Preschool subscription smack down

I wasn't too impressed with day 1 of our "Berry Best Preschool" subscription.  I haven't looked ahead at all so I can only judge day by day....and today, day 2, was another bust.

It starts out so exciting, two activities organized into a little pouch with a theme...

Unfortunately,  the activities are just kinda dumb. The instructions say to have the adults cut out all the pieces - now I'm understanding why they sell a "pre cut" set for more $$$. I suppose I could try to have TC cut her own,  but scissors haven't gone well so far and I'm spooked. The learning activity was a worksheet - count the items and glue the number in the box. The cutting and gluing felt like unnecessary complications to make it a bigger activity. ..but it wasn't real educational or much fun. The artwork so far looks just like the mimeographed worksheets of my youth, these are NOT computer assisted I guess. Maybe that's whimsical.  It feels kinda slipshod.

Activity #2, the craft, was embellishing a snowy owl. Worksheet, 3 feathers, and a stick + feet to cut out and paste on. Eh. Meh. 

I felt like again this was more work for me than my preschooler, didn't occupy much time, and was very low quality.  It's not refrigerator gallery work. It came with just a couple facts about owls,  not enough to teach anything from, so I can't even really give it credit for being more educational. Carefree Crafts includes a set of facts about the month that are much more interesting and we'll curated.

and speaking of Carefree Crafts, they are KILLING IT this month. So much win. We're gonna do everything the first week and then be sad to wait for more. 

First up we stuffed a little teddy bear!  We were sent a bear "skin", fiberfill, and a little heart to stuff inside (like at build-a-bear workshop).  That went pretty smooth, then we didn't even have to stitch her up, it was velcro! Finally there was a little scrap of felt and a pattern to cut a vest, I did that and let TC color on it with markers for some additional mileage out of this craft. Her name is Pinky and she was a a hit:

2nd craft was to decorate a ladybug mailbox for Valentines.  This is exactly what I prefer in crafts right now for TC - stickers she can independently take the backing off (small motor skills + phenomenal practice with patience) nothing messy, no scissors or glue - and again TC loved it. Neither of these are projects we will keep forever but they will be played with some and ready to go once next month's projects come. 

If you are keeping track, Carefree Crafts is winning by a mile. I should be rationing the projects better since we only get 1-1.5 per week, but they are WAY more fun and interesting so far than the 6 per week we are doing with BBP. 

My Ipsy Glam Bag and Bijoux Box should arrive mid month, so we are just starting our subscription box odyssey.  Gotta do something to pass this long crazy winter! 

Berry Best Preschool Subscription + Other Crafting Meltdowns...

We had an utter craft-tastrophe this morning with at least a dozen mega meltdowns and a river of snot and tears, all caused by various craft frustration. Egads. It actually started with milk on the cheerios (I want it! No I don't! Now it's there! World is ending!) Three year olds are far from sensible (or maybe it's just mine who thinks the world is ending if I ask her to slow down, pause, or listen at any point), but this was a bit over the top. Scissors, stickers, coloring - it all just fueled the fire. Ugh.

Now that we've all calmed down (chocolate milk for her, Dr. Pepper for me, chocolate chunk cookies for all), here's a look back:

We're trying out a new monthly subscription sorta like our crafting one, this is from Berry Best Preschool and includes art + curriculum, supposedly a learning activity and a craft for each day. We ordered the 3 day a week subscription for February, and started it today. The "learning activity" was a worksheet to trace and practice making #9s. Sounds easy enough, and I'm pretty sure they do similar things at TC's daycare, so I didn't think twice.

Cue first meltdown.

I'm not sure what I did wrong here, but TC didn't want to follow directions, listen to directions, or allow me to demonstrate. It pushed her well over the edge into toddler tantrum territory. Not awesome. Also, she's terrible at making #9s, so I feel like I kinda failed too. Hmmm....

