valentines a plenty

Why yes it is that time of year again. Okay maybe I am a bit early but now I can play with my Disney pictures and don't have to freak out over what to give the kids for Valentine's Day! Sad thing is I was looking for goodies to give the kids before Target even got any Valentine's Day stuff in!! They still had their storage stuff in the holiday section! Guess I was a little excited for this years fun.

We'll start with the kindergartners.... and if one of them is yours- don't let them see this post!! I want it to be a surprise!! 

I punched out circles in white and red cardstock. Stamped the heart on the white and a to/ from on the red and put them together.

Punched the holes with a heart punch. Was severely disappointed that the heart was upside down when I punched it!! I mean really??? Dumb punch. But I released and went with it anyways. 

I was going to do bouncy balls but I found bubbles instead!! Yahoo! Bubbles! I was very excited and snapped them up pretty quick. Thank you Target! Here they are all completed and ready to be handed out!

Then I had to make valentines for Alex's class. Pencils are always a good go to present in the classrooms because of the no candy rule in most classrooms nowadays. I used my Sybill (Silhouette machine) and cut out the three different heart patterns. That saved a ton of time!! Adhered them to some white cardstock that I cut and scored. Added the recipient's name on the front and stamped the sentiment on the inside. 

Attached the pencils with a bit of washi tape that I had in a red chevron pattern and had Alex sign his name.

And that is it! Valentines for three classes all bagged up and ready to go! Feeling pretty good about myself right about now!! Doesn't happen often so I am going to enjoy it.

valentine's day goodies

This year I have been working in Alex's classroom of amazing first graders and in one of the kindergarten classrooms for both the AM and PM classes (not to mention getting to hang in the art room once a week) and decided that I wanted to give Valentine's to all those kiddos. 

First came the decision as what to get them all. Since there is always a big demand for pencils in the first grade room, I went forth and found some cute ones at Target in their holiday area. Then somehow counted wrong and ended up with more boy pencils than girl pencils which did not work in a female dominated room. I then hit the dollar store and they saved the day for the girls!!

For the kindergartners, I decided on some fun colored super balls along with some foamie heart stickers. Thankfully I counted correctly when buying the super balls at Target (again in their holiday section) and managed to have a 'few' left over for my kiddos to have (or save them for next year!!)

Then came the decision of how to give these goodies to the kiddos. I decided on a pencil holder type card for the first graders. Below shows the inside of the card that I stamped. I also signed it for each of them.

I also stamped the front of the cards and added their names. I closed the card with some heart stickers I picked up at Michaels since I didn't like how they looked open. Yes I sharpened all the pencils since the students are not allowed to use the electric pencil sharpener in the classroom (sharpen pencils too much, push too hard etc etc) and that would not be fair to the teacher to have to sharpen all those pencils before the kids can use them.

This is a side view of one of the treats. I was pretty proud of myself!!

For the kindergartners, I decided to put their goodies into snack baggies and then add a tag. As I was surfing Pinterest (cuz everyone does) I found these so adorable tags. They seemed pretty easy so off I went. Below are all my love bugs set to be made into tags.

Here is the completed project! I stamped the sentiment onto the red paper and then attached them together with some floss I have. I added who it was to on top of the love bug. Perfect!!

And since I cannot forget the teachers... I made each of them a little bag to hold some Lindt goodness.

Hope your Love Day was a wonderful one!! xx

would you like cheese with those sneaks?

This is the first year that it really mattered what kind of sneakers Kira would be wearing in gym class. They take their physical education pretty seriously at the Junior/ Senior High School. I was at Target and ran across this great sneaks. Not only were they great colors for Kira, but they are so light! Seriously, they are lighter than the sandals she has been wearing all summer. Love that!! They are a specific running sneak so I think she won't have sore legs and such anymore. woohoo!

Anywho... here she is when I gave her these amazing new sneaks. My poor flash on my camera was taking FOREVER to work so the smile got a little forced and cheesy. And much to my surprise, she said we could leave the purple laces in the sneaks. I thought for sure we would be changing them out for the pink. Guess she does take after me a little bit!!

