February the Month of Love

I love this time of the year. I get to use my creativity to make something sweet for my loved ones. I love coming up with new ways to surprise them.

This year I am making my son a mailbox and putting love notes and a small gift in it everyday until Valentine's Day. I haven't decided what else I will do. My husband will also get notes too. I leave them around in different places for him to find them. It's fun to see his reaction.

Here's some ideas to get you started. Get 14 cards, note cards, postcards, index cards. Whatever you can write a love note one. You can get cheap cards just about anywhere. Hallmark, Wal-Mart, Target the Dollar Store. You can also be creative and make your own cards with stickers, markers, construction paper, glitter and whatever else you have on hand.

Send one card the them everyday of the week or put it on the dresser, lunch pail, backpack, wherever you want you loved one to find it. Sending a card in the mail is great because not a lot of people get mail anymore and this would be neat for kids to receive one each day. Now I realize that on Sunday you can't send one so hid it somewhere in the house that they can find it. You can also do this during the week as well.  You can also send them to their place of work.

Inside the card you can say whatever you want. Be creative and have fun.

If you wanted you could put clues in them for where you will take him or her out for Valentines or pieces of a puzzle they will have to put together. Special stickers, candy, small toys, pencils, pens and anything small.

Start getting your stuff together now. Have fun with it and don't forget you got to do it everyday.

I made love notes this year using Picmonkey. I haven't figured out how to share documents yet so I hope that you can print these out and use them. If you right click them and save them to your computer you can put them in a word document and print. If you not you can always make them on Picmonkey and print them out yourself.

I had so much fun making them and I hope everyone enjoys them.

I also have some other ideas for Valentine's Day that I will share with you in the coming days.

What do you do for your loved ones? Do you countdown or just wait until the day?

Here's the one I made my husband for today.

These are the one's I made for my son. He loves jokes so I will hand write them in the bubbles. You can write whatever you like in them.

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Family Goals

I know I just shared mine a couple of days ago but after thinking about I decided I needed to get my children involved in goal sitting too. 

I have a 13 year old and a 6 year old and thought it would be a good lesson for them. My 13 year old is just like any other boy at that age. He plays video games, uses the computer and draws. However, my 6 year old loves to read and learn. Total opposites.

So I decided to have a little talk with my children and explained the importance of sitting goals. How it would be great to learn to sit them and then find out how they could reach them. It took a lot of coaching the 13 year old but he finally did it.  

Here is what my children came up with. I only asked my 6 year old for 3 but he came up with 10.

Mr. I's 2013 List:

Go to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum.

Got to church every Sunday.

Play fair with my friends.

Be nice to my brothers.

Be an artist.

Write notes to God and my family.

Go to a Thunder game.

Be my best at school. 

Be quiet in the library.

Make crafts and arts my best. 

I want you to know I did not coach this kid. He came up with all of them by himself. So proud. 

Mr. B's 2013 List:

Get a new game chair.

Pay more attention in math.

Do good in art class.

Be alive.

Get payed. 

My 13 year old loves to be silly. However we can work this this list. I already got some ideas in mind for the be alive and get payed. :)

Happy New Year!

It's a new year and usually that means it's time to set some goals. I usually make them and break them but I think it's because I set my goals to high so this year I'm going to try some obtainable ones.

Here's my goals for this year:

Read some classic stories to my children. I'm going to check out some from the library or go to our local discount book store and find them there. 

Read the Bible. I have never read the whole bible and this year I thought I would try it. There is a great app called YouVersion it has several plans for reading and I'm going to use it. I also noticed you can listen to it as well. 

Make a menu each month. I started this last year and it worked out so well. Making a menu saved me time and money at the grocery store. I also started using my crock pot and that is a great time saver. I'll have to post about it sometime. 

Keep my house in order. The house can get crazy with three boys so keeping up with it will be a major task. I am going to focus on doing one big thing for the day and then maybe it will be better. 

Start a bible study. I have wanted to for a long time and I hope this year will be the year to start it. 

