Christmas Card Holder

I actually completed a project. This HUGE. My house is the land of unfinished projects. Heck, my house is an unfinished project! Anyway, I saw this cute card holder in Family Fun magazine. I liked the concept, but thought it would look better with ribbon. LOTS of ribbon. And they used alligator clips to hold the cards. I am going to use paper clips. Check it out...

First...start with a tomato cage. If you want to do this project, you are going to have to search for these. I ended up getting one at a small mom and pop Ace Hardware. Lowe's didn't have any out and they weren't going to get one from the back for me. Ace let me go back in their storage area to pick it out. You can find them in green, but mine was not, so I spray painted it....

(Note all the board games and Mr. Potato Heads? Those are for the preschool kids. I was able to get some great games for them for CHEAP!)

Next you will need LOTS of ribbon. Hobby Lobby has their ribbon on sale all the time. I probably had enough ribbon in my house to make 50 of these, but I have no idea where half of it is. I decided to go with a red/white/green/black theme for my tree. I just cut a ton of the small pieces.And then, just start tying and a tying and tying and tying...get the picture? It's a lot of tying, but I think it's cute.

A couple of the trees like this that I have seen on line have made a cone out of paper for the top. I didn't want to mess with that. Just took a large piece of black grosgrain ribbon and tied a knot. It brought the 3 pieces at the top together. Then I just tied a bow. Not the greatest looking, but it works. Then I took our Christmas card from this year and sat it in the "nest" at the top. I just taped the card at the back to make it stay. I think it looks cute. As cards come in, I will punch a hold in them and hang them from paper clips on the tree.

What do you think?

ARG! I need to go. I've got to be at a party in less an a hour and a half and I haven't showered or packed one single thing!!!!

Blog ya later!

Finally!

So, about a year ago I stopped letting K cash in her CEC tickets for tiny pieces of junk. I take that back...I didn't let her cash them all in on tiny pieces of junk. I would give her like 40 tickets and have her get stickers and a sucker. She was happy with that. She never knew the different. But I've been saving all the other ones. Over a year's worth. And there was about a 3 or 4 month period where we did not go to CEC because K went into a meltdown the mintue we walked into the place. She's scared to death of Chuck E. We've been twice in the past two weeks. We have sort of a tradition with our neighbors. On the kids actually birthday, we head to CEC, eat, play games and eat cupcakes. We didn't do it for K's birthday this year because her birthday fell on a Saturday and I would need to be medicated to go into that place on a Saturday. Anyway...tonight before we left, I told Brian to grab all the slips and we would cash them all in if we had enough. At the end of the night, we had 5,731 points. They had two Disney princess Barbie dolls that she could pick from. She tried to talk me into this GIANT stuffed bear and I put my foot down on that FAST. Then she spied this Tinkerbell set. It was 6,000. I told her if she wanted that, she would have to wait until we got some more tickets. Then the girl pipes up....you can upgrade for $3 and get that prize. So, I gave K the option...a Barbie princess or Tinkerbell. She picked Tink. Everyone was like..."wow! that's an awesome prize! That's a lot of tickets!" Yes, it was. She was so proud of herself and her prize. I told her we will start saving up again for another big prize. I didn't get a chance to take her picture with it when we got home. But I wanted to post a photo. This is one of the photos from our family photo shoot this month. I love this photo. I never thought about doing photos of our hands. I love the simplicity of it. My plan is to change it to black and white and have it enlarged. Over the past 4 months, K has had her photo taken a number of times. I am going to go broke buying all the photos I want! I've decided that this year, I am not doing a Christmas photo for her. She will see Santa, but that's it. And I am 99.9% sure that the photo of her and Santa will be of her screaming her head off.

Okay...list is still a mile long for tomorrow. Need to go to bed.

blog ya later!

Seriously?

I am 37 years old. I am old. I know that. And let me just say....I am over the high school drama that some mom's seem to thrive on. We are grown ass women. Get.Over.Yourself. Seriously?

On a much lighter note, I actually got some stuff done today. Took the dog to the vet. Made a run to Lowe's for somethings. I needed a tomato cage. The lady at Lowe's was like...they are already put away for the season and then just walked away. What? We have a small Ace Hardware Store by our house, so I thought I would stop by there. They didn't have any on the floor,but the manager took me to the back storeroom and dug one out for me! Awesome. Love small places like that that go above for their customers. I need to make it a point to shop there more often. Stay tuned for a project that involves the tomato cage, some spray paint, ribbon and some paper clips. Aren't you wondering what in the world I am making with that? I'm MacGyver!! I've actually got a couple of projects that I am working on that I hope to have completed tomorrow.

I know this is going to sound silly, but I have set a small goal for myself. My goal for the rest of the year is to not bring anymore plastic bags into our house. I have probably 20 reusable bags that I've bought or have been given. I need to start using them. I picked up some super cute ones from TJ Maxx yesterday. It's pink and paisley...two of my daughter's favorite things.