The "craft activity" was much more benign and one of the few things we accomplished today without tears (ahh, parenting....). It was a "puppet" to celebrate groundhog's day (which was yesterday, so kinda odd to make it today...). The package contained the groundhog printed on brown paper, and a paper bag. The instructions said to pre-cut the head and body of the groundhog, and allow kids to affix the pieces to the paper bag. I used some leftover glue dots (which I still hate, but were easier to use/cleaner than actual glue) and it didn't really feel like TC did much for this. Also, here's what it looked like:

Um....isn't the point of a puppet that the MOUTH looks like it is moving? this "puppet" splits head from body...WHY WOULD WE WANT TO DO THAT?!?!?! It makes no sense, and wasn't real fun to put together.

So, it's pretty early to judge this subscription, but day 1 was kind of a bust. I would guess we'll have a lot more tracing worksheets for the "learning activity" and I'm okay with that since it is a good thing to learn, but we'll have to come to a better working relationship with them (and each other). As for the crafts...very dubious so far. This one was sorta a dumb product AND not real kid-involved to make, so I give it pretty low marks.

Fingers crossed it gets better!

Hearts for Lucy

We've been messy craft machines around our house lately, and yesterday we made some pretty special pieces - Hearts for Lucy:

The Cupcake with her creations

Lucy is the youngest of 4 children in the Marlett family. Lucy is dying. Soon. Her parents have realized this and made the difficult move to comfort care, and part of the comfort they want to provide to their daughter (and their 3 other young children) is to fill Lucy's hospital room with hearts and cards and love.

I found out about their request from a Facebook link to a blog link to a different blog link - I hadn't read the family's blog or heard of them before I saw it, and honestly I haven't read much beyond the most recent posts even now,  but I knew immediately we would be on board to send some love. I can't imagine these circumstances, and I hope I never have to, but I can do crafts and I too have a love of mail. I can only imagine that a Santa-sack full of sparkly envelopes just might perk up the family's feelings, if only for a brief time.

We had just picked up some foam hearts and princess stickers thinking they might be useful around Valentine's Day, so I rationed a few out to TC and just let her go to town. I did the letters in Lucy's name and centered one of the hearts, otherwise it's all 3 year old chaos and excess. I think that works. It's sparkly and happy, and that's what we'd like to send to Lucy and her family. A few moments of sparkles and happiness.

We're sending them per the instructions on the family blog:

Our hope and prayer for Lucy in these final days, weeks…is that we'll surround her with love, wrap her in it, bathe her in it, saturate her with it! 
So...I have an idea.  Not unlike any other admission in which our girl celebrated so many holidays in the hospital, we need to decorate her room.  It's time to take down the Christmas decorations, and bring on the LOVE!  For the love of Lucy send hearts, send cards, send love notes to Lucy, affirmations of love…help us surround her with love.

The hospital address is:

Nemours A. I. DuPont Hospital for Children

℅ Lucy Marlett Room 3708

1600 Rockland Road
Wilmington, DE 19803  

You can read more about Lucy and her family, or their request at AllTheMarletts

Neverland Preview

The Cupcake turns 3 on Saturday and we're celebrating with a Neverland themed party. She loves both Peter Pan and the Disney Jr. Series "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" and I love the idea of combining pirates, pixies, mermaids, lost boys, and so much more into one party theme, so we are all excited. Since today and tomorrow are pretty busy, I've already put up most of the decor! It's kind of fun to enjoy it a while.  Here is a tiny happy sneak peek:

I'm already thinking happy thoughts :)  stay tuned to see how it all comes together!

Ink Refills - Failed Experiement

One of the things I miss the most about not working is the access to office equipment. I predicted it would be true, and it is.  I loved my copier. I loved scanning things with ease, including long documents or cards for digital scrapbooking. I miss printing. I miss the endless supply of toner/ink/post it notes that arrived to fill my every whim.

Paying for ink blows. I think we all agree, it's a big  expense  that gets put off until you end up in an emergency and you have no choice.

