easy wrap

Remember when I said I was inspired by the grocery store?

Well I did use them on my Christmas cards (post to follow next week)…and I also used them for some easy wrap for my teacher gifts.

I was able to get them coin purses and matching lanyards from one of my favorite stores. (on sale…sahweeeet).

I packaged them up in some old plastic boxes I had. I have had these forever in my stash. I bought them eons ago to hold notecard and envelope sets. I wish I could link you…but I have no idea where I got them.

I cut a strip of the paper bag and wrapped it around the box, tied a big grosgrain bow and crafted a quickie tag from the extra paper and prints left over from our Christmas cards.

After I took this picture I added a Thicker initial for each teacher.

Viola! Simple, easy and cute.

Are you ready for the holidays? I’m drowning…but it’s going to get done!

Kristen

another card for you…

I haven’t been completely ignoring my big box of Green Tangerine Kit Club goodies…

I made this card for one of the teachers at school…the room mom had all the kids sign it and included it with the group gift we all chipped in for.

I thought this was a great idea: she asked all the families who wanted to, to chip in their budgeted gift amount. Each family did their own amount based on what they wanted to do. In the end the teacher got a basket with $50 to her favorite restaurant, $50 to a teacher supply store and $40 to a very nice nursery in town. Some other families just donated what they were giving her anyway (like Pampered Chef items, etc) and the mom organizing pulled it all together nice and cute with this card.

Speaking as a former teacher, I would have been so excited to receive an end of the year gift like that!!

I’ll share another card later this week…and no, I haven’t forgotten about my promise of 12 on the 12th! :)

Kristen

simple tags

Ack! I have something creative to share!

Even though I’m not super motivated to plan layouts and play…I still hop in my scrap office at least once or twice a day to fiddle around.

These are super simple tags that I put together for the aides in my oldest’s class. I just corner rounded a white piece of cardstock, wrote a little something and then popped a piece of American Craft summer flair on them and drew a stitched circle. Easy Peasy.

The teachers got a tag with a bit more effort…but not much. :)

These are Jenni Bowlin initials slipped inside of a glassine envelope. I popped an epoxy accent on the outside and then put a red brad in the corner and tied them on. Super easy once again.

What do you do when you are looking for an easy tag or card for a gift?

BTW…I think cello bags, bright tissue and some cute ribbon can make a super simple gift look super fabulous, how about you?

Kristen

wherefore art thou?

Ah…has anyone seen my creative mojo? It’s missing in action, my friends.

I’m actually okay with it…just riding the tide, because I know it’ll come back to me soon.

But with it, my blog has been a bit neglected as well. Sorry about that.

I think I have a few ideas of why it’s hiding right now…

* It’s the end of school…May is a crazy, crazy month, no? The activities ramp up, as do the projects and help that the teacher’s need. Forget trying to do cute, end of the year gifts. Luckily I made them cute wall hangings for teacher appreciation so for the end of the year I found some adorable handbags from my favorite store…on sale…bonus!

* I have a bit of a new obsession…my running. Seriously. I never, ever thought I’d be a runner. In fact, I swore up and down I wouldn’t be last year. Here we are one year later and some days all I can think about is my next run. Um, who am I?

I’m trying to be smart and follow training programs to avoid a common beginners mistake of running too much.

I invested in a foam roller to help my muscles prepare and recover from runs. (p.s. if you are  a runner and haven’t used a foam roller yet…oh my goodness…you MUST. I actually want to give the inventor a huge kiss on the mouth…that’s how much I like how it makes my muscles feel)

I am on a high from my longest run ever this morning…4.7 miles with the jogging stroller! I actually wanted to do 5, but S man was being so good and we were right near the park and closing in on Kinder pick up time so I acquiesced to him and gave him 20 minutes park time as a reward for being such a good running partner. He told me later that ‘the run was fun, mom’. :)

So I guess you could say my creative mojo might be tied up in my brain by my thoughts on running. We’ve got another 5k coming up and I know I’ll have a new personal record…I’m so excited!

But here is something that might bring my mojo back…

The May kit from Green Tangerines!

It will be her last kit until the store re-opens since she is going to concentrate on getting the store up and running again.

I just love the colors in this kit and the buttons are so stinking cute!

Hopefully I can find some inspiration here to pull together a layout soon!

Until then…I’m off to Open House at the boys’ school…there’s another end of year task to cross of the list. I actually love going, even though I’m at school all the time, it’s fun to see all the displays and have the boys show me things that they are proud of.

