Convention Roomie Gifts

Before I officially begin this post, I need to offer 2 pieces of backstory:
1.  The following pics are from the Close to My Heart annual convention at the Gaylord Resort at the National Harbor.  Four days of paper-crafting euphoria!  ~sigh.
2.  Yes, I am aware my photography stinks...I'm working on it.

So, it's tradition to give gifts to your roommates at convention, and this was mine.  I totally snatched this idea from a preschool mom and I'm sorry I don't even know which.  Someone gave it to the preschool teacher as an end-of-the-year gift.  Appropriate, I thought.  It's super easy: 

1.  Dollar Store!  Choose your container 

2.  Stuff it with tissue paper or colorful paper

3.  Tie a coordinating ribbon around the base

4.  Set a styrofoam ball on the tissue paper

5.  Use straight pins to pin chocolate minis around the ball, starting at the bottom.  (Push the pin through the end of the wrapper, not the compartment holding the actual chocolate.)

6.  Bunch shredded white paper (purchased at Michael's) on top for the whipped cream and stick a red tootsie pop into the center.  Voila! 

A couple more just for variety.  : )

Lazy mom activity #43

Let's be honest.  We can't always be Bobo the clown, swing-pusher, artsy, Mary Poppins in one neat little mommy package all of the time.  Sometimes we need a couple minutes to check Facebook with a cup of coffee BY OURSELVES!  (Interesting concept for my kids.  I haven't shut the bathroom door since '03.)  Here is a favorite new activity that I will juice until my kids get bored with it- which they haven't yet.

Ingredients:
Bag of mini marshmallows
Box of toothpicks

Directions:  Build

Course this is for the older toddler set, not for little ones that still put things in their mouths.  My kids like to see how long they can make their row of houses before they run out of supplies (usually marshmallows.)  Happy building!  (and Facebooking...)  : )

Car Wash Tears

If your 2 and 4 year old want to "help" wash the car, let them.  Just be sure to use some sort of no-tear formula soap.  Trust me, everyone involved will be happier for it.

You Rock!

There's nothing like someone telling you they like your blog to light a fire under your butt to update it.  Seriously, sometimes I forget I even have them.  (My other one is coffeebreathcori.blogspot.com- I think)  So here is one of my favorite recent pages, my little rocker girl Madeline right around her 2nd birthday.  She's not shy, this one, and I have to wonder if the Hannah Montana reference will be lost on her by the time she can appreciate these pages.  Time will tell...

Another reason I'm so in love with this page is the paper.  I'm pretty sure the CTMH Gods said, "We need to design a paper pack just for Cori."  BAM!  Here it is- hippie rocker meets craft nerd.  Whoo!  Rainbow swirly, tie-dye paisleys?  Now we're talkin'.  Maybe it's because with three girls, I'm usually reduced to pink petals and ponies.  I love the...darkness of the paper combined with the bright swirls.  Okay, enough gushing.

Kissing Cousins

When we get all the kids together, there's never a dull moment- especially when Gram breaks out her most recent "treasure" find.  (That's her doing the jig in the background.)  I believe these lips were actually suckers made of high fructose corn syrup and some carbon compound.  : )

Animal Cookies is one of my favorite CTMH paper packs pretty much because I have kids.  The primary colors just pop and it's easy to coordinte non CTMH products with it- ribbon, glitter, letter stickers, etc.  Very versatile!  It also gave me an excuse to break out the foam numbers.  Thank God for liquid glass.

Hokie Grad

There is really nothing in this world (for me) like a weekend retreat at the beach scrappin' with my favorite crafty ladies.  It's an opportunity to make new like-minded friends and catch up with old ones.  Talk about re-charging the batteries!  The next several posts will be the product of how I spent the weekend....

Hokie Grad- this was one of my favorites a.) because I am also Hokie alum and b.) I got to scrap something other than my kids (not that I don't love them).  Can you tell I'm proud of my bro?

I used a Close to My Heart product called flip-flaps to creat a mini album on the bottom left hand page (see below).  The tricky part is slitting the page protector with an x-acto knife at just the right spot to allow the flaps to come through.  That way, when you are leafing through the album, you can access each flap without removing the page from the protector.

Hopefully one of my kids will go to Tech setting the stage for many more Hokie pages to come!  : )

Water Balloon Toss

Any chance to get wet!  Savannah loved participating in the water balloon toss with her daddy at the Moose Club picnic.  And she was surprisingly good!  I think it was more her pace than skills that had them as a couple of the last tossers.  Savannah was very proud of her wet spot on her shirt, but hopefully this will be the ONLY time she prances around in a wet t-shirt...