I thought I'd be a little proactive and try out ink refills now that Costco is offering them through their 1 hour photo. I had done some research online and found a few people that had trouble with their printer recognizing the refilled cartridges, but decided  it was worth the gamble.

WRONG DECISION.

I really wish I had only refilled one cartridge to try it out, but no, I refilled an XL black and all 3 color cartridges at once. The color ones were out out out, so I loaded them right back up and was pleased that there was no recognition problem. I printed a poster just fine and did a little celebratory dance at my success.

And then I tried to print another poster. And the colored ink got fainter, and fainter, and eventually stopped.

They don't work. 

Dammit.

I have yet to try the black ink, but for sure the colored ones were not worth the gamble. Even if they had worked it was only a few dollars savings per cartridge over new, definitely not worth the hassle. The black was a bigger savings, but I am doubtful it will work any better - though I'll try to remember to update when I try it out.

State Fair Bridal Shower - SkyRide Garland

Does this look like a party? WHOOO HOOO!


For decorations at our State Fair Bridal Shower we chose do do a few fun items that would have a lot of impact for our theme and fill the space with the fun fairtime atmosphere - and what evokes the State Fair better than the SkyRide:



We translated the iconic ride into a bright fun garland that zig zagged the party space:



Framed the windows:


And hung from the chandelier:


Sadly, there is no Cricut cartridge that cuts SkyRides :) So instead, I created my own template by blowing up a picture of the skyride, tracing the major lines of the silhouette, and cutting the shape with an Xacto knife:



I used that template to cut SkyRide gondolas out of red, yellow, green, and blue cardstock:





My mom used wire Christmas ornament hangers to suspend the gondolas along an old telephone cord so they still had some movement but hung securely over our heads. Midway style tickets purchased from the local party store made up the rest of our hanging decor:





The stage was set! Next up, check back to see the FOOD!
Click on the "StateFair" label to see other pics and projects from this State Fair themed Bridal Shower,

State Fair Bridal Shower - Name Tags

I think when you have a big bridal shower with several different "branches" of your family tree, it's always nice to have name tags. This shower involved the Bride's family from both her mother and father's sides, as well as friends from college and childhood, and there were so many guests it would have taken an hour to introduce everyone, so name tags were perfect. In keeping with the State Fair theme, I echoed the invitations with smaller rosette ribbons:

But THIS TIME instead of piecing them together, I cut them all out using my Cricut! I got one from my mother in law over a year ago, but haven't had much of a chance to use it until now, so I am having fun exploring the options. I have a hard time judging what each cartridge will do just from the pictures on the back of the boxes, but I just discovered if you go to the Cricut site you can click on each cartridge and many view the handbook in a PDF document, so you can see ALL the capabilities! Whoo hoo!

It was in searching like this that I came across the "Plantin Schoolbook" cartridge, and it's many award ribbon patterns. PERFECT!!!! Of course, this cartridge is not available for purchase and was only distributed as part of a bundle with the machine (and I wasn't buying another machine!). Ashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif luck would have it, someone on my local Craigslist had one for sale, and I picked it up immediately!



I used a rainbow of papers from my existing stash and the Roly Poly setting, and cut 6 from each 12" x 12" sheet of paper. I used the same paper punch to cut the centers from white cardstock as I did for the invitations, and a glue stick to attach.



We laid them on a table in the entry way with markers and pins, and guests could choose their own color. We left one as an example so people would know to write their name AND relation to the bride, which really helps people to mingle and socialize. We even marked the back of two name tags with a star, and those guests won a door prize (pie!).



The Cupcake had so much fun she knocked herself out:



Click on the "StateFair" label to see more pics & posts about this party, and stay tuned for additional pics & projects!

State Fair Themed Bridal Shower - Blue ribbon invitations

So stinkin' cute! That's how everything turned out for my dear cousin Carley's bridal shower. And now that the festivities have come to an end, I can share some of the crafty creations I contributed to the fete!

