I'm finally back!!

Wow, it has been a whirl wind couple of weeks around here. But now the kids are out of school for the summer and they are so excited! Me, on the other hand... well, I wouldn't say that I am as excited as they are. I do enjoy the summer, but the older they get, the more the kids bicker. And I hate listening to that! Maybe I should find another summer camp or two to send them to. No, I really do want to spend time with them. They just grow up too fast! We did enjoy our time at the beach. The weather was great after about noon on the second day. So they played in the ocean and the pool, and we ate lots of yummy food, did a little shopping, a lot of relaxing, and even took in a movie. We took them to see Night at the Museum 2. I went in with low expectations, but I ended up really liking it. It was pretty funny. The 3 year old even seemed to find a lot of it funny. After it was over he looked at me and said, "dat big guy keeped telling de udder man hey dum-dum, you bring me gum-gum." and then he just cracked up! It was so precious. I really enjoyed our time away, but sure hated to come back and start all that laundry!! How is that that we came home with more (dirty) clothes than we took?? At least it seems that way. lol Anyway, I'm glad to be back and I have lots and lots of fun stuff to share, so I'll get to that now. Happy??

I'll start with the gifts I made for the teachers. Remember the notepad covers I talked about a few posts ago HERE? Well, I made one for each of my DD's 2nd grade teachers. Here is the first one.



Here is the second one:



and after I thought I was finished, I decided it needed a lady bug. So I made one with a few punches and added it to the cover. then I drew on the antennae with a black marker. sorry the picture is blurry.


For my DS's 6th grade teachers, I made little gift bags. I based them on the Easter gift bags I made earlier. You can see that post HERE. I had purchased gift cards to Sonic for each of them and then added that to the back using the slit punch. I filled the bags with M&Ms because 1) Who doesn't love chocolate? and 2) I though the colors went very well with the papers I was using. So here they are.

Here you can see the candies on the inside and the gift card on the back.




They were a lot of fun to make and everyone seemed to really appreciate their gifts.

Speaking of gifts... a friend had a little baby shower recently. I wasn't sure what I wanted to get her, so I went off to the store to see what caught my eye. I saw this super cute Lion onesie and decided that was what I would get. I also bought a little rattle to go with it. When I got home, I set out to make a matching card and a gift box to hold it all. Here's what I came up with:
This is the onesie and the matching card. I made the lion with several punches. The card template I found HERE at Lauren Meader's blog. She has some really cute onesie cards. I've seen them made before, but I really liked her basic tutorial. Then I just matched the colors, etc with the onesie I had purchased.

Here's just the card

and here's the box. I put a tiny bit of adhesive on the back of the card and just attached it to the top of the box. Cute Huh??

So there you have it. Hahaha. I hope all of these pictures help make up for not having posted in so long! And ... as always, I would love to hear what you think!! I hope y'all have a Stamptacular Day!!