Halloween goody bags for Layla's school

Layla's school has a Halloween parade on Friday. The kids get dressed up and the teachers take them to walk in a circle and show off their costumes. And somehow, this becomes a source of stress for me....

Last week, Layla's teacher handed me an envelope with a letter and detailed information explaining the Halloween festivities for the day that included a list of every classmate's name, as well as each teacher's name, and floating teacher's names. This is just in case I want to bring presents for everyone. So I read each page over and over because it's pretty dense in information. Yes, this is for a toddler's Halloween parade, not college application process.

You'd be surprised how much pressure a mom can put on herself to offer the perfect present to these little buggers. You don't "have" to bring gifts for the kids,  but  you sort of feel obligated to participate. Because otherwise, you're not a bad person, you just kind of suck a little bit.

 For Valentine's day, I hadn't gotten my act together after going back to work and gave the kids Valentines a week late. They consisted of little squirting bath toys, because I couldn't think of anything else to give infants. You can't give them food because they mostly drink milk only and if you give clothes or toys it can expensive when you're buying for 16 babies. Plus you gotta get goodies for the teachers too.

So for Halloween, I found the perfect gift. Again, I went with the bath toys. Halloween themed rubber duckies:

Are they cute or what?! I made little tags with each kid's name on it and  "Happy Halloween! Love, Layla".  Half were duckies dressed as a witch and half were dressed as pumpkins. I didn't want to do candy because they are all just barely 1 years old and I don't think most parents let them eat junk food yet.

A lot of thought and effort went into choosing, buying, and assembling these. Half of Tuesday was devoted to this. Like I have so much time on my hands, right?  Unless the other parents out-do me, I think I'm going to feel pretty good about my Halloween goody bags. I'll finally get to feel like the Joneses that everyone is trying to keep up with. Isn't that the point?

(note the last three sentences aren't as pathetic as they sound. i was trying to be ironically sarcastical)

Baby Binkies

So I'm home sick today and have a baby shower to throw on Saturday. I hate being sick and unproductive. So with what little energy I could muster up, I made these cute little pacifiers.

Really easy recipe: 2 white lifesavers, one pink jelly bean, you can use whatever color. I used a hot glue gun to stick the 2 lifesavers together and then stick the jelly bean to the lifesaver.

You could use royal icing as an adhesive, but being that I'm sick (even though I washed my hands regularly), I don't want people eating them. They are just for decoration.

Bebe shower invitations

I haven't been doing too many artsy craftsy projects recently. I kind of got burned out after my wedding. This blog is pretty much my main creative outlet, besides drawing class.

But since my friend Vicky is having her first bebe, I decided to make the invitations for her shower myself. I don't have a close up of the final product, but in the picture below, you can get the idea of what it looked like. The completed invitation is on the bottom left.
I dug up my old tools (top center) and put them to work. My cousin Cyrus got me the decorative paper cutter on the right. It made the wavy edge on the matchbook booklet enclosure, which I bought from Paper-Source. If there was a Church of Paper, I would be all over that.

The completed main invitation is on the far left. The white insert I printed out on a color printer, cut to size, and punched little holes in with my tools (top center). I used the orange ribbon to secure the insert to the booklet.

The little baby foot prints on the invitation insert are rubber stamps with embossing powder on them. I used a Distress Ink stamp in "Mustard" and a "Worn Lipstick" colored embossing powder and then pointed the heating gun (the purple thing on the bottom center) at it so that the powder would sort of melt onto the ink and create a little bit of texture. The pink and mustard color together made a blended orangey color that matched the ribbon.

There was a time when I liked to over decorate things and I would have had little baby footprints all over the card and envelope. But that time has passed and I like things clean and simple now.