My mother/Carley's aunt hosted the party, but I'd say I acted as something of a "creative consultant" after proposing the State Fair idea. You see, Carley LOVES the Minnesota State Fair. LOVES IT. She makes it more than an event, it's a verb. She DOES the State Fair, from Machinery Hill to the Haunted House, Cheese Curds to Deep Fried Hot Dish, I'm pretty sure she even has special pants. And after a few years out of the state, (and more to come after the wedding) a Great Minnesota Get-Together was the PERFECT idea!

Starting at the beginning: Invitations! This was not my first inclination, I originally was running with sort of a corn dog bouquet theme, but it just wasn't working out, and in the end these blue ribbons turned out ADORABLE, so I'm glad I experimented a bit.



This was the first creative project I'd undertaken since The Cupcake's nursery, and the first time I've tried to accomplish anything of the sort since she came along - and it all went surprisingly well! I credit her swing with all of the success :) One day she conked out while swaying, and I sat down to cut out all of the pieces assuming someone else would need to assemble them...and when I finished, she was still sawing logs, so I started to put a few together...then, before I knew it, I was done! 43 of these pretty little rosettes I believe, in all different colors and patterns:



I used paper punches for all of the circles (the "ruffles" around the medallion are just a bunch of overlapping circles), and once I found the sizes that looked right together I created the "ribbons" to fit. I cut all of the "blue" parts out of various patterned paper from a 12" x 12" stack.

For the invitation wording, I started by downloading a pretty font from 1001freefonts.com (Calamity Jane) and laying out the text - this was the first time I'd ever printed on vellum and it worked GREAT, I'm definitely using that technique again. I like to use powerpoint to lay out my pages, I just measured my available space and set text boxes, then crammed as many on a page as I could to conserve paper when I printed. I cut them apart, and affixed everything with glue dots. For the back I cut another blank large circle from cardstock (same as the center front) and used it to cover up all of the double sided tape and glue dots holding the smaller circles to the larger one, and I ended up pasting a label with registry details on that circle as well.

We mailed the invites in large 6" x 9" envelopes, which are nearly the largest that can still go with one stamp. A few times I had splayed the ribbons too widely and had to bend a corner, but for the most part they traveled pretty well, and I was assured that everyone could tell what they were right away and start looking forward to the State Fair themed party.

More State Fair party pics to come, I promise!

Look, look, an actual CRAFT!

That I made! All in one sitting!
It seems like it's been a while, but I swear I'm not done crafting. I just rarely sit still long enough to complete a project these days, what with all the working + laundry + flying trapeze... But occasionally I do squeeze it in, like on Sunday when I went to a Stampin' Up workshop and made some really cool things.

I've come to realize that I'm actually a really crappy stamper. It's annoying, but getting frustrated about it doesn't make it any better - it just makes me want to do it less often :) But I have a few friends who are really into stamping, and they persuade me to try again every few months. This past weekend we did some techniques that didn't actually involve stamping images, which was music to my ears! Check out the beautiful boxes we made - and pay close attention to the green marbled paper on top:



Not only did we make the boxes, but I MADE that paper too! Well, not the paper itself I guess, but the design on the paper - we used a technique called "polished stone" to mimic marble, and I love how mine turned out! It's two shades of green stamp re-inkers, gold, and rubbing alcohol on shiny paper. And a lot of luck. I'm so impressed with myself!



The flowers are just various punches like the place cards I made for Al's wedding. I think I'll use this for a small gift box. We also made cards using the same technique (and a couple stamps - but I had more success than usual, so I'll try to get a pic of them up eventually).

Heather's Mailbag: Hello, Cupcake!

I've mentioned my cousin Holly before, she's an avid scrapbooker and queen of pretty presents. A few weeks ago she send me a delightful surprise in the mail, a chipboard album in the shape of a cupcake!



