors. Monday, October 1st, I’ll be giving out the ones for this year at our office – to help get us into the Halloween spirit.

There are several poems out there and I’m sure if you did a google search for them you would find plenty. Here are a couple that I have found (I changed some of them from saying neighborhood to saying office):

The Phantom has struck at your office today

And now it’s your turn to help it on it’s way.
The traveling ghost who can’t quit
He needs your help, just for a bit.
This phantom enclosed should go on your wall

So this ghoulish creature will haunt you no more.

Take treats to two coworkers who’ve not yet been haunted.
Do this in ONE day so you won’t be daunted.

The phantom should make the rounds till Halloween night

When the haunting spirit will take his flight.

Copy this note and phantom without delay

And the scary spirit will be on it’s way.

Here’s another one:

The air is cool, the season fall,

Soon Halloween will come to all ghosts and goblins,spooks galore

Tricky witches at your door.

The spooks are after things to do,

In fact a spook brought this to you !!!

The treats that came with this short note,

Are yours to keep, enjoy them both .

The excitement comes when friends like you,

Will copy it & make it two,

We’ll all have smiles upon our faces,

No one will know who “BOO”ed whoses places !!

Just two short days to work your spell,

Keep it secret, hide it well.

Please join the fun, the seasons here.
Just spread these “BOO’s” & Halloween cheer .

You have been BOOED! Please keep it going by following these directions:
Enjoy your treat
Place the BOO sign somewhere visible, so that everyone knows that you have been booed
Within 2 days, make 2 copies of this note, make 2 treats & 2 BOO signs
Secretly deliver to 2 co-workers without a BOO .

Another one:

The air is cool, the season Fall
Soon Halloween will come to all
The spooks are after things to do
In fact, a spook brought this to you
“BOO” is a shield from witching hour
Just hang it up and watch its power
On your front door is where it hangs
It wards off spooks and bats with fangs
The treats that came with crypted note
Are yours to keep, enjoy them both
The power comes when friends like you
Will copy this and make it two
Then others here among our friends
Will give warm fuzzies that do not end
We’ll all have smiles upon our faces
No one will konw who “BOO”ed whose places
And don’t forget a nifty treat,
Like something cute or something sweet
Please join the fun, let’s really hear it
And spread some “BOO”s and HALLOWEEN SPIRIT.

Here are the BOO baskets. A lot of the items in the basket were from dollar sections.

To get an idea, here are the two “signs” I included in the BOO baskets (the first is the poem and rules and the second is the Boo sign to hang up so people know who has and hasn’t been Boo’d).

Happy Haunting!!

Getting Over Thursday

I think that Thursday is the hardest day for me. I work a regular Monday-Friday, 8-5 workweek. For some reason by Thursday I feel done. I’m just done with the workweek. I just want to be home with my family, wanting to be able to spend more than 4 hours a day with my daughter before it’s bedtime.

So let’s start this Thursday off right, hoping it passes by quickly and the weekend is here so that I can have proper non-work time (not that I don’t like my work, I actually do like my job – I just like my home life better).

Everyone has their own way to relax – I craft. It’s fun. I get to just relax and be creative. Here’s a quick, fun, cute and cheap craft gift to give. I’ll be giving these out at work today (except for the ones that say “LOVE;” those are for my wonderful, loving husband).

Take regular address labels, load a document of them onto Microsoft Word (I used Avery Labels 5160). Decorate. You can make a background in another program, or even a picture, and paste it (make sure to measure the size you will need to make it for the label). You can put in text over the middle of the label. For mine, I opened up a new document in Adobe Photoshop, added a layer of lavender, then added a texture in the blending options. I then saved it as a jpg and inserted it into the address labels as a picture.

Have fun with it. There are so many ways to decorate them. When you are satisfied with your labels, print them out.

I added text over my design and ended up with these labels.

Buy a bag of Hershey’s Nuggets (they’re yummy anyway – you know you want some).

Peel off the address label and use it to cover the chocolate.

Let your baby help. This is an easy craft for little ones to help with (while they help themselves to some chocolate, always a bonus). To personalize the labels more, give your little some crayons and a blank label page and let them draw their own labels!!

Here are the finished chocolates. Put them in a cute box to give to someone special.

Here are Chloe’s finished chocolates. She gave them to her daddy.

Next Thursday: Personalized letters.

Stamps and Harry Potter

I’m going to be talking about Harry Potter in this entry, so if you haven’t read Book 7 yet – what are you doing reading this? Go read that book!

Crafty Stamper

I love doing crafts. I love planning parties, decorating, just making stuff. The great bulk of what I do includes stamping. It’s fun for me. So for a while now I’ve been on the hunt for adoption related stamps. Last week I found a couple of cute sentiment stamps. I plan on doing our son’s lifebook mostly in digital, but I do want to handmake a couple of pages myself. Of course I had to play with my new stamps! Here’s the first card I’ve made. More to come.

