justem: little bits of this and that

Spruce up your holiday packages...

Good morning!  Last week I had a post up on the Pebbles blog featuring some quick and easy gift wrapping ideas!  As we all know, the holidays are crazy busy for most people, so I shared a few simple ideas of how you can spruce up your gift wrapping without too much time or energy! ;) Here is a little sneak peak...

 Be sure to check out the original post, as well as stop by the Pebbles blog to check out some of their new collections to be released at CHA!  I'm always excited to see what they have up their sleeve! :)  

Saying goodbye... {Pebbles Treat Bags}

Hi!  I apologize for my lack of blogging lately! We have officially lived in our new house for a week, and to say it's been chaotic would be a bit of an understatement. Although we've "lived" here for a week, we spent one day at a friend's for Thanksgiving, one day at a Badger football game (my team!! So glad we live closer now!) and one day back in IL gathering the rest of our belongings.  So, that means we really only had two "workable" days until my husband went back to work.  I'm having a hard time getting much accomplished - the daily tasks like laundry and dishes and chasing around my insane children seem to take up the majority of my time, and I'm lucky to get even a box or two unpacked a day.  I hope to have some house photos to share at some point!!  Until then...

Before we left Illinois, my daughter celebrated her last day of preschool. She has been going to that center since she was five months old, so leaving was incredibly sad for both us and th staff there . She wanted to do something special for her friends, so we decided to make some treat bags with her picture on them to say goodbye.    First we made a sign for her to hold with the greeting for her friends.  I let her pick the words, but I had help edit, because what she really wanted to say was, "It was fun playing at school with me. I'm sorry I have to leave you and go to a new house and a new school. Here is a bag of candy for you because I am saying goodbye...." Yeah. She had a novel planned out. ;)  I explained that we had to fit all the words on ONE piece of paper with a font big enough to read. So this is what we ended up with:

 My Canon Selphy worked perfectly to print out the small photos, and we used the cute little Pebbles treat bags from last season's Amy Locurto line.The bags were decorated with stars cut from patterned paper and washi tape from the Basics line.  Mirielle was in charge of choosing all the colors for each bag and was very particular about who got what color!  She wrote her friends names on the bags and we filled them up with candy.

Of course after we took the pictures she decided that they weren't quite embellished enough and by the time they reached her friends they also had some crayon drawn hearts and a few Wizard of Oz stickers stuck on them! ;)  She was super excited to give them to her friends, and it made me smile (and my heart ache a bit) when the mother of her best friend from school told me that she came home and immediately put the photo of Miri on their fridge. :)  I like to joke that outside of layout making, I'm a craft flunky. I don't make gifts. I don't make decor. I don't even make cards unless I have to.  Altered projects scare me. I've never quilted or sewn anything in my life. Costumes, wreaths and everything else that a craft person could potentially make just come from Target (man, I love that place). However, I will admit that in spite of the bittersweet occasion, I had a blast making these with Mirielle. Maybe you'll see some homemade Valentines in my future. Or maybe not. ;)

Family ABC's

Hi there!  Happy Friday! I'm up today over at write.click.scrapbook with  a fun and relatively easy project to create for kids. I thought I'd share it here, too!  My family and I live in Illinois, while all of our extended family lives in Wisconsin, most up to 7 hours away. We also have family in Georgia.  This means my kids don't get to see their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins very often.  I decided to create a little game for my daughter that could meet two objectives.  First, it would help her remember the names of all the faraway family members. Second, it would reinforce her knowledge of letters and letter sounds.  There are basically two steps to creating this project.

The family cards I made were super simple, and thanks to my resources, took me very little time to create.  I used my Canon Selphy printer to print out images of all our family.  I love this printer because I can select the "4-up" option, and it will automatically print four images on a single 4x6 photo. After I used my trimmer to cut them all apart, I adhered each photo to a blank Project Life journaling card.  The photos fit perfectly.  That's it. I told you...super simple! 

I purchased a set of generic library pockets from a local educational store. I used a bunch of papers from my stash to decorate them up a bit and included a single letter on each. I kept it simple and didn't spend a ton of time on each one, because let's face it, a three-year old would be playing with them...they are bound to get a little destroyed! ;) 

Mirielle and I reviewed the names of everyone on the cards.  Then I had her figure out what letter of the alphabet each name started with. She already uses a lot of name association with her letters ("J is for Justin") so this was a perfect next step.  Once she decided upon the first letter, she put the card in the appropriate pocket. The Project Life cards just happen to fit perfectly into the library pockets!

I have to say, I was a little surprised at what a hit this game was. Mirielle was so excited to see all her family members. She loved it immediately! We had a little trouble deciding if the grandparents should reside in the "g" pocket for "grandma/grandpa" or the pocket for the first letter of their first name. She decided we should go with the first name, which was probably a good thing or the "g" pocket would have been stuffed!

All on her own, she also started playing  a matching game with the family cards, matching same family siblings and spouses to one another. I was amazed at all the different combinations she eventually came up with. It really helped her understand the relationships between all our family members - things like who mommy's brother, who is daddy's grandma, who is cousin C's mom, etc.  I did have to laugh when she mixed up the great grandparent couples based on her oh-so-scientific method of who had the whitest hair. ;) I made the game a couple of weeks ago, and she continues to play it at least once a day.  As predicted, it already looks, though not destroyed, very loved! 

Let me know if you have any questions!  Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!