Have a great weekend if I don’t pop in here before then…I’m hoping to preview the course for our 5k…

Kristen

another little gift

Okay, first let me apologize. I’ve read through my last few posts and realized that I’ve made a ton of spelling or grammar errors. Hello? I’m either (a) way too tired and must go to bed earlier or (b) chatting with my kids while I’m trying to do blog posts. I’m thinking it’s probably a bit of both.

And then, I realized I promised news about the store in the last post and did deliver. HA! So a little birdie told me that Kelly is still in talks with the bank that now owns the strip mall. It’s looking quite promising…as in they could re-open before the end of the year! Yesiree! That puts a smile on my face. It’s been hard not having the store nearby.

So back to the gift I made.

Last Monday was our last meeting of MOPS at Bayside. I have been in MOPS since my oldest was 4 weeks old. He turns 9 this summer. Yikes. I still love it though. MOPS stands for Mothers of PreSchoolers and it’s a great way to get a break from your little ones (they are cared for by loving teachers) and get some adult talk in. We have crafts, speakers and general fun. It’s obviously had an impact on me…10 years later I’m still eager for the next semester to start.

This upcoming one will be my last year though. My youngest is entering preschool and it’s time for me to get more involved in the school age stuff. How sad. I think I’m ready for it, though.

So back to this past Monday. We like to honor the girls that are moving into a new season of their lives…the one where they aren’t dealing with the dirty diapers and late night feedings. There were three girls in our group who’s last kiddo is entering their last year of preschool or Kindergarten. I was in charge of that part of the morning this year so…

I pulled out my Lemon Grass goodies and got to work. I picked up frames from JoAnn’s on sale and slipped in a simple design. Each one was different using different flower die cuts in the Lemon Grass kit.

The verse is “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under Heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

I’ll be back tomorrow with some fun stuff I’m playing with this week!

Kristen

teacher gifts

Today is Teacher Appreciation Day…do you celebrate at your school? Even when I was teaching (I taught elementary aged kiddos in East Los Angeles for nearly 8 years prior to being a stay at home mommy) I thought it was odd that there was an appreciation day well before the end of school. Most parents liked to show their appreciation the last week of school. Oh well.

The school my kiddos attend is celebrating it this week. So I decided to whip up a cute little wall hanging for them using stuff I had on hand.

Cosmo Cricket goodies that I picked up at Green Tangerines before they closed. The Boyfriend line has some cute school-themed papers that I knew I’d put to good use.

I pulled out the ones that I was most interested in. Sorry about the blurry photo…not sure what I did there.

I pulled some chipboard out of my stash…first initial of the teachers’ last names. I spread some glue on the front of the chipboard letter, adhered the patterned paper, then used a craft knife to trim around the end. Finally I took an emery board and distressed the edges for fun.

Then I pulled it all together…adding a cute phrase with the letter stickers. When I was teaching one of my cutie students brought me a plaque that said “Home Sweet Classroom”. Her dad had carved it out and then she helped paint it and her mom sealed it. It held a prominent place in my classroom and is now packed away. I should pull it out and post it here so you can see how darn cute it was.

Originally I was going to get a little frame to distress for this 6x6 gift…but then I passed 6x6 canvas and I liked that idea better. So I ModPodged the paper to the canvas and painted the edges in a coordinating color. I figure they can hang it on the wall or prop it up on their desk.

The boys helped with little thank you cards that I attached to the top of the cellophane bag.

They are all slightly different. I love how they turned out!

Want some other ideas? Here are some links I found while looking for inspiration. Any of them would be super cute and easy…

Wooden Monograms

Crayon Jars (I’ve done this before and filled it with jelly beans and a gift card)

Note Card Sets (from Valentine’s day this year)

Soup in a Jar (a Christmas idea)

Note Pads (pricier, but just a click away….I did these one year in a time crunch)

Colored Pencil Monograms (this has been in my idea file for a while…some day I’ll do it!)

Pencil Sharpeners (just found this a few weeks ago…so cute!)

Fun website with tutorials…givers log (you will not be disappointed in this site, I promise!)

 

So…what did you do for your teachers this year? Quite honestly, as a teacher I can say that the things that have meant the most to me over the years cost the least.

…Hand written, thoughtful thank you notes

…Drawings from my students…my favorite have been portraits of me…so fun to see how they see me. :)

…An invitation to lunch in their home, or an offer to bring me lunch at school. A home made meal during the school day was awesome!

