Celebrate Celebrate Celebrate > Valentine's Day Cards

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you all are having a wonderful day filled with love and lots of chocolate. Although, those two are the same thing in my book.

I want to share with you my new family tradition I started this year; Valentine's Day Christmas Cards! You aren't confused by that title, are you?

Typically around Christmas I am one hot mess. Between working, putting up Christmas decorations, Christmas shopping, cooking for the holidays, and trying to maintain a generally jolly attitude; I'm usually just one sugar cookie away from jumping in the local mall fountain. Needless to say, the stress of sending out Christmas cards probably would have sent me over the edge; so for everyone's safety - I didn't. Instead I sent out this for Valentine's Day!

Aren't they cuties? I also included an annual Christmas  Valentine's letter of the all the things our family loved in 2011.

I had so much fun putting this together that I'm sending out Valentine's Christmas cards every year! It was so easy to do, I just edited the photos in Photoshop and added the fun background and banners and sent them to Costco to be printed. I think 35 only cost me around $12. And I still have my sanity!

Happy Valentines Day!

Love,

~ Angela

I Need Minions > DIY Refrigerator Magnets & Bookmarks

This post was supposed to be for all you Moms and Grandmas who have a cache of great recipes, and sharing the bounty.... but I have been sidetracked by something that happened yesterday.  

What happened yesterday - GRANDKIDS, and the wonderfulness (is that a word?) of having them!  

I was supposed to pick up my oldest grandson at the dentist and drop him off at basketball camp.  Here's my facebook post:  Wait for Grandson at Dentist and drop off at basketball camp - 25 miles, 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Grandson turning around and running back to give me a hug, saying "Grandma, I love you" - PRICELESS!!!!  If you've been to the dentist or doctor you know they are never on time.  So after waiting 45 minutes (in the wrong parking lot, that's another story) he was finally finished, I drove him to the church (turned into wrong church), walked him into gym foyer and checked him in.  He was running into gym, when he turned around and said, "Oh, Grandma," ran back to me, hugged me and said "I love you."  I'm tearing up now just thinking about it.  Grandkids are great!  

Okay, that's my post - no not really but it made me think about gifts grandkids or kids can make for moms or grandmas because we are all sentimental (dare I say it) fools.  

Check out this magnet that's been on my refrigerator for years.  It's a little "Velveteen Rabbit" around the edges.  Mr. 2Wicked made this eons ago and yup, it's still on my refrigerator!  It's a great way to recycle all those magnets you get from businesses (sometimes they are attached to your phone book), save the dates, some charities, etc. and fairly simple to make.  

• Pick picture or artwork and decide whether to laminate or not.  I use my nifty Xyron to laminate top but I have also used clear Contact paper - which works great.  Xyron also makes a laminate/magnet cartridge.
• Rough cut around picture or artwork.
• Glue artwork or picture to magnet.  
• Cut around artwork or picture and YOU'RE DONE!  Note:  The cheaper the magnet the thinner it will be and the easier to cut.

Doesn't get much easier than that - except doing this:  
Don't want to go to all that trouble - how about buying some of those 4X6 acrylic frames with the magnets on the back and putting photos in them.  My mom has her refrigerator covered with them, it's a photo essay into our lives - pics of my kids when they were six and nine next to pics of my grandkids at six and nine.  Every year someone gives her a couple of new pics for her refrigerator.  

Is your mom a reader?  That's a reader of books, not kindle (I'm old school) - how about making some photos into bookmarks?  Just made this bookmark -

 from this photo -----------------
and it took about 5 minutes,  too bad taking the picture and getting it on blog took 25 minutes! 





Print photo. I like to use glossy photo paper because I like the stiffness and gloss of the paper.

• Rough cut out photo.
• Laminate.
• Cut out photo and you have this very, very cute bookmark.  This photo would also make a cute refrigerator magnet.

I also have this up on my message board.  I don't like clutter, but this has been up for quite a while because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  I wrote on the back: "Aiden 4/11."  





How about making a magnet from a signed and dated statement from your kids to their Grandma so they can feel all warm and fuzzy too!

Secret Note to Grandmas:  Have your grandkids over and help them make some personalized gifts for Mom!

Get out your paper, glue, scissors and start crafting!
-Laurie (AKA "Sentimental Grandma")

I Need Minions > DIY Personalized "Go Fish" Cards

Every year I like to make a few simple and quick gifts for Christmas, and this year we will be sharing our ideas for DIY gifts with you! First up is these cute "Go Fish" playing cards that I made and put in my oldest grandson's stocking when he was about 4 years old.  You all know the "Go Fish" game, but I added some extra "aawwhh" factor and personalized the game by using pics of family members instead.  The first time that my grandson and I played the game and I told him to "Go Fish," he said "No, Grandma - "Go Human!" Kids say the darnedest things - in our house we call this game "Go Human."  

Want to make your own "Go Human" cards? Well of course you do! You will need:

• 1 picture of each family member that you want to use - I made 52 cards total so I needed 13 pictures of family members (4 cards of each person).  That's my Mama in that picture. You could even add in pics of your family pets.
• Fun and festive Scrapbook paper to adhere to back of picture.

And ... that's it!!  How simple is that?


The details:

• Crop all photos to 3 1/2" x 2 1/2". I cropped photos in Photoshop Elements (PE) which made it quite easy to crop all photos to same size.  Open photo and set crop size to 3 1/2" x 2 1/2".  This will open a crop box on the picture that you can move around and resize, but will still keep it the set size ratio.  Crop and save.
• Print photos.  In PE you can print eight on a page choosing "Print Package" in "Select Type of Print" Box. Then in the "Select a Layout" Box choose "Letter (8) 2.5 x 3.5", this will print eight of your cropped photos on one letter size page of photo paper.  
• Rough cut photos out.  This means cut them down the middle so you have two strips of 4 pics each.  I would show you a picture of this but I didn't know I would be doing a blog back in the day!
• Cut your scrapbook backing paper into strips the same size as your photo strips - 4 1/4" x 11".
• Adhere the two together.  You can use whatever you want to glue these together.  I have lots of craft paraphernalia that I have to use to justify the owning it so I used my mini Xyron machine with permanent adhesive.
• Cut cards apart.  Be sure to use the photo side of the card as a guide.  I have this nifty Fiskars cutter that I use.
• Use a corner rounder punch to round each corner.  I like this EK Success corner rounder and use it all the time (I used it to round the accordion pleated medallions behind the elephant in the Circus Baby Boy Banner.)

Done! Easy Peasy! 


I was not paid to promote Xyron, Fiskars or EK Success products - although I'm not adverse to being paid - anyone listening?
- Laurie