Quick Mother's Day Gift with Free Printables

I don't know about you, but I always feel like I'm doing everything at the last minute! Too much to do, too little time...yada yada yada! Well, I sure don't have time to stop & complain!  I just need to find ways to get more done in less time!  Last night & today's issue was how to make my mom a Mother's Day card, wrap her gift, get the kids to make her something special AND get it all in the mail today!  I'm like so many of you, I LOVE making personalized gifts and using my imagination to create something special for my loved ones.  But that whole issue of too little time enters the picture way too often!  I did make it to Costco to pick up my mom's gift, something she loved but didn't buy herself on her recent visit.  No, I'm not saying what it is on the off chance she's reading this! So, I had the gift, which was good.  But still, how do I squeeze in a post office visit into my Wednesday...it just wasn't in the cards!  Then it came to me, at Christmas I was too late to do this (Yep, this lateness seems to be a theme for me recently!).  The Post Office has a print online option for postage and thankfully, I had remembered to pick up some of those flat rate priority mail boxes on my last trip to the physical Post Office.  So, a quick trip to the garage solved part of that problem.  The medium box was the perfect size.  Then I went online and printed out my prepaid label on usps.com.

Even though I was running short on time, I did find a quick minute to check Facebook.  Yes, I'm sort of a procrastinator....  But this time, my Facebook visit actually saved me some time!  Yes, I'll be telling my husband about this when he's back from his business trip because he swears Facebook is the biggest time sucker ever invented.  But, I digress!  There at the top of my news feed was a post from Kim over at Today's Creative Blog, she had a new free Mother's Day printable designed by Michelle from Elegance and Enchantment.  And Michelle also had coordinating pieces for free on her blog!  Lifesavers those two!  I grabbed some white cardstock and quickly set about printing one page of each Mother's Day printable.

I only had time to get everything printed before I had to get kids to bed and work on one of my other business projects.  I do a few freelance contract type jobs that I squeeze in between being a mom.  So I got back to my Mother's Day project this morning before Jake's swimming lesson.  I looked through my cardstock stash and found a nice dark green that complemented the printables and made a card out of it.  I cut out the printable tags and note card and used them to decorate my card, with the addition of some coordinating printed papers and wood veneer pieces, sequins and twine as embellishment.

After Jake woke up, I had him fill out a cute Grandma printable that's free over on 30 Handmade Days.  He had a great time answering the questions about Grandma and drawing a picture of them together.  He didn't have as much fun doing the writing and having to ask me how to spell words, but I really wanted it to be his handwriting she was reading with his comments.  I rolled his photo and a letter that prints with it in some baker's twine for Grandma to open when she gets our package.  My daughter, Delaney, had made Grandma a special card with a drawing on the front and a poem inside.  My mom always loves seeing what her little artists come up with.

Next, I wanted to wrap my present so it looks special inside the box when Mom opens it.  I used kraft paper I picked up at The Container Store a couple weeks ago and taped it with pink washi tape.  Then I combined pink & yellow baker's twine with a medium garden twine for the ribbon.  (I use garden twine in different sizes in tons of my projects.  It's one of my very favorite go-to "ribbons".)  I added a couple of the cute Mother's Day tags from Elegance and Enchantment to the twine and taped one to the package with a bright floral washi.

With time running out before swimming lessons (the mailman comes while we are at the pool), I grabbed some white tissue paper and ran everything downstairs and started filling my box.  I put the gift in first and then layered our other items between tissue.  I added a couple of the printable tags, tied with baker's twine in between the layers and put my card on top.  After it was perfect, I taped the box closed and added some of the printable circles to the outside of the box, so mom knows it's special the moment she picks it up at the Post Office.

I shot some photos of everything and put the box out on my front step just before we had to leave for swimming.  When we got home, it was gone!  Off to Mom's house just in time for Mother's Day!