She had personalized it with images of my wonderful surprise party:



It's so stinkin' cute!



Each page is embellished too - she put a raised "30" in place of the candles on the cake page above. Such attention to detail!



Ahh, I can relive the fun each time I look through it :)

Thanks so much Holly, I love it!

"Literature" might be a stretch...

Could these book covers BE any more embarrassing?!?!?



Clearly it was time to consider making some book covers, ala 4th grade. Here's the step by step tutorial that I used to refresh my memory, and about 4 seconds later I had an easy mask for my terrible literature.

Before: woefully bad book you don't want people to see and judge you by (though you are not above reading it), and a piece of 11" x 17" paper. You can use any kind of paper you have lying around, this happens to be what I have access to. Paper bags are the old standby for their durability, but I'm really just looking to cover up the outside without damaging these (mostly borrowed) books:



Remember this ridiculous thing? I found myself with time to kill at a coffee shop last night, and this was the only book in my bag. I actually tried to hold it so that nobody could see the title and author. Definitely time for a book cover. 4 folds is all it takes - I didn't even need a scissor:



Voila! Formerly embarrassing books now cleverly incognito! I thought about writing something witty and misleading as an alternate title, but I kind of prefer the understated mystery of the plain white cover.

Kenyon books, you're next!

Flashback: Fiesta Crafts from the Vault

Hubby and I lived for a short time in the tiny little town of Walker, Minnesota. Have you heard that name before? Perhaps you are even attending this weekend's International Eel Pout Festival, which draws 10,000 (drunk) people to the ice. Sometime today they'll all stagger back to their real lives in Eagan and Wayzata, leaving a huge mess and a population less than 1/10th of that behind.

I didn't love living in Walker, let's be honest. I tried it, it wasn't for me, and I moved on. But damn, they had a great little Mexican restaurant. And that little Mexican restaurant had a great little pollo wrap. Mmmm. I miss that sandwich and it's bacony-chicken goodness. And every year that Mexican Restaurant had a Cinco de Mayo celebration, with which came a pinata contest.

Yeah, couldn't pass that up.

Year one was fairly impressive:



This guy is about 2 feet across. That's honest to goodness paper mache, the skeleton being a giant "punch ball" balloon with an accordion folded strip of cardboard for the "rays", all wrapped up in layer after layer of newspaper strips and flour paste. It took forever to dry so I had to do a bunch of thin layers, but it came out awesome. Then I decorated the front with tiny scrunched squares of bright crepe paper, dipped in white glue. That took WEEKS, at which point I ran out of time and totally phoned in the back. Oh well, I still got 2nd place. :)

My attempt the next year was much less exciting, though I did actually finish it:



The base was just a really big balloon, and my focus was more on the decoration (that technique with little paper squares takes FOREVER!) The "basket" is basket weaved crepe paper, and would have been way cooler with a strange little assortment of figures peeking out, maybe like these guys.

So if you ever go up there, and these are still hanging around (7-8 years later?), feel free to toss some interesting action figures into the basket. And don't look at the back of the sun, it just ruins the illusion. And also try the fried ice cream banana split, though they only have bananas once in a blue moon.

Cinco de Mayo is about 10 weeks away, which means this is the perfect time to start your pinata if you want to finish it strong! I can't say I really understand the holiday, but crafts + margaritas win me over every time.
:)

Valentines I should have made...

Adorable

Happy Hallmark - I mean Valentine's - Day!

How do you fight back against the consumerism and still have fun on a so-called "Hallmark Holiday?" By making your own cards, of course! I've never been huge into celebrating Valentine's Day, but hey, any reason to craft is a good one. And who is in love with these little guys? Me, definitely! Here are the rest of my Valentines:



I didn't send out a ton, so don't be offended if you didn't get one - hey, it's not like you send me mail either :)



I love how all of these turned out, both inside and out. For example, here's a front:



and it's corresponding inside decor:



The orange heart was where I wrote my little personal message, very simple and sweet. J'adore! Hope your V-Day is full of sweets and admiration.

