May has graciously offered her time and talents to the interweb, FOR FREE. (She usually gets paid the big bucks for this kind of stuff.)

Blah, blah, blah….here’s May:

Can you believe Nevada Day is this Friday? (I’m sure you all have that marked on your calendar, right? RIGHT?) That means Christmas is just around the corner. The time of year when you think, “Oh crap. I need to think of some good present ideas. Whatever shall I do?”

I suggest you make your cards 4.25″ x 5.5″. Because that’s a sheet of regular cardstock folded in half, then cut in half. Dude, 2 cards out of a sheet of cardstock. That’s crafty AND thrifty. Click on this image below where I explain it all.

GLITTER GLUE IS NOT OPTIONAL. See how I made all the cute polka-dots on the backgrounds? They’re for you to dot glitter glue onto. You don’t have to go overboard, sometimes less IS more, but seriously, everything is better with glitter.

Random Bullet Pointed Tips:
* Buy envelopes before you make your cards. That way you can make the cards exactly the right size. Or, if you’re like me, you may have a stockpile already to pull from… (Because you never know when you’ll need 500 envelopes, right?) (Size A-2 envelopes are 4.375″ x 5.75″, and fit cards that are 4.25″ x 5.5″. Do a google search for A-2 envelopes & find lots of lovely options.)

* I buy reams of card stock to make my own cards, but craft stores carry nice little 25-page packs in a variety of colors that are lovely. I use a paper cutter to cut it down to the right size. If I’m really ambitious, I’ll use a butter knife to score where the paper will fold before I cut it. Then I get a pristine fold line. It’s very satisfying.

* Coloring Your Card: I think Colored Pencils are the best. Watercolors will work too (if you’ve laser-printed the designs, but if you printed it on an inkjet printer it will smear.)

* Again I say it, glitter glue is your friend. Embrace the glitter glue. For best results, color the design in first & then enhance & highlight with the glittery goodness.

HAPPY CRAFTING!!!

PS – I originally made this craft for my Non-Denominational-Christian-Moms-Group, MOPS. I joined this group when I moved to Reno because:

1. I needed to make friends QUICK. We don’t do well without playdates.

2. I needed a break from my kid (I love my kids, but dude, being a SAHM can be INTENSE.) When you go to a MOPS meeting, you get to leave your kid at a class run by nice church ladies. I say it again. YOU GET TO LEAVE YOUR KID FOR TWO HOURS. And then talk to other ladies. Real conversation where NO ONE ASKS YOU FOR A SNACK. I know. It’s like heaven.

Here’s some of the cards we made at our meeting last week. Awww….

My birthday was last week and it kind of sucked. I have no one to blame but myself. I dragged my little family on an eight hour road trip so that we could go to my cousin’s wedding. So four-in-the-fraking-morning we loaded Lil May & The Gretch into the car (the grand plan being that they’d sleep for at least half the drive. Not so much. Instead they slept approximately 2.5 minutes each). So that started the suckage. Then I got a “Road Trip Migrane”.

When we finally rolled into Salt Lake City, I was in a mighty foul mood.

But then I remembered that Isabel sent me a mysterious package! When I opened it, I found my OWN MINI POCKET EDWARD, purchased with love on etsy. So in homage to our favorite Pocket Edward, I took some photos of him and our journeys.

Look, he’s totally pondering the homogenization of our society!

Here he is on my brother-in-law’s side of the bed…

Here he is with my brother-in-law’s pretty wife…

Edward was glad the weather cooperated. Nothing like overcast skies to bring a smile to a felt-mini-vampire’s face…

Sniff, this is the last time I saw Mini Pocket Edward. I tucked him carefully beside my seat, in easy reach so that I could keep him photo-ready. We stopped at the Salt Flats…

…got back on the road, and I haven’t seen him since. I’m feeling an empty hole in my chest, ready to rip apart. I’m sitting all angsty in front of my computer, pale and withdrawn. If Jacob doesn’t get here soon to piece me back together, I might not make it. Maybe I’ll get the scooter from the garage and do some curb jumps so I can hear his sweet velvet voice in my head…

Till I find my dear Mini Pocket Edward, I made a PAPER POCKET EDWARD to tide me over! Look! He’s ready to start back at Forks High with his Pee Chee folder AND a trapper keeper (he likes fast cars). Also, I gave him some cleaning supplies because a hot guy cleaning my bathroom is pretty much the pinnacle of existence, right? Or, if need arises, a pirate costume.

Do you know what would be awesome? If you printed out Paper Pocket Edward, on sparkly card stock paper, of course, and took him on some adventures.  You also might want to laminate him prior to cutting him out.

Till then, Be Safe.

xoxo

May

I just got back from vacation in Antigua, and pretty much already blogged about the highlights (TSA encounters, surprise engagements, that kind of stuff).

I started thinking about vacations I planned but never took. And how I wish I would have.

Last year at this time my marriage was done. He was moving out and it was just going to be me and my girls. I was trying to think of something fun that we could do, just us girls, for a long weekend in September, as kind of a distraction. We all loved the beach but that was a long drive from the Midwest. We couldn’t afford to fly all four of us. And lodging – forget it.

Then I remembered a friend telling me about the Indiana Dunes. It’s in Northern Indiana on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and it looks like a beach. After all, the Great Lakes are inland seas, you know. You can rent a cabin and enjoy the water and sand, just like an ocean beach, but for half the price and half the drive. Brilliant, I thought. So I printed out a few houses and some websites. I took it home and left it in my car. Things happened and we didn’t get a chance to go before it got too cold. “Next summer,” I thought.

The girls and I talked about trying to fly to San Diego to see my brother before he left for Iraq. Again, things happened and we couldn’t do it. “Next year, when he comes home,” I thought.

We talked about going to my dad’s at the Lake of the Ozarks, three hours away. Or even having Jessica take Kelli down for a weekend. We never did, because of work or school schedules. “Next month, we’ll go.”

Well, it’s almost next year now, and I didn’t go to the Indiana Dune. I didn’t fly to San Diego. I have been better about going to see my dad.

I know “seize the day” is easier said than done. But sometimes, you’ve got to grab a toothbrush, clean underwear and hit the road. Because you might not get a next week, next month, next year.

Would the fact that we went to Indiana or San Diego change things and they’d still be alive today?

No.

But it would have been one more set of memories that I would have to think about when I look at their pictures and remember what could have been.

So grab the ones you love and take a vacation. Even if it’s renting a hotel room and using the pool. Pack junk food. Jump on the beds. The memories you gain are worth more than the money you spend.

We visited Seattle to see our BFFs & