Valentine's Day Card and BUTTONS

 Just a quick post to show the card I made for Joe for Valentine's Day.

It's a rather large card, it's just a 8 1/2 x 11 piece of white heavy duty card stock folded in half. The buttons are from bag-o-buttons in various collections. I love me some buttons, so this was the perfect way to use about 1/8 of my collection.

This is my collection without the bigger buttons. I have the bigger ones stored in one of the bag of buttons bags.

This is actually a spice rack that my MIL found on clearance at Target. I just put the spices into individual plastic bags and gave them to my sister (cause I'm not the cooking with spices type of person), rinsed and dried them out then sorted the buttons by color and put them in.

I'm loving that they were organized that way because when I needed a whole bunch of red buttons I just dumped them on a piece of paper and looked at the sizes before forming them on the card.

Thanks for looking!

The Notebook

Unfortunately (or fortunately) this is not a review of the movie/book. This entry is about a notebook Elijah got for his birthday this year. We were in Target one day looking for (cheap) birthday presents for Elijah, so he would have quite a few to open. At this age it's not the amount of money that matters, but the amount of gifts, so we took full advantage of that. He got some stuff from the dollar section... little cars, coloring books and self inking stamp that say "awesome". Then we hit up the clearance section of craft items. Not too much there, except for these cool Cars and Toy Story activity backpacks that come with crayons, stickers, coloring pages, etc.

Right next to the craft aisle is the stationary aisle, so I was browsing there for some things and I came upon this:

A notebook... to be his very own. Since he loves to write in -everyone else's- notebooks, I thought he would love it, but apparently I wasn't realizing that he is only turning 3. We wrapped it up and when he opened it, this is the expression we got.

Nothing. He flipped through the book trying to figure out why it was blank. As he flipped he gave the expression that Joe is imitating in the background (without the smile), about every 30 seconds. He was annoyed... "Was this some sick joke? Why would my parents give me a book with no words or pictures? Very funny, people, very funny..." is what his expression said.

I explained to him what it was for after a few minutes of him scouring the pages for any possible words that might be on it. After he heard, the notebook was promptly put on the floor and he moved onto the next gift. A day or so afterward I re-introduced it to him and he has been drawing/coloring in it ever since.

So if you are looking for something inexpensive to get a 3-5 year old, a notebook is a good way to go... however just make sure the little boy or girl knows what notebooks are used for, first. :-)

DYL - Sick person edition

These past few weeks have been full of sickness. The week before last Elijah had strep throat and he apparently passed some of it on to me. Last week I thought I had caught it, but before it turned horrible in my throat it traveled to my sinuses and became an awful head cold instead. Fun times and 3 days off of work and I was on the mend, kind of. Today is the first day I can actually breathe normally again, so in honor of yuckiness this is a Declare Your Love for things when you are sick.

I would like to declare my love for the...

Vicks Waterless Vaporizer

This thing is the best thing ever for little kids... and adults too. It's completely safe for infants and pregnant women, which is the best part. There is this little square pad you stick inside that is "soaked" in vapor fluid and the fan blows it out into the room (it lasts about 8 hours per pad), so your sinuses are cleared without having to put the Vicks directly onto your body. I also like that it has different settings, so you can set how much vapor is released. We have used ours for over a year and it's still going strong... We just have to remember to buy the refill packs of the pads and we are ready for any sickness that hits... but hopefully that won't be for a long time.

So what do you love when you are sick?