Mom's Birthday Card

My mom's birthday was September 19 so I decided to make her a card. 

I got this chipboard at a yard sale for .50 cents

Then I covered it with scrapbook paper and used spray adhesive to stick it on

Next I wrote a poem in the pages

It read:

I often contemplate my childhood, Mom.
I am a mother now, and so I know
Hard work is mixed together with the fun;
You learned that when you raised me long ago.

I think of all the things you gave to me:
Sacrifice, devotion, love and tears,
Your heart, your mind, your energy and soul--
All these you spent on me throughout the years.

You loved me with a never-failing love
You gave me strength and sweet security,
And then you did the hardest thing of all:
You let me separate and set me free.

Every day, I try my best to be
A mother like the mom you were to me.

It took a little longer to make than I had thought so I had to give it to her late.  I think this may also have to do with this crafting kick I was on getting a little bit old.  Don't worry it will hit me again, but if I go awhile with out posting you know why. 

Yard Sale

I went to a scrapbooking yard sale this weekend and for those of you that know me well know 1. I'm addicted to scrapbooking and 2. I never pay full price for anything, so I love yard sales.  
I only ended up spending $8 because Brayden was with me and in a hurry to get to magic mountain and was rushing me the entire time. 
Here is what I got:

The item I am most excited about is the picture organizer ($3).  I have a new goal and that is to finish up 2009s pages this week, so I can have all my 2010 pictures organized and then put them out of the way until I finish the wedding and Disney. 

Last of the 3 projects I started

Here is my inspiration that I found on Pinterest:

So I found an Advent Calender at Hobby Lobby for $12.99 and used a 40% off coupon. 

I took all the boxes out and painted the sides and the front.  Then I took all the boxes and wrapped them in scraps of scrapbooking paper.  If you scrapbook always save your scraps! They come in handy. 

Then I used my cricut and cut out all the letters.  I tried to use some of my son's foam but I couldn't get it to cut so I ended up just using regular paper. 

Something that I did different because I am going to use this as a learning tool is I wrapped both sides of the box and put the upper case letter on one side and the lower case letter on the other.  I did this because say my son knows this is a G but doesn't know this (g) is also a G, he wont be able to just look beside it and see the bigger letter he will actually have to learn to recognize both upper and lower case letters.  If you are not making this for a learning tool I would not recommend doing both sides because it makes it harder to fit back in the slot. 

My finished product:

I flipped the h and x around so that you can see the lower case side. 
Here is how I use it as a learning game....
I take my chip board letters (from scrapbooking)

and hold up a letter, if my son knows what the letter is he gets to put it in the matching box.  If he doesn't I hold on to it. 
AND the great thing about this game... when he learns all his letters, he will have also organized all my scrapbook letters into their new storage box =)

A Gift for My Godson

While I was shopping at Hobby Lobby I ran across this in the clearance isle

It gave me an idea to make my Godson a little gift.

It was really hard to take apart so I thought my idea might not work out like I thought it would.

Whoops the edges ripped when I was prying it out of the frame. Guess I will just have to compromise. 

I painted the O red and the background gray and then added some of my scrapbook paper to the edges so that the ripped part was covered.  I used mod podge (which is my new found favorite item... why wasn't I ever told about this stuff?!) to glue it back together and finally added 4 Brutus the Buckeye stickers to the corners. 

The finished product:

 Lastly I found a cute little saying and wrote it on the back for him...



Counting Game

So I finished my 1st craft project from Pinterest.com
Here was my inspiration:

So I bought a piece of wood from Hobby Lobby for $1.47 (It wasn't on sale so I probably could have gotten it cheaper.)

Since the game is going to be for him, I let my son paint it

While he was painting I used some number stickers that I already had and put them on the clothes pins. 

I did both sides- One side the number had a teddy bear around it, so it was harder to read

After 3 layers of paint and letting it dry I used a ruler and a paint pen to make the sections. 

I didn't make the sections even since I was using stickers and some are bigger than others. 
After the pen dried I let Brayden dig into my scrapbook sickers and pick out some the I wouldn't mind using for this project

 And the finished product..............

After all that work it took him all of 2 minutes to put it together.  All well at least we had fun making it together. 

More Scrapbooking

I got inspired to do some more scrapbooking tonight....

I finished up the last of Halloween 2009

Then I finished Fall 2009

And did a little of Winter 2009

The pictures of the trees are the view from  my front window. It is so pretty.

I also made a trip to JoAnns today and bought some stuff for my next (non-scrapbooking project).  But while I was there I just had to pick up some more scrapbooking supplies, like ribbon... like I needed more ribbon.

I never use the ribbon I have, so I shouldn't buy more.  But here is great idea for ribbon storage.  I used foam board and wrapped the ribbon around it.   I have a couple hundred spools in there, it saves so much space. 

Night of Scrapbooking

I got in the mood to scrapbook last night after being on Pinterest.com all day. 

I used this layout as my inspiration

And from it I made two layouts of my own:

Making layouts when you do not already have the pictures seems a lot easier. But I haven't been to a beach in years and don't have a trip planned in my near future so I decided I should also create a layout for pictures I already have:

Working on the end of 2009s pictures!  All I have left is Halloween, Fall, and Christmas (which is a lot of pictures).  I was hoping to finish the year before I went to Disney, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen.  Maybe I will be able to go to a retreat soon and knock out a lot of what I am behind.