High Five for Friday

Hello there! Today I'm linking up Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past week.

1) Last Friday, Grant got to spend the day at his Gramma & Grandpa's. Since Husband I would be out late for the concert, Grant just spend the night Thursday and then all day on Friday. He had a lot of fun and we all met at IHOP that evening for dinner and to pick up Grant. That's where he got to show off his new hat from Gramma & Grandpa (and eat up all the compliments he got at the restaurant).

He's requesting cowboy boots now.

We even got Husband to try it on :)

2) I made a blanket! With my sewing machine. Most of you may not know what a huge accomplishment that is for me, made even bigger by the fact that I really didn't throw any hissy fits during the process. Not only have I never made a blanket with my sewing machine, but I've also never used my sewing machine without having an absolute meltdown over how awful I am at sewing (or stabbing myself several times with pins - no tears and no bandaids make this quite a success for me!). I'm looking forward to gifting my craftiness :)

3) We have a lot of birds in our backyard and my favorites are the cardinals. I love to watch them when they get brave enough to hang out on the deck and every once in a while, I manage to get a picture.

4) This week I shared a fun little Teacher Appreciation gift idea (Teacher Appreciation Week is next week - thank a teacher!).

5) Costume day at school! 

6) Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs! The boy is obsessed. The Land Before Time (classic!) doesn't doesn't leave the DVD player anymore and we watch it several times a weekend. And recently discovered the TV series is on Amazon Prime and Grant has become a fan of that too. I think he has a hard time believing that Husband & I watched that movie as kids too. And the dinosaur book he got for Easter is read a lot. One night before bed we read it cover to cover (this is not a small book people!). Me reading the book, Grant telling me if the one on the page was a plant or a meat eater. He LOVES dinosaurs!

The one millionth showing of The Land Before Time

Reading the huge dinosaur book

Happy Friday everyone!

Have a great weekend!

"You're the 'balm'!" Teacher Gift Idea {with printable}

Grant loves his school. We were so lucky to find this daycare/preschool when we did. Grant has been there since he was about 6 months old, when we moved him from a daycare we were less than thrilled with. Most of the kids he's friends with now he's known his whole life. That makes me sad because he so loves his friends and this year when kindergarten starts, they won't all be together anymore. 

And Grant so loves his teachers! He's already asked us which one will be his kindergarten teacher. He looked confused and a little sad that none of the teachers he knows will be his kindergarten teacher. It kind of broke my heart. But it makes me happy too, because he's so happy at preschool and that is an awesome feeling. 

Every year for Teacher Appreciation Week (this year is May 4th-8th) I bake some stuff for the staff at school. They all work so hard with all the kids and definitely deserve a week of appreciation (though I hope they know we appreciate them every day)! This year I wanted to do something a little extra for Grant's teachers. While I've always felt like he's getting an early education where he is, with this year being preschool I've really noticed a change and can tell how much his teachers are doing to ready him for kindergarten.

I thought this was a fun little gift idea and I wanted to share it for anyone who might want to use it too.

What you need:

• lip balm (you can use any kind, I used eos)
• cellophane treat bags
• filling (mine is shredded paper but I think tissue paper would be great too)
• twine or twist ties to close the bag
• gift tags 
• optional: I added some fun hair ties as well

You just put it all together and add your gift tag when you're tying it closed. 

I think it's so fun and a nice little way of saying an extra "Thanks!". I tried several times to get Grant to write his teachers names on the backs of the gift tags but he still writes a little too big and kept running out of room. So we settled on me writing their names and he signed it with "Love, Grant". 

How cute are those tags?! I love the chalkboard look. Want to use them? You can get them HERE (for your own personal use).

I mentioned hair ties above. All of Grant's teachers are females and what woman doesn't love a good hair tie? So I added some hair ties on a 3x5 index card to the package.

These are hair ties I made because I found some adorable school themed elastic (but you could use any). I tried to personalize it to each teacher. For instance, the ones in the above picture are for a teacher that loves the beach. He has another teacher that loves tie-dye so I ordered some tie-dyed elastic for her hair ties. 