 

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!

Kristen

a gift to share

Sorry, not a gift for you guys…but rather a gift I put together last week.

Hubby called to say he needed a baby gift for one of his employees. Fine with me, I like to shop. Problem…he needed it that night.

So off I went with the boys to pick up a gift. I love Target. And I love that they are carrying Paul Frank items. Sigh. This kind of stuff makes me want babies again. Almost.



Then my creative juices started flowing. I thought back to the stack of Little Yellow Bicycle papers I had sitting in my stash. I LOVED this line (it’s retired), but the reality is that my boys are getting older and I’m not doing a whole lot of baby pages. So I thought I’d make a cute little brag book for the new family. A quick walk down the scrapbooking aisle in Target (mine isn’t that elaborate) and I walked away with a plain ole plastic photo album for a buck!



I just started cutting up my stash into 4x6 pieces and slid them in the album. Cut a few strips to add as embellishments, add some journaling cards (the orange ones are on the back side of one of the safari papers, the brown ones are by Pebbles, Inc.) and some number journaling spots (by Jillibean Soup) lastly some brown cardstock and Thickers and there you have it…a quick brag book that new mama can throw in her diaper bag.
 

The journaling cards are meant as a place to quickly jot down new milestones or fun notes about the baby at that age. When she has time (ha ha!) she can transfer it to the ‘official’ baby scrapbook…but in the  mean time she has a cute place to store all the things she wants to remember.




Then I had to pretty up a gift bag I had on hand…



  I hand cut the animals out of the paper…quick and cute. This line had some adorable chipboards or stickers or something, but I didn’t have any left…only the paper so I made due.



The whole thing, including the shopping, probably took me about an hour and a half to do. Super simple, but now hubby had a cute gift to give. As soon as I came out of the office with it, hubby just laughed. He knew he’d get much more than a last minute gift!
Kristen

Happy Monday…

So I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth…I’m sure you were looking for the last two days in my week…I DID take pictures. I just was busy with life so I didn’t get a chance to upload, etc.

I’ll share my thoughts on the whole week later today and then we’ll get going on putting it all together…

For now I want to share with you a quick and easy gift that I put together this weekend.

My good friend, Carrie, had a big birthday a few weeks back and a group of gal pals got together at a spa to celebrate her yesterday. (BTW…if you’re local, Serenity Spa in Roseville is lovely and they do great little parties!)

I wanted to bring a little something to celebrate her that she could take home so I asked everyone to email me a few words that described her. Then I went to wordle.net and plugged in the words, clicked on the button and there you go…instant word cloud!

To make her name stand out, I typed it more than the others. Those directions are on the website…

You can play a little with the random placement, font and color scheme.

The hard part is the printing, because the software doesn’t allow you to customize the size and stuff. So I converted it to a .pdf using this free .pdf converter. You have to install it on your computer and add it as a printer choice…then instead of printing to your computer you choose the .pdf and it creates the document to save.

After it’s a .pdf, you can open it using Adobe and then print it to the size you want it.

It was easy, I promise. But the end result was such a tender keepsake for a good friend.

The frame I had on hand…I had made it a while back and didn’t end up using it. It was a plain wood frame from Michael’s that I just painted with crackle paint. Another easy project.

Some friends at the party talked about using this idea for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day…I think I might too.

Kristen

He is risen

Christ is risen indeed…

We’re having 16 people over today to celebrate. I put together these little baskets (purchased at WalMart) to use as place cards.

Happy Easter to all!

I’ll be back tomorrow with more March kit goodness…

Kristen

valentines for the teachers

So here’s what I ended up with for the boys’ teachers today…simple and cute…right up my alley!

I had these little note card and envelope sets from back when I was demonstrating Stampin’ Up! I came across them in my drawer and thought I should use them.

Each teacher got a set of 5 little note cards with envelopes (they have a scalloped edge…love that!) plus a handful of Valentine’s candy. Tie it up, attach leftover tags from the kids’ valentine’s and there you go!

The paper is actually from Basic Grey’s Christmas line: Eskimo Kisses. I loved the green and pink! I just punched out a whole bunch of circles and went to town.

They were all the same…time saver! And I used a similar look that I used on the front of my grandparent valentines…lifted from my friend Brenda (she used it on this card).

Wouldn’t you love a little set of mini note cards like this?

I hope you have a good weekend…we’re getting ready for a trip. I love the trip part…don’t love the packing and driving!

Kristen