Finally, Harry

There are so many things in book 7 that I couldn’t possibly cover all of my thoughts, but here are a few (not in any particular order):

• Epilogue. . .boo.
• Omygod! E was right! Okay, not “omygod she’s right.” I meant, omygod, Harry was a horcrux. I swear my mouth was hanging open for a long time after I found that out. I totally didn’t see it coming.
• I really think these books would be fabulous as a mini series. I hope that years down the line they decide to do that because that would rock.
• I cried a lot. Pretty much from Dobby’s death and on I was doing nothing but crying or gasping.
• I’m a little unsure about how I feel about Dumbledore not being perfect, in a very big way, making very big mistakes.
• Harry is a true hero. I think I could feel my heart swell in pride when he marched to his death.
• Is Harry related to Voldemort? It was something that wasn’t explained thoroughly, just little hints. Harry is a descendent of I. Peverell (spelling?) due to his having the invisible cloak. Voldemort’s family is from the brother who had the ring who is the brother of Harry’s ancestor.
• Yay! Percy’s not a *insertswearwordhere*
• The winner of total hatred to total endearment goes to. . .Snape. I honestly wasn’t a fan of Snape. In fact, I wasn’t a fan of Snape until I found out what his patronous is.
• I HEART NEVILLE. He is. . . a hero. I knew he had to do something big. Killing Nagini was perfect. In fact, the fact that he had been fighting all year is perfect. And the fact that he is now the Herbology Professor is perfect.
• My second biggest cry came when McGonagall was the first to cry out in pain when Voldemort showed everyone that Harry was dead.

And my first biggest cry is tied with my absolute favorite moment in the book.

When Molly Weasely killed Bellatrix. For 6 books, and 3/4 of book 7 we’ve watched Molly sit and worry and cry and watch her family die and get harmed. It had to have been so hard on her. So when she came to Ginny’s rescue and killed Bellatrix

- NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH -

for all the pain her family has had to suffer. . .I’m getting tearyeyed just thinking about it.

Project One Done

I have a box full of unfinished projects. I go to Michael’s and see something and just know how cute I can make it. So these unfinished projects all begin to build up. Now that I’m on vacation I’m finally able to take time to dig deep into the box and start finishing things. Here’s the first. It’s already hung up in the toy room. I hung it up high so that there’s room under it to add our next child’s name too.

Nerves, Peek A Boo, and Cleaning Frenzies

I’m a bundle of nerves. There are a lot of things going on that are on the verge of happening. And I tend to stress out quite a bit when there are big things going on and they haven’t happened yet. They are hiring a new boss at work. I have all sorts of projects at work that are just. . .not quite there yet. I have our meeting with our social worker Thursday morning.

Speaking of meetings. I need to get going with my cleaning frenzy. There’s so much that I want to do before our home meeting. Cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning. That and hanging every picture I’ve been wanting to hang for the past year since we’ve moved in here – along with any home projects I have. We desperately need to clean our sofa – and by clean, I mean it needs to be blasted with soap and about a few hundred quarts of bleach. Who told me a beige couch and a baby were a good idea? Do you have any idea how many chocolate/marker/fingerprint stains a child can put on a beige couch in a year? In all honesty, it’s not a very pretty sight.

In less obsessive news, I’m learning how to digital scrapbook. After falling behind on my scrapbooking (I’m still not done with Chloe’s one year scrapbook, and she’s, um. . .three), I figured digital was the way to go. I’ve made 3 pages in two days! It’s fabulous. My goal is to be caught up with Chloe by the time we get our referral and I’ll be able to start on his scrapbook without being too stressed out. Here’s the 3rd page that I’ve made digitally:

On a Hunt

I’ve been on a hunt to find stamps to use in the lifebook I’ll create for our child. I haven’t been able to find good stamps that I feel relate well enough. On a whim I went to a small scrapbook/stamp store and there were two that I fell in love with, the first a dragonfly stamp and the second a sentiment stamp that says, “I’ll love you until the day after forever.” Although they aren’t directly related to adoption I’m sure they will fit perfectly when creating the lifebook. And, of course, I had to play with my new goodies. . .

In other news, there’s no news on our adoption. I know all the paperwork is in as of last week, so I’m just waiting for a call from our social worker.

___________________________

Very suddenly Chloe has reverted back from the potty and doesn’t want to go on it. She was doing so well, then stopped wanting to do it. The problem hasn’t been that she doesn’t want to because I am fine with her trying in another month or so when she’s more ready. But she doesn’t want to go in a diaper either. She’s trying to hold it and it’s making life just plain miserable for her. We feel bad, but have already tried everything we could. We’ve tried talking to her about it, tried introducing the potty as something not scary, tried rewards, tried being positive. Nothing is catching and it’s been a couple of weeks. Poor thing has her stomach in pain because she keeps holding it when she has to go.