Prepping for School

Does anyone remember this commercial? I love it!


The dad is so happy and the looks on the kids' faces are perfect. That's exactly what my kids are looking like today - the last day of summer. Usually I'm not looking forward to school starting, I like my kids at home. I really don't look forward to homework starting, to the rush of getting everything done after school. And this year, all my kiddos will be in school all day! I'll have no one to "hang" with, no one to play with, no one to scrapbook with, no one to laugh with all day, no one to "help" me go shopping. Secretly, I'm a little bit excited about this, too. I'll have 7 hours to do whatever I want each day. I can mop the kitchen floor in the morning (a chore I despise) and have it last at least 7 hours! Anyhoo, we all are feeling very mixed emotions, sadness that our summer fun is over, but excitement at what lies ahead tomorrow. So here is some of my last minute prep for that big day tomorrow.

1.  I finally got the tags made for Cheyenne and Natalie's instruments. (I've only been meaning to do this for 2 years now.) Everyone in band stores their instruments in the band room each day. That's a lot of basic, boring, black cases that all look alike. So I wanted to make something that not only identifies them, but distinguishes them from all the other cases making it easier to grab the right one.
This is what I used: My Cricut; Childs Play, Walk in my Garden, Car Decals, and Plantain cartridges; chipboard (or old packaging like I used); scrap paper; stickers and rub-ons, eyelets, adhesive, packing tape.
I started by cutting 3 oval tags (on tall ball setting) from the Plantain cartridge at 4" using the multicut and3 or 4 times (depending on the thickness of your chipboard.) One daughter thought she liked the thickness of two layers together and the other one liked only one layer.  I then did "repeat last" but turned off multicut to cut 4 pieces of patterned paper. Then started gluing it all together. Natalie's in to turtles right now, so using the Car Decals cart, I cut the turtle at 2" and glued it all on the back.  Cheyenne picked out "Laugh" from the Childs Play cartridge at 1 1/4" and the little flower from Walk in my Garden at 3/4" for the back of hers. When it was all dry, I added stickers on Natalie's, and rub-ons on Cheyenne's (wishing they were a little bigger), and then covered both sides in packing tape, my cheap way of laminating. Worked great! I then set the eyelets in the holes already cut, and TaDa! cute tags ready to identify anything. A cheap-I had everything I needed already on hand); quick-only took maybe a 1/2 hour to make both; easy-the cricut did all the work, I just glued; fun-they make me smile; great little project for getting ready for school.


2. My next project is a little more work, or maybe it's just a little less fun. Hemming pants. I've got 3 pairs of pants waiting for me to hem up today, a job I really don't enjoy much. However, thanks to this great tutorial from Sew Much Ado it will at least look much nicer. No one will notice that Cheyenne is height challenged, at least by the hem on her pants. ;) (Love ya, Cheyenne!)

Picture from The Gunny Sack

3. My final project to accomplish today is to get some things printed while we're in town today. (We haven't replaced our color printer yet.)  First are these great lunch Lunchbox Jokes from The Gunny Sack. Since school lunch prices have gone up again, my kids are going to be taking A LOT of lunches. Billy loved getting a great joke in his lunch last year and I'd also sneak them in Cheyenne and Natalie's, too. I'm sure C & N would roll their eyes and then they'd chuckle with their friends at the corny jokes. I really like these ones from The Gunny Sack because of the lift-the-flap, just makes it more fun. I'm also searching for some cupcake toppers for fun treats for after school tomorrow.

So that's it, these last minute projects and lots of fun, fun, fun today. I'm savoring every minute of my time with them today. I love my kids!

Linking to:
A Bowl Full of Lemons
At Home With K
Carolyns Homework
Strictly-Homemade
Funky Polkadot Giraffe

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