Seeing Green

It's St. Patrick's Day Eve. I love the color green. I really have no other ties to the holiday other than the fact that I'm about leprechaun height and I want to find gold at the end of a rainbow. But I do love holidays! I wish I had a big box of decorations for each month/holiday that I could decorate with each month. I think there's something so magical about decorating and I just love it. Sometimes I think what traditions I like the most and now that I'm older I have ideas in my mind of what traditions I think would have been fun as a kid.

I babysat for a family one weekend and it happened to be St. Patrick's Day on Sunday. I was there Friday-Saturday night. On Saturday I told them some made up story about leprechauns and how nobody has ever been successful at catching one, but that if anyone tried to catch one the leprechauns would leave a gift behind. It was silly but they bought it. The key to success when selling a story to skeptical kids is inflection. First you lower your voice so it's like you're telling them a secret, you make your eyes wide and get really into what you're saying. Once you can see that they're hooked you become animated but not overly so, you don't want to give them reason to question your sanity. Every story has an ending and ending it with a flourish helps seal the story.
The story was my bait and once I was done, they were on the hook. I had planned ahead and brought a shoebox and other misc. supplies as well as crafting supplies. All day Saturday I kept them entertained by decorating this box with all sorts of green and rainbow craft stuff, paper, glitter, stamping, coloring, cutting out shapes, etc...Once they were done we found a quiet corner of the house and set our 'trap. We rigged a little system like you'd use to catch a rabbit (like I know what a rabbit catching trap is...). It was the box standing on it's end with a stick propping it up. We used a little bit of lucky charms as bait under the box.
That night after reading stories and tucking them in I waited until I knew they were asleep (they were REALLY excited for the next morning so it took some time). I had a hidden bag with chocolate coins, green clover confetti stuff, a few other St. Patrick's Day themed items/toys, nothing fancy at all. I made a trail of green confetti on the hardwood floors and put all the goodies under the box and removed the stick so it looked like something had knocked it over.
I explained to their parents when they got home and they thought it was fun. Well the next day at church they were like, you're wonderful but those kids were up at 6am to check their leprechaun trap...woops...they weren't really mad though.
The kids were really eager to show me what the leprechaun had left them. They each had their own animated story about what happened and how it had gotten away. They were beaming as they explained it all to me.

This doesn't have much of a point other than if you ever want someone to set a leprechaun trap I'm your girl. I haven't caught one yet but never say never!

Honestly the idea of setting this sort of thing up makes me so excited (don't worry I'm not going to because that would be weird). Maybe in an alternate universe where I had kids I would be setting up that surprise right now! I'm like an old kid. All I want is a bouncy house and a pair of heelies. #isthattoomuchtoask?

Whoville

This month has flown by, I do not approve. Out of all the months, I wish December lasted the longest. Maybe we could shave a few days off each month and add them to December, whaddya think Mayans? So far your calendaring expertise has been helpful perhaps you could assist us with this.

Besides the fact that this month has gone by much to my dismay, I have gotten quite a bit done. I had my final and only got one question wrong (holla back), lots of work, etc.....I'm too ADD to list everything.

Amidst all that stuff I have forgotten to blog about Whoville. That is the theme of our Christmas decor for 2012. I was told I have free reign over decorations and could do whatever my little heart desired.

I started out by going to Michael's and bought some fancy ribbon, I was going to be fancy this year. The ribbon sat and stared at me for a few days and I decided I can't pull off fancy and why pretend to be fancy when we are not? Too much pretense. My next thought was Whoville. I love the Grinch and all things Dr. Seuss plus Hobby Lobby had 50% off their entire Christmas decor sections. I filled that cart like nobodies business. I got some great deals and spent about $60 total on all the decorations to decorate the entire living room. Those bags were filled with glitter for dayzzzzz.

I also decided to make several decorations just to be fun and to save some money. Here are some things I made:

I cut out a bunch of random colored circles and sewed them in looooong sections to make garland, I made a bunch of paper cone trees, I cut out aprox. 50 coffee filter snowflakes, I sanded/painted/glittered an antelope just because I can, and helped make 5 elf stockings.