I hope you stop over and check out the printables on Kim's, Michelle's & Mique's blog (there are tons, not just these!).  Pin them to a special Printables board on Pinterest and next time, you're in a time crunch, you'll know just where to find what you need for that someone special.  If you'd like to see some of the variety of printables that are out there, stop over on my Printables Pinterest board.  I've got lots for you to check out.  I also categorize my finds on the internet a bit differently than most people.  I like to use monthly Pinterest boards to help me go back and find what I need in a particular month.  My May Pinterest board has pins for Mother's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Teacher Appreciation...really anything I think I might need in May.  I have boards for each month of they year, stop over and check them out when you get a chance.

Hope you enjoyed my take on these beautiful free printables!  Happy Mother's Day!

DIY Lego Valentine Hearts to Exchange

Jake will be six this week and he's obsessed with Lego's.  While helping him put sort his pieces the other day, I had a thought that it would be cool to go non-traditional for class Valentines this year.    It's funny how I sometimes get these bright ideas without actually realizing a million people have probably had this idea before.  Wouldn't it be cool to make little hearts out of Legos for the kids in Jake's kindergarten class?!?!  Of course, I tried to make one from scratch and shockingly, I am not the best Lego creator ever!  So, I went to my trusty Google, where I realized quite a few people have gone before me in this quest.  I found a few ideas and after trying them decided on this pattern from instructables.com.

Jake wanted to help, so we sorted through his red Legos and didn't have enough to make the entire heart red, so a few of our pieces were white.  We liked the shape and the combination of colors, so we decided to make them for Jake's class and a couple other friends.

Then my daughter Delaney & I made a quick trip to the mall.  Having a Lego store with a "fill your bucket" area was super cool for this project.  You pick a large or small container (They probably measure about a 16 oz for a large cup and 8 oz for a small cup, but don't quote me on that! Price is about $7.50 for the small and $14 for the large.).  Then fill your cup with bricks of all sizes & colors from bins that cover the back wall of the store.  The employees are super helpful and shake your container or rearrange the bricks for you, so you can fit a couple more.  The trick is to put in a few large bricks and fill the wholes with little ones.  We counted the pieces in our sample and then chose red & white bricks to create that shape.  We did end up with different bricks because of what was available in our store, but the final product will be the exact same shape.  We are making 22 Lego hearts, after a 50 cent deposit credit for reusing one of our own containers and putting a $5 credit from my Lego VIP card toward the purchase, our total ended up being around 70 cents each.  If you don't have a Lego store near you, I did check the Lego website and found that you can order individual bricks HERE.  I am not sure exactly which bricks are available or how much the little hearts would cost doing it this way, but it looks like a good option.  There are 157 pages of individual bricks to explore and you can narrow that number by entering information such as category and color.

After making some of the hearts, I looked around the internet and ended up combining a few of the ideas I found and adding a little touch of my own.  I searched for free Lego clip art and came up with some fun little minifigure faces and a stack of bricks.  Being a self confessed hoarder of fonts, I searched for a Lego font and came up with Legothick from Urbanfonts.

I used my trusty Photoshop Elements to come up with my design for the tags and some cellophane bags I use for my custom Project Life cards.  And we're all ready for Valentine's Day!

I had planned on using the same little minifigure head on all four of my tags but then I came across the cute little girl with the eyelashes & red lips and couldn't pass it up.  So the little girls will get a girl and the boys will get the little smiling face.  Jake loved the one with the sunglasses, so I put that one next to his name on all the tags.  Download the FREE printable tags for your Lego Valentines HERE!

Don't worry, if you're in a hurry or can't find the bricks to create the hearts for your Valentines.  This idea works just as well with a little bag filled with miscellaneous bricks.  Buy a bin at Target or just grab some from your kids' stash...chances are they won't miss a few (maybe...)!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Check out this post and tons of other great Valentine ideas over on InspirationDIY.com:

And, of course, don't forget to stop by my friend Kim's link party for
all sorts of inspiration...Valentine & otherwise!

Find it over at Today's Creative Blog