Sympathy Card

Unfortunately I had to make another sympathy card this week.

I made a similar one for my cousins fundraiser a couple of weeks ago and I now I really like this layout/paper for a sympathy card because it could be for a man or a woman. maybe I will have make up some more for my stash o' cards ")

Lilacs Already?

We went out for an evening walk tonight and could smell these down the road. I can't believe that they are already blooming.

Inspiring Mother's Day Giveaway

Want to win these awesome items for your mother or yourself?

Go to Inspiring Ideas and enter to win, you have until April 26th! or you can find them at all Hallmark Gold Crown Stores

Birthday Bear Card

We made this card for the other sweet little boy turning 2 this weekend.

Just a simple and cute little bear floating away on balloons.

Robot Birthday Card

We have a double birthday party on Saturday. Two brothers born two weeks apart sharing one party.

We made them two different cards and here is the one we made for the sweetie turning 5. I'm not sure why it is, but I think little boys need a robot birthday card these days. His theme is a super hero one, but I don't have any super hero stamps so hopefully a good robot with suffice.

I printed this groovy graph paper on my home ink jet printer from a free printable I found online(I will have to find out who it is and add a link). There were six cut-outs to a page and I just cut out the one I wanted and stamped my little robot in the middle. I colored him in with Prisma Colored Pencils and then I went over it with a little Gamsol to smooth it out a bit.

I cut out the outer blue square thing with my new Spellbinders Nestabilities and then I added the shiny star sticker and the dark blue Rhinestones to the peaks.

I stamped the "Blast Off" on the front and then drew on the sewn-look border, I stamped a happy birthday message in the inside. I also stamped a "shooter" on the envelope and colored it to match and drew a "bullet path" dotted line.

Homemade Laundry Soap

Lately I have been seeing a lot of recipes for homemade laundry soap on the blogs I check somewhat regularly. One of the sites that I saw it on was Pea Pod Creations, but I decided to Google it and see just how hard it would be.

Turns out it is really quite easy!

All that you need is:

*A box of Borax(this is new style packaging)

*Super Washing Soda

*Fels Naptha

Walmart had the Borax and Cub Foods(here in MN) had the Washing Soda and the Nels Naptha stuff, all found in the laundry aisle.

First I cut down the Fels bar into smaller pieces so it wouldn't overwork my food processor.

Then I used the grating blade and chopped it down, I think you can use a hand grater but I wanted to get it done quickly. I'm sure there is a way to grind it even smaller...

Then I added:

1 cup of the grated Fels Naptha

1/2 cup of the Borax

3/4 cup of the Washing Soda

and mixed it well.

Here it is all jarred up and ready to use! 1-2 Tablespoons per load, won't get foamy like other detergents and will wash A LOT of loads. It appears to only cost penny's to do a load with this stuff.

Price Breakdown

Borax -$2.98

Washing Soda -$2.57

Fels Naptha -$1.07

----------------------------------

I grated the whole bar of soap and it was enough to make 3 batches of the above recipe.

Raffle Basket Cards

Our school had their annual Bingo Night last week. They also do raffle baskets that you can buy tickets for a drawing. There were some really great baskets to try to win!

Our Kindergarten class made up a Tea themed basket, but I thought we needed some handmade cards to add to the loot :)

I made up a dozen assorted cards & here they are:

Some of them are similar to the ones I made for my cousin's Silent Auction for their Catholic School. They were fun and easy to reproduce.

*******

I am also working on some other crafty projects that hopefully I can post soon!

Como Zoo Conservatory

We had Spring break last week and one of the days we went to Como Park Conservatory in St Paul. It is a zoo and conservatory and lots of fun! We usually get there a few times a year.

Here are some of our pics from the day - Sophia took most of them.

They had just switched it to the spring flowers and we were loving the bright colors!

Stopping to smell the flowers

Funky trees and leaves galore

Orchids

The funny thing is, this is the closest we got to a picture of an animal!

A penguin sculpture.

Crazy Eyes

These are the Easter Eggs that my mom colored with the kids this year.

I'm not quite sure where she found the crazy face kit, but the kids sure thought it was fun to make all of those silly faces!

When it came time to eat them, no body wanted to peel them apart....