I also made this silly canvas sign. I cut out the quote onto vinyl using my silhouette. After painting the base green, I punched out all the letters from the vinyl and painted the letters on. Then cut out the tree (which ended up being made in reverse- red was supposed to be on top), and added some fake snow paint to give the tree something to 'stand' on.

 The tree once it was decorated with all the sparkly ornaments and disco balls. Completed with a crooked star. Let's pretend that's on purpose.

 Bad cell phone pics but this is the living room from further back.

This is a random mishmash of decor. Since we've never done this theme I really underestimated how much stuff I'd need to buy to fill this living room so we were lacking a bit of shelf-type decor.

I just like staring at the tree in the dark. I might spend a bit too much time staring at the tree.

I'm really not wanting to blog so here are a few more random pictures of random decor. Perhaps I'll do a better post another time but probably not. It was a fun change from the last several years with the rusty snowman theme (no offense) but we've just done that for SOOOO LONG.

Merry Christmas Eve!! Have a wonderful day!!

Christmas, Unwrapped

Get it? My goodness I'm so punny...get it? OK I'm done, promise :).

I got prettttttty spoiled this Christmas. I think the older you get, the more you buy for others, you start to get really good gifts yourself...maybe? I know it's not about the gifts but I don't hate it =).

Here are a few of my favorite things!

A zebra pillow pet, every 24 year old needs a pillow pet, come on!! I seriously love it, it might seem childish but I've used it a lot.

So practical, a car emergency kit. It's about time I got this kind of thing. I think I want to put together a whole 72 hr kit in my car too just in case. I love preparedness.

Ummmm a whole Costco sized pack of hand warmers because my hands and feet are always so cold. I actually didn't know these were for me, I saw them in the back of the car a week or so ago. I was driving through a parking lot and saw a homeless person's cot set up under the eves of an abandoned store. That person probably needs this more than me. Maybe I'll go back and see if they're still there.

KB socks, represent!! These are my favorite socks ever. Thanks Costco & Mom for getting them for me while I was shopping with you. Your efforts to hide them from me didn't go unnoticed.

Random box of stuff, mostly stocking stuffers, scrapbooking stuff, HARRY POTTER, a smash book which I'm excited to start and various other items.

A NEW CANON LENS!!.....

.....that doubles as a drink holder..... :) wah wah....

Some new TOMS. Favorite shoes ever. I got another pair in an army green color from my aunt as well. So two kids who need shoes now have them.

This might be one of my favorite favorites. Roald Dahl was/is my favorite author. I have been wanting to buy all of his books for several years now but it was going to be very expensive. Well at Costco one day I saw his entire collection for 25 bucks. I was with my mom and she bought them as an early gift for me. See I'm way too spoiled.

My dad got me this book--that will remain sideways--just flipping through it quickly I've seen some really neat projects I can't wait to try. Perhaps they will be blog worthy?

A gypsy machine for my cricut. This is actually kind of for me and my mom. It's a handy dandy device that lets you plan what you want your cricut to cut...trust me it's neat. Not pictured: I also got a cricut case to use while transporting my cricut.

Super excited for my new soft box to go over my flash. I took Christmas party pics a few weekends ago and used a SOCK to get the same effect, but this looks more professional  :). I also got a cord that makes my flash 'portable'.

 My brother also got me a handy carrying case for all my paints as well as some new brushes and saaweeeet paints.
Santa heard that I needed a new external hard drive to back up all my photos and the big guy pulled through.

But the best part/s of Christmas?

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the gift that keeps on giving!!

 I bought us all animal print snuggies (a WOOT special). Not pictured: My father wearing his cheetah snuggie....except that he never even took it out of the package...rude.

 But really the funnest part was skyping with my brother Ty. He's serving a two year mission in Santiago, Chile. This was his last Christmas in the mission field!!

So one more skype until he's home...well in Aug/Sept. So he's still got some time.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. What a wonderful time of year. It's my favorite time of year, fo sho.

Really Last Minute

Two blogs in one day...wahhhhhh? WEIRD. Someone better take my temperature. Like I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to very quickly, post about a few very last minute Christmas gifts I'm working on. All my gifts from my previous post are wrapped and ready to go, if I didn't have a splitting headache I'd go deliver them now :(.

