I was hoping I would have more of the baby blanket done by now, but I was too busy working on my new craft podcast!

I would love it if you head on over to the Crafter Cast website and take a listen. The first show is all about me - the crafts I enjoy, making handmade gifts and our trip to Atlanta this weekend. I was so nervous but I know I sound good. Next week I’ll be sharing more about the trip to Atlanta and handmade holiday gift ideas for boys - the one thing I am having a hard time with!

There are days when my brain goes off on wild tangents. Today was one of those days.

I was listening to the latest Mom’s Money podcast, this week’s show is about teaching kids about money. This is a great topic for me because I want to start giving my kids an allowance and just don’t know how. I’ve mentioned they are price conscious and now seems to be a great time to start working with money.

While listening to Mom’s Money I decided my kids need piggy banks. I know I had seen one with multiple compartments for saving, spending, donation, etc., so off I went on a Google-quest to find said piggy bank. I tried Amazon - who had the one I wanted (the Money Savvy Piggy Bank) listed, but it isn’t available right now. Okay so tried and true Amazon failed me - but google won’t!

Back to searching.

I found the site that created the money savvy bank - and wow it is available in multiple colors! Alice immediately picked pink and Jake wanted green. I’m thinking this is a great idea but can I find it locally so I can save on shipping costs. Ahah, Toys R Us! But their phone number is busy no matter how many times I call them in five minutes. Since my brain is skipping from thread to thread, I quickly move on.

A quick glance around the bank creators site shows me a cow bank and a football bank - Jake sticks to wanting a green pig, Alice thought the cow was cute but she’s becoming attached to the color pink in general so there was no changing her mind.

Still thinking I want to save on shipping, I go back to Google - maybe there is a site that has it offering free shipping or low shipping. Darn Amazon anyway.

Then I stumble upon a post on the financial blog Get Rich Slowly about this exact piggy bank. Reading the post is merely verifying my want of the piggy banks and I’m ready to click back and buy the banks, sucking up the shipping charge (and the crazy fact that I would be spending a chunk of change to teach my kids to save money). Then I read the words

(Of course, the truly frugal can accomplish the same thing with four canning jars.)

His parentheses; and the link goes to a flickr picture of three canning jars with a child’s handwriting indicating saving, spending and donate. It took searching and bouncing from site to site and my finger on the buy now button before I thought *duh I have old Ball Mason jars* - I can just use a few of them! A little while later and we went from this

to this on the dresser.

Save, Spend, Donate.

I stayed with green paper for Jake and pink for Alice, used stamps from Stampin’ Up to decorate the punched out circle and look at that - a three component piggy bank system. It’s about time I use the jars for something, as they haven’t moved since I put them up on the shelves. Their allowances start next week.

How does your brain work when searching for something?

Another post from my wonderful Mom! She cross stitched/embroidered pillow cases for Alice to go with her quilt. The edge was raw and we found matching ribbon in my ribbon stash. I’m not sure if you can tell on the picture but the ribbon background is brown and the flowers are pink and orange - perfect match! I finished one of the edges last week and then the second one over the weekend. It wasn’t too hard once I managed to coax my sewing machine into sewing longer stitches.

I’m still doing the card swap with a few girlfriends and these are the cards I picked to make back in August. I ended up not shipping anything because I was doing the September cards and figured I would send them together.

These cards are called trifold - and wow they were SO hard for me to get right! I need a new tool to score my paper with because I’ve realized the paper cutter I like to use and the one I used to use are slightly off from each other, so the old cutter and it’s scoring tool put off marks on the paper. Here are the cards almost put all together. I love the color combination.

And here are the cards all done!

These are a new stamp set called Merry & Bright in the Holiday Stampin’ Up catalog. These stamps are SO cute! I used the set again for my September cards. (so the stamps, cardstock, ink and ribbon are all copyright SU!)

I like the trifold, I should have taken a picture of how they open but you can kind of tell in the top picture. They are fun cards that’s for sure! Perfect size for a stocking stuffer. I think I’m going to make more for the kids in my life. I may go with a regular side open 3 X 3 card, and not the tri.

I made these a few weeks ago and they are still so great! It felt early for Holiday or Christmas cards when I got the idea but now that the weather is cooling off a bit and it’s almost October, it’s perfect timing. How about you, getting ready (or already a lot ready) for the upcoming holidays?

For the kids friends I made gift bags to give out at the birthday party. I’m all about the party being about the birthday kid but I didn’t make invites for anyone so I figured a cute bag with snacks in it would be just as good.

Even though the party didn’t have a theme, this crab set from Stampin Up was perfect! The crab is holding a piece of cake in a shell, there are other accessories I could have included but I wanted to get it all done in a day so I kept it simple. You can kind of see the party hats on the side of the main image, which I realize works mostly on darker colored paper. Alice helped pick out which ribbon should go with which and also with the coloring. I didn’t want the crab to be all one color, I was going for a shaded look, but I ran out of time.

I put a few pieces of candy and a fruit snack in each bag - I made one for my kids plus the other four kids that came. Everyone was happy with them and my kids are still playing with theirs days later! I am so glad I did them and I’m wondering what else I can make them for. I do need to use different adhesive as the sides came apart much too easily for my liking.

I found the gift bag tutorial here - very easy to make and so cute!

All images/cardstock/ink copyright Stampin’ Up.

Technorati Tags: stampin up, gift bags

Since Alice was three and Jake was one I’ve made them a cake from a molded cake pan - you know, a shape or character. Okay so we’ve just used the same Dora and Elmo cake pans, but hey, it’s the thought that counts!

This year I made a gumball cake for Jake - thank goodness for eBay! I searched one day just in case a gumball mold had been made at some point - only to discover yes one had been made…back in 1987. Thanks to eBay I managed to score one and received it in the mail early last week.

It was super easy to decorate - three colors (really just two) and the gumballs! I suppose I could have squished the icing together more so you can’t see the chocolate cake underneath, but it still looks great.

Alice’s cake was a big tougher - she wanted a strawberry. Unfortunately a strawberry mold isn’t out there, only Strawberry Shortcake is. I figured making one myself couldn’t be that hard - a heart shape, something for the seeds and leaves. And so I made the circle cake and the square cake and cut the circle in half. Only then did I realize how much more the circle cake rose up! Rather then cutting down the circle cake, I cut the edges of the square cake and filled it in. Needless to say it didn’t look like anyone on Duff’s team of awesome cake makers was here helping! I wasn’t sure it would even work out - but check it out, very cool! I used chocolate chips for the seeds and a few fake leaves for the leaves. It turned out great. I even dyed the cake batter pink.

I got the idea for this card from this card in the splitcoast gallery. I’ve had the Stampin’ Up chalk set for quite a while now but never used it because I was too scared to! And after using it - wow, I love them! All I did was stamp the image (the leaves) in versamark and then use a qtip to brush the chalk over. The instructions do say to use a cotton ball but I couldn’t find them the day I did this card. The qtips worked well I thought, and when I did find the cotton ball I thought too much chalk got onto the card - though maybe that was the point? I’ve been playing around with my chalks here and there and like the effect the qtip gives much better.

I made a few of these cards for a swap group I am in and kept a couple for myself. I haven’t sent them to anyone yet, just adding to my growing card collection.

All paper, inks, stamps, etc copyright Stampin’ Up

Technorati Tags: handmade cards, stamping, Stampin’ Up