Valentine Sneak Peek:

I've been waiting to share these cards until I send them out, but I'm terrible at keeping secrets and I really want something cute to post. This person leads a fast-paced commuter lifestyle, so I know she won't read my blog and ruin her surprise (unless she maybe checks it while stuck in the airport - in that case, Hi J! Check your mail!) So here is a sample of the Valentine cards I made during the DiGiorno party a couple weeks back - they're so cute! These are scans, so the color doesn't pop as well as a photo, and the glitter is a little funny looking, but you get the basic idea:



They're more "assembled" than created, the main pieces are from a pack of paper embellishments I found at Michael's. They were adorable and glittery, which made them basically irresistible, and I'm so glad I scooped them up! I used double-stick tape to adhere the pre-printed/glittered cut outs to textured colorful cards. I even embellished the insides:



I'm still no good at stamping, so I stuck with paper punches and I love the simple, slightly retro look. Just doin' my part to keep the USPS in business :)

Stuff that has gone down while I've been not posting...

I apologize heartily, dear Internet. And now for something completely different...POSTS!

1. I sold all of the painted letters from the Wonderland party. First went the big Marquee, then I just recently shipped off the Cheshire Cat and Mad Tea sayings. I had listed them very low, mostly I just wanted to find them all a good home and possibly kick back a little money into the pot for next year.



I used USPS Flat Rate boxes, thinking they were $8.95, like they were the last time I shipped something. THEY ARE NOT. THEY ARE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I was fairly perturbed to find out that AFTER the boxes were packed, addressed, and on the postal counter, they were actually around $15 EACH to ship. Craptacular. There goes any possible thought of starting the 2010 Halloween fund, I was lucky to break even. Post Office, I shake an angry fist at you.


2. I had our DiGiorno party, and it was fine. It's weird for me to have low key gatherings, I don't know "how." I always feel inadequate without goodie bags and decorations, but I'm working on it.

The pizza was good. I'll admit when I buy frozen pizza it's generally the $0.99 Party Pizzas or maybe a $2 Tony's, so this was quite a treat to get six $7+ pizzas. I got all rising crust varieties, and my favorite was the plain old pepperoni.


(This is not my photo...I have been as woefully inadequate at uploading pics as I have been at blogging...but according to flickr, this is a DiGiorno pepperoni pizza. It looks pretty much the same as ours did.)

The "Ultimate Supreme" (really? two dramatic adjectives? necessary?) was so heavy it started to fall between the wires in the oven rack while cooking, that was kind of weird. The same thing happened with the three meat, so I guess it's good to watch them or you'll lose a lot of toppings (bad) and have to clean your oven (worse). The cheese stuffed crust was just okay - not a lot of flavor, and once it cooled the cheese really shrank. Probably not worth it. I'd have the pepperoni again, or the spicy chicken, and I'd like to try the garlic bread versions. I also have a bunch of $4 off coupons I forgot to give out. Let me know if you want one.

Football was watched, crafts were made. Crafts which cannot yet be shared due to their gift-like nature, and me not wanting to ruin the surprise just yet (ooh, intrigue!). Perhaps I shall share in mid February instead. Though that is not a promise, as I am apparently untrustworthy when it comes to posting. *Hangs head in shame*

3. We officially cut the cord with Qwest, and I just survived my first 24 hours without Internet.



I felt an odd calm and lack of purpose without my computer on my lap last night, and I had a pile of messages to wade through today, but I'm still alive. I'll have to take it day by day :)

4. I was an hour late to work one morning because I started watching last week's Project Runway and couldn't tear myself away.



My commentary is this: Ping, WTF? It's getting old that they keep a weirdo around each season who is "inventive" and "modern," which are code for "crazy" and "unsellable." Let's get real.