May your feet not hurt you today as you run the race.

air show at pease

Okay... hubby and I happened to be in Newington, New Hampshire when the air show was either practicing or having a family event. Not sure which, but there were planes flying all around overhead. They are quite loud in case you haven't been to an air show or even in the direct flight path of these planes. I tried to take some pictures of them as we were driving with my point and shoot camera. Let me tell you, the pictures are awful. So now you are wondering why I would want to share them with you all? It's just how I roll.

I took the liberty of writing on the photos where the planes actually are in the photo so you can see them. You are welcome. :)

Yes I have a Captain Mickey Sparrow antennae cover. Should have pointed that out in the picture too. Guess I will have to do that before I print these.

I probably could have gotten something a little better if I had taken hubby up on his offer to stop the van, but I really wanted to get to Target and get some more DVD sleeves to continue the fun we had been having. See this post to find out about DVD sleeves and all their awesomeness!

one happy organized mommy

I love me some organization. I mean seriously... who doesn't? Since the kids are growing up, I wanted to make their playroom a little more kid friendly and then maybe they would spend some time there playing instead of using it as a dumping ground. Since we never really did much to make it a playroom for them to begin with. 

First order of business was to figure out which pieces of furniture I could remove and live without. My eye went directly to the dresser that is holding the television and DVD/video player along with a boatload of videos and DVD's. It worked out great to put all the movies in the dresser since at the time, we didn't want Alex getting into all the DVD's and scratch them. You know the whole, out of sight, out of mind with toddlers trick. :)

He's past that stage so I started looking around to figure out where to put the large collection of movies that the kids have. I came across this amazing post in the most fantastical blog. Seriously, this woman is a genius and should be treated as a national treasure.

I found the sleeves and purchased one package as I wasn't sure hubby would join me on my adventure, but he did!! Love that. We then headed to IKEA and had a total blast buying furniture to fix up the playroom. More pictures of the transformation will be coming and pictures from our IKEA fun.

Today we worked on the kids movies. Holy Hannah did they have a ton. Seriously a ton! I picked up these two baskets at Target in their bathroom area as the ones in their storage area were not square but had angled sides which did not work. Here they are all put away in their sleeves and alphabetized since yes I am that anal.

View looking down on them. The movies in the right basket are all Disney. The movies in the left basket are the other kids movies and also include all the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD's as well as our collection of Pooh movies since they would not fit in the Disney basket.

And here are the amazing sleeves!! I was so happy that Target had them on sale this week and I should have bought all that they had in Danvers, Massachusetts since the Target near me only had two boxes when we went out to pick up more! We went through 100 sleeves and only did the kids movies. Crazy I know.

Now we'll have to do the adult movies. No not THOSE types of adult movies. Harry Potter, Pirates, Iron Man etc. Get your mind out of the gutter!! We did manage to pick up two more baskets and I ordered four packages of the sleeves off of Amazon.com since ordering them through Target online was twice as expensive. You can be sure that when I see these in a Target, I am picking them up. Hubby was so impressed with how many movies fit in such a small space. Go me!!

And a huge thank you to Jen at IHeartOrganizing!! Without you, I have no idea what I would have done with all those movies!!

couple projects happening here

I've been working on some stuff and sad to say not scrapping. But still being creative is a good thing. With my immense love of all things posted on Pinterest, I have been finding many projects and things to try. Some I may someday get to... others not so much but fun to have them if I ever feel the need. Anywho I found this one pin and knew I had to do it for Valentine's day. 

To start our crayon melting project, one must first strip a few boxes of crayons down to their bare naked selves. Big time hint here for anyone attempting this... use the cheapo RoseArt Crayons and not the Crayolas. Trust me. Those wrappings are down right frustrating to get off! Both of the kids gave up and left me to finish unwrapping four boxes of 24 crayons by myself. Oh the things I do for my kiddos. I left out the black and brown crayons since I didn't want the end product to be too dark and heavy feeling for Valentine's Day.