Okay, I am going to change into my pjs and work on some things for tomorrow!

blog ya later.

Must get going...

I've got to get motivated and get out of this house! I've got so much to do this week and today I really need to get going! Yesterday I was able to get H1N1 shots for myself and K. K because she is 4 and me because I work in a childcare facility. Since it is still so hard to get a vaccine anywhere, but the health department, I've been watching their website to see when they are offering them. I called their "H1N1 Information Line" on Sunday and they said that they were giving out 500 shots. My plans were to get up early and be there when they opened, but K slept until 9:45! We got to the health department about 11ish. We walked in, I filled out paperwork, they handed K a number, we walked into the area they were giving the shots, handed some guy the number, got shots and left. All in less than 10 minutes. Most of that time was spent talking to the nurse in code so K wouldn't realize what what about to happen. I planned it that way so she wouldn't be freaking out the entire time. When we pulled into the parking garage, she said, "oh, we are at the doctor? Ummm...how did she know that? Anyway, K screamed like she was being tortured for all of 3 minutes and then she said, "that was the worst thing ever!" and started crying again. I told Brian that when she has to go back for the booster, he is taking her.

I can not believe that it is already after 11am! I've got to get going. I am headed out for some girl time this evening with my friend Kennington. We are headed to Bare Essentials for some make-up retail therapy. I also need to get K some hairbows and some Christmas pjs. I bought her a pair, but I don't like the ones I bought. Then we are going to have dinner at Chuy's. Can I just tell you that I am in HEAVEN now that Chuy's has come to Nashville. It's AWESOME. Tex-Mex. YUM!

Since I hate posting without photos, I leave you with one of our MANY Disney photos. We happened to bump into these two while we were on our way to the Country Bear Jamboree. As soon as we got in line, we were informed that they were taking a break and would be back at 1:30pm. That happened to us quite a bit. We made the decision to stay close so that we would be first in line to see them. We went to the Jamboree and then stayed in the area their greeting site was in. We rode the Magic Carpets like 5 times and then decided to get in line when we saw that there were already people waiting. I think we were like 3rd or 4th in line. Jasmine and Aladdin were awesome. They were so cute and kept joking around with each other. This was the only time that we saw a princess with one of the "guys". Jasmine happens to be one of K's favorite princesses, so I thrilled that we just happened upon them. This was the only time we saw her other than in a parade. (Oh who am I kidding....ALL of the princesses are K's favorite.)

Okay, I am going to jump in the shower, gather all my library books and canned goods and head to the library. Thankfully, the library system is doing their Food for Fines again this year. I usually wait until the end of the year to pay my fines to see if they are going to do this. With coupons, I usually get canned goods for next to nothing, so I "pay" my fines for cheap and I also help out the Second Harvest Food Bank. It's a win-win situation for everyone!

Okay...I've GOT to get going. Blog ya later!

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

That's basically how busy I've been lately. Due to some H1N1 cases at our tiny Mother's Day Out Program, I am going to be off for two weeks instead of just one week for Thanksgiving. I am hoping with the extra time off, I will be able to get some things done around the house. My plan is to get the Christmas tree up Monday. Brian is off of work, so after he gets back from golfing and K is done with dance, I want the tree up. I know, I know...it's early! But, in my defense, we have so much stuff going on this week that if I don't get it up now, it will be December before it goes up! I can not put the tree up myself. Brian is the official "tree putter upper and fluffer"...not me. I do all the decorating, but he does the assembly and fluffing.

Okay...I need to get myself to bed. Since we are not in school this week, my plan is to head down to the health department in the morning and get K and hopefully myself a H1N1 shot. I called the health department's flu information line and it said that they will have 500 shots available on a first come, first serve basis. They open @ 7am. Not sure we will make it when they open since K stayed up so late tonight. I was too into the Indy/New England football game to realize how late it was. Oops.

I am trying to get back in the blogging bandwagon, but I've been busy, and honestly, my life is pretty boring these days. I need to spend less time on my computer and more time on other things.

Here is a cute photo of K dressed up for Halloween. She had three different costumes this year. This is her JoJo Circus one that I adore. She was excite to wear it since we had just gotten back from Disney and she got to have breakfast with JoJo. Did I mention we went to Disney??? That was the best vacation I've ever had. I mean, my honeymoon was awesome, but this was so much fun and K was so over the moon at meeting Princesses and Fairies. Lots and lots of photos to share. I am thinking of making her a photo book of all the pictures from our trip. She talks about it all the time still. Originally I told Brian that we probably wouldn't go back for 3 or 4 more years, but I want to go back next fall again! It was just so much fun and even though we did a ton of stuff, I feel like there was a lot of stuff we didn't get to do.

Okay...off to check on K and then head to bed. With a couple of the kids at school getting sick, I've been keeping a super close eye on her since Friday. Overprotective Mommy is my name!

Blog ya later!