This is an easy little gift to put together and it's a nice little extra thank you to go along with the treats I plan to send to school that day. Grant can't wait to give them to his teachers. Since I made them early - to share this post with you - he asks often when he gets to bring them to school!

Linking up for
Made by You Monday!

Heart Shaped Crayon Valentines

I am so excited about this project! I have been wanting to try the "recycled" crayon thing for a while and with Valentine's Day quickly approaching, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I've got a little how-to here on how you can make them too.

What you need:

• Crayons (I bought a box of 250 crayons HERE)
• Mini heart-shaped silicone mold (I purchased mine from a craft store, the one with 12 wells)
• Double-sided tape
• Cardstock (or something to adhere your finished crayons to)
• Baggies
• Twine (or anything else that you can use to close up the bag)

So first things first: gather your crayons. We don't have oodles of broken crayons lying around that I could "recycle" so I decided to go straight for the bulk crayons. I thought it would be 8 colors but it ended up being a lot more color variety than that. I was nervous about that at first but I think the end result looks great.

I was like a kid when I got home from work and this box was on my porch. I started peeling them as soon as we were done with dinner. It's not really something to spontaneously start on a Thursday evening so I didn't get too awfully far with it. I ended up having to put it aside until Saturday.

Grant actually asked to help me peel the crayons!

I love the concentration on that face :)

So...many...crayons!

At some point during our peeling endeavors, my husband suggested using a sharp blade to slice the paper. "Wouldn't that be easier?" he asked me. I'll admit that when peeling the paper it came off the crayons much easier than I expected but when Grant abandoned me in favor of crashing his toy cars...I decided to try Husband's idea. 

Pretty genius, right? I was peeling those crayons at record speed!

After you undress all your crayons, then you chop them. I used a paper plate so I didn't ruin a cutting board. I tried to keep the pieces relatively small to really fill up the mold. 

I also got a big blister from chopping 250 crayons (beware!).

So after your crayons are all chopped up, it's time to fill your mold. Make sure you put the mold on a baking sheet of some sort for stability! Otherwise you'll end up with non-toxic smelly crayon wax in the bottom of your oven...it's possible I'm speaking from experience.

I filled my mold pretty full. I wanted good sized crayons.

Then you bake them at 230 degrees for 15 minutes.

Fresh out of the oven! It's probably the smelliest thing that's ever come out of my oven.

Once the baking sheet had cooled down some, I popped the whole thing in the fridge to make it cool down faster. Once the crayons are completely cooled, press up on the bottom of each well and gently peel the crayon out of the mold. (FYI: I got 44 heart crayons out of the 250 that I chopped.)

So colorful and fun!

My favorites are the ones with the speckles from the tiny bits of chopped crayons

Your next step is adhering them to the backing of your choice. I made up this nifty background which you can download for your personal use below.

You can leave the corners square if you don't feel like trimming 

them with scissors. I think they look cute either way.

My crayons had a little "lip" around the edges after they hardened so I used the same blade that I sliced the paper with to trim the back of the crayon.

Then I used the double sided tape to stick the crayon to the card.

I had some cellophane treat bags leftover from various baking projects, so that was my baggie of choice but you can use whatever want. I also had some twine here so I used that to close up my baggie instead of the twist ties they came with. 

Is it wrong to admit that Grant is a big fan of candy? I promise he doesn't eat it all the time. But since he is and Valentine's Day makes me think candy, we added a sweet treat tied up in the twine to finish up.

And there is your adorable DIY Valentine!

They really do color too! I let Grant experiment with a couple extra.

You could do your To & From on the back of the little cards. 

For us, we're attaching these adorable personalized Valentines from Tiny Prints! Grant had so much fun looking through the Valentines but was even more excited when they came in the mail!

If you decide to make these and you'd like to use the background I made (for your own personal use), you can download it HERE. And if you decide to make the crayons, I'd love to hear about it!

Grant can't wait to give out Valentine's at school! He keeps asking how many more days. This project was a little time consuming but not difficult. I love that I was able to involve Grant for some of it, since was asking to help and it makes me so happy see him excited to give them to his friends.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!