Spend time each month as a family. This is a huge one for me. My children are so spread out in age that is makes it hard for us to do anything together but I'm going to make it happen. We can do movie nights and game nights. I will plan a couple a month. 

Say I love you more in different ways by doing small acts of kindness for my family. I say I love you but I don't always show it. I wanted to find different ways to express my love to my husband and my kids. My examples might be taking out the trash for my son sometimes, cleaning the kids rooms, taking the kids to their favorite places, making their favorite meal. 

Send out at least one note each month. I miss hand written letters. I use to send my cousin one each week and receive one back from her. This year I will pick someone each month to write a hand written letter too. 

Make myself a reminder in my calendar for my goals. I tend to forget my goals and get side tracked from doing something about them. This year I don't want to forget. I set up my calendar with reminders through out the month so I will remember. 

Write a love note to Jesus every month. I really want to enrich my relationship with Christ this year and I thought this might be a great way to do it. 

What are your goals for 2013? 

Love to Loom

Looming is something I picked up a couple of years ago and really love. I have so many different items I would like to master. You can make scarves, hats, blankets and so many other things.

The looms come in different shapes and sizes. I have only used the round looms but there are several on the market.

I really love the easy use of the loom. I have never been able to master the art of knitting or crocheting so this was right up my alley.

I'll have to share my other items at some point.

The picture above is my most recent project. It's a super easy cowl. I love the way it turned out, however it's a little itchy. I'll make a new one with softer yarn at some point.

Here is my pattern for the cowl:

Cast on Chain.

Purl first round. 

Double wrap and knit second round.  

Work until desire length. Mine is about 24 inches. 

Used round knifty knitter loom with 50 pegs.

Candy Birthday Card

This past weekend we celebrated my nephew's 18th birthday. I had no idea what to get him and I had a very limited budget. I wanted to do something fun and he would enjoy.

I had seen plenty of candy cards in my lifetime but I had never done one. I decided this would be an easy gift and fun to do. I took a trip to the Dollar Tree to see what they had to offer. I stood in the candy aisle for what seemed like hours trying to figure out what candy would work for a great card. I had my notebook out writing down different sentences with each candy title. I'm sure the people around me were wondering what I was doing.

I had a lot of fun putting it together and my nephew seemed to like it as well and my family members thought it was a cute idea.

If you have a birthday party coming up this is not very expensive to make and it just takes a little writing and rewriting to come up with your own version.

Here is what you need:

Poster Board
Pencil
Marker
Packing Tape
Candy
Construction paper

Instructions:

Take your poster board and write out your note on it with pencil first. This will make it easier to place your candy and know how much room you will need.

Next take your marker and start going over your pencil marks. When it's time to add the candy use the packing tape to tape it on. Just take a piece and create a circle and stick it on the back of the candy.

You now have a great birthday card. You can also make this for other occasions too.

If you are using candy that you don't want letters to show or name use construction paper to cover up the unwanted letters. (See runts in the picture)

What a Summer!

Wow! It's finally over. The kids are back in school and I finally feel like I can breath a little. I loved the summer but I'm so glad it's over. I was running out of way to entertain the children.

I had a great summer. We went to Montana and just hung out around out great state. We had a ton of birthdays to celebrate. Three in June and six in August. We also had some sickness over the summer too.

I spent quite a bit of time crafting over the last couple of months as well. My sister and  I decided to start our own Etsy shop with hair accessories, bottle cap jewelry, journals, baby items and just a mixture of different things. We are still working on it. You can check it out on Etsy and Facebook.

The last thing that has kept me busy is my little boy. He turned one in August and it's been amazing to see his growth. He has learned how to crawl around the house, pull himself up and grow six teeth at one time. It's been fun watching him develop all these new skills.

Life around here has been crazy busy but it's been fun too. I guess now it's time to get back to a more scheduled life. I like the routine of kids in school. It's a lot easier for me to concentrate.

What was your summer like? Did you have fun? Learn anything new?