The first is a gift I'm making for my grandma, I should be working on it now.
It's going to be a birthday calendar eventually.

So I had a bunch of these poker chips...why we have them when none of us play poker, I dunno, but we did. So I started by spray painting all the ones that weren't black, black. 

Then I picked out 6 pieces of slightly patterned paper and printed the first name of each member of my family along with the day they were born ex: Mariah 8th.

Cut out each name with a circle punch and glued it onto the now dry poker chip.

This is a horrrrrible picture of the basic idea behind this bday calendar:

It will be a wooden piece that says, Peck Family Birthday's. Underneath that, I'll have the months written across the bottom of the board. Each month will have an eye hook beneath it where I will daisy chain the poker chips.
Still with me?
No?
OK.

 This tool above is called, a Crop-a-dile. It cuts through just about anything. I'm able to cut through the paper and plastic poker chip. Once the holes are made, I'll use jewelry jump rings to connect the chips, in order under their corresponding month

 

I apologize deeply if you're still reading. I don't think I'm making ANY sense but it's been a long day!!

 These are all the poker chips, basically done, I still have a few more that I need to redo do to glue mishaps. Tomorrow I'm going to punch holes in each of these and place them in order by month.
I guess this might be a gift that gets delivered a little after Christmas because I don't have any wood to make the sign. So that's a bummer. I think I also need to find some eye hooks.


SOOOO if you're still reading here is another last minute gift I've been working on:

 Headband Earwarmers!! They are so hip right now and I can make them in about an hour so they are the ultimate last minute DIY gift!!

I've made three in the last day and a half, one was already gifted so just two are shown. These two will have homes soon. If you know how to do basic crochet stitches, you can make this so super easily.
If you want to make your own, watch this video. 
I didn't make mine as thick as hers and I added a flower. She's very wordy and kind of slow getting to the point so once I watched enough to know what I needed to do on the ends, I just made up my own directions as I went but it's pretty simple.

I'm thankful for my knowledge on how to knit and crochet, I'm able to make gifts for people that I wouldn't otherwise be able to make. It's pretty fun to watch a piece of 'string' as my dad calls it (yarn) turn into something else like a hat, blanket, scarf, earwarmers etc...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Breaking My Rules

Rules are made to be broken right?

In this case, RIGHT.

One of my most favorite and essential Holiday rules is that I do not shop after about the 15th. Usually I have all my shopping done way before that anyways so it's not a hard rule to follow.

This year I made an exception. Seeing all the gifts under my tree grow over the last few days made me feel reallllly spoiled (even though about half of the gifts under the tree are FROM me to my family). But we are pretty lucky to have good jobs and to be able to afford nice Christmas's every year.

This year I decided to grow up. I have picked a name off a giving tree pretty much every year for about five years by myself. So I shopped for an 8 year old girl this year. I hope she likes the items I got her, I hope she knows someone was/is thinking of her.

The other part of this 'growing up' was deciding last night that I needed to get a few gifts for a particular family. I'm not sure why, but I couldn't stop thinking about it all night while I should have been sleeping.

Today I broke my rule, I braved the crowds/traffic and last minute shoppers to get a few things for this family. I'm only writing this because I know she doesn't read my blog, I don't want them to know it was me.

It feels really good to do something for someone else. No matter how big or small the impact might be. They only have three people in their family so it wasn't very hard to find gifts, but I did want them to be useful gifts.

Now I'm listening to music and packaging up their gifts to deliver under the cover of night :). I sound so CIA I know....psh.

I wish I could buy something for everyone who needs a little extra this year, but I know that's unrealistic but I'm happy to help one small family.

I think this will be my new tradition. Since I don't have my own own family, I can 'adopt' one. I have the means to do so, so what's stopping me?!

Should have been doing it all along.

Even if there are times we are struggling financially, there are other ways we can give. We can use our talents and time to bless others around us. It is Christmas after all.

Stay tuned, maybe tonight or tomorrow I'll update with a few reallllly last minute Christmas gifts I've been making. I know you have nothing better to do these last few days before Christmas than read my blog :) just kidding.