Slacker

This year has really thrown me off my game. I feel like I am perpetually behind and running around like a chicken with my head cut off whereas normally I am on top of things. It is a combination of both of my kids being in school and now having functions, permission slips, information forms, required meetings AND my husband's night schedule that has him either home and occupying me during the day OR home and sleeping requiring me to either be very quiet around the house or be out of the house all day. How's THAT for a run-on sentence? I won't be correcting it, because the chaos and lack of organization in that sentence accurately reflects the same in my life right now.

Normally this time of year, I have whipped up awesome Halloween crafts, cards, projects, treats and costumes but I have accomplished NOTHING this year. Nada. I am thankful that I somehow managed to delegate the kids' costumes to other people, because I don't know that I would have done it had the responsibility fallen to me. And that is so not me. I hate feeling like this.

The last crafty thing I accomplished was Zoe's Ice Cream Parlour birthday party in August. For today's Mama Kat's Workshop, one of the prompts was to "show us something you've created for Halloween" and I am going to link up this post from Halloween last year. I just wanted to have an explanation in case someone followed the link and then landed on my current posts.

If you have been with me for awhile, I apologize for the repeat, but if you are new.. enjoy!

Hopefully I will get my groove back soon. Has anyone seen it?

End of Year (FINALLY) Teacher Gift

Tomorrow is Noah's last day of school. ( I know- it's about time!) Here are the very simple gifts I made for his teacher and bus driver: ( you can click on the image to see it enlarged)

I took a simple canister jar from WalMart, filled it with pink lemonade mix, cut out some cute little flip flops with my Cricut, tied a pretty bow around it and added a tag. The pinwheels were easy too. I used paper I already had, a long straight pin, a bead and a pencil. Easy Peasey.

Happy Summer!!

Mother's Day Cards and Gifts

Warning: this post is picture-heavy.

A few weeks ago, I posted a couple of pictures from a recent photo shoot. Well, I didn't post the best ones because I had them printed in various portrait sizes and sent them along with handmade cards to the family for Mother's Day.

First, here are the cards I made for my stepmom, my mom, my grandmother, my sister and my sister-in-law:

Now, here are the photos that made the cut and were printed and sent as gifts:

Christmas Crafts

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you all that my kids didn't cooperate for the Christmas card photo shoot. I think I made the best of what I had. Here is my Christmas card this year:

front:

back:

For Noah's teacher and bus driver, I made gift boxes and a set of all-occasion cards to go in the gift boxes. I am really proud of myself this year. I did not have to buy one single thing to make the gifts... I used everything already in my stash of supplies!

gift box for bus driver:

gift box for Noah's teacher:

the cards:

Halloween- Basic Grey paper(Eerie) and Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge for spider and web

Summer: Die Cuts With a View paper and Life's a Beach Cricut cartridge for flip flops

Baby Card- Making Memories (Animal Crackers-Ella) paper and New Arrival Cricut cartridge for rattle

Winter- Basic Grey ( Eskimo Kisses) paper and Accent Essentials Cricut cartridge for snow flake

Valentine's Day- Basic Grey ( Bittersweet) paper, Fiskars border punch and Studio G-bird and "Happy Valentine's Day" stamp

Spring- K& Company paper, scallop punch and spring stamps by Studio G

Basic Grey ( Mellow) paper, leaf punches

Christmas- Basic Grey ( Figgy Pudding) paper and stickers, Cuttlebug for embossing snowflakes

same supplies as above

birthday- Basic Grey ( Lemonade), Martha Stewart border punch, Cricut Accent Essentials cartridge for flowers and Doodlecharms cartridge for ladybugs

Birthday Projects

I've been busy working on things for Zoe's birthday party. I initially wanted a girly theme, but since most of the guests will be boys, I decided on a gender-neutral Circus theme. I used CS3 to make the invitation:



I attached the invitations to boxes of animal crackers for delivery:

This is going to be the centerpiece. I needed something sturdy enough to hold the big swirlie lollipop, so I took a square glass vase I have and made a red cardstock sleeve to slip over it. I then cut stripes for the cardstock to give it a popcorn box look and used my Cricut to cut the "pow" shape and letters for "popcorn"

I wrapped boxes in colorful wrapping paper for the cotton candy and then used the Cricut again for the cute little sign.

These popcorn bags are what I used for the gift bags. They include small swirlie lollipops, tattoos, foam clown noses, play doh and blowouts.

The candy came from the Christmas Cheer cartridge.

Banner for Zoe's Birthday Party

I made the banner for Zoe's birthday party last night. The blue and yellow polka dot papers are K & Company, the balloon paper is Basic Grey, Cupcake and the rainbow polka dot paper is by My Minds Eye- Whiteout Collection. I used my Cricut Storybook cartridge to cut the letters and Paperdolls cartridge for the clown.

Convention Projects

I am finally finishing up the projects from CKC convention last weekend. I have one layout that I need to print out pictures for ( my printer is out of ink!!) but the rest are done.

The first class was Set for a Year- Creative Cardmaking. We made six cards and a gift box in class and had the instructions and materials to complete six more outside of class. ( as always, click on individual pictures to enlarge)

The next class was 1 Stamp, 10 Techniques. We made a card and two layouts, but as I mentioned above, I need to print pictures and finish up the second layout.

The last class was Canon Summer Fun. It was sponsored by Canon because they were promoting their photo printer. Most of the embellishments on this page are printed on paper and cut out using the Canon website, Canon Creative Park which has cute scrapbook kits you can print out for free. I love free.

Finally- the last day of school!

The last day of school has finally arrived. These are the teacher gifts I made for Noah's teachers. I either got the idea from Two Peas in a Bucket or from Cricut.com. I can't remember at this point. It's a combination of a few ideas I saw posted. I thought this one was the most practical. A lot of the gifts posted were really cute, but not very practical and I just pictured them getting thrown away in a few days. It doesn't matter if these get thrown away.. they're disposable gifts!



Now for the details. The plastic bags are just sandwich bags folded over. All of the paper used is DCWV Citrus Stack. The lemon cut is from the Life's a Beach Cricut cartridge. The scallop is a 2" punch and I used a Martha Stewart butterfly punch. The border punch is also Martha Stewart and the pinwheels are just made out of 4 " squares slit at the corners with alternate corners folded in. I stuck a straight pin through the middle and into a pencil eraser ( the pencil is the stick for the pinwheel) and covered the straight pin with the butterfly. Then I glittered them up with Stickles.