I found these heart silicone muffin trays in the dollar section at Target (they were $2.50 but so totally worth it) Here are the bits and pieces getting set to go into the oven. I believe this is a little bit before I had finished filling them in but was so ready to get them in the oven, I didn't take one right before cooking.

Here they are after I popped them out of the trays. I will say that I cooked them for about 17 minutes at 230 degrees. They are still kinda chunky looking and have since re- cooked them and they look much better. I need to take another picture of the whole collection for Alex's class. But I was pretty proud of myself for not only finding the idea on Pinterest, but actually doing it!!  I didn't scrub the trays clean since they were not that expensive and who knows... there is always next year!!

Now to figure out exactly how the tags for these will look. I have some ideas so that will be another post.

Then today, I dusted off my Silhouette (aka Sybill) and created a 100 cut out for Alex's 100th day of school celebration. We had started thinking we could punch out 100 Mickey Mouse heads and place them on a piece of cardstock. Which he thought was cool until he decided that would be a ton of work and hard on his fingers. Then he came up with the wonderful idea of 100 smiley face stickers! And wouldn't you know it, we had purchased such animals a few weeks ago on one of my shopping trips to Michaels. Even better, the package we purchased had 112 smiles in it!!

Sybill all done cutting. I bet she was quite happy to be plugged in and running. It's been way too long for her. I feel bad that I use her more for holding my agenda and my notebook than for cutting. What a waste!

This pile would be the reason that she is not used more often! I had to move all of this before I could cut since the paper has to be able to move freely back and forth. I need to clean my desk off in a big way. It's on the list. oh what a disaster. BTW... that is one small section that is overly piled up, the rest of the room looks about the same. oh the shame...

And here is Alex's project!! I glued the numbers down for him and had to help him get the stickers off the sheet (and they were hard for me and I have nails!!) But he put them all on himself. It really shows him. My happy little guy. We are ready for Tuesday!! (as long as there are no snowdays!)

Well... I need to clean up a bit around here. sigh... I don't wanna but I think I would like to have some order and then maybe I can be more creative with more space to work!!

medallion/ accordion flowers for halloween

I forget exactly which blog I was on when I came across mention of medallion flowers. That mention, took me to Google which found me this amazing you tube video by UKmaryanne. The music in the background is rather soothing as I was learning a new technique. And the flowers... so simple and amazing. I have not stopped making them in about a week. My husband thinks I have gone over the deep end, but I LOVE THESE!!

Here are some I was working on for a project that hubby insisted I create. LOL Okay, we were at Target and saw these really cute Halloween buckets in their dollar section (love that part of the store) and he asked if there was anything I could make them in to. I said I could but we probably didn't need them. As I was walking around the store, I decided that $3 would be a good investment in a Halloween decoration so back to the front of the store I went.  But I digress...

Here are some of my medallion flowers. I used the Cloud 9 Design Seasonal Stack that I picked up at Joanns (on sale) and my Martha Stewart scoring board. I will say I went through a bit of a crisis when I went to purchase this item. I am not a big supporter of Martha (won't even look at her stuff) but the scoring board price and the fact it comes with an envelope template.... it was not an easy decision. My wonderful twin helped me by saying that Michaels (where I purchased said board) had already paid for the item so really I was giving the money back to Michaels and not really to Martha herself. That did help and made me feel like I hadn't sold myself out. Then I find out that there is another scoring/ trimming board out there pretty much like this one. sigh... I should have held out.

Anywho... From the above medallions turned into the below decorations. Love how it all turned out and how they look. I did purchase some of the spider webbing at Walmart. This one is green and will glow in the dark with a black light. So if you have a black light, come on over and check it out. LOL

I am currently working on a large collection of these flowers to create a garland for the fireplace. Hoping to have that done by the end of the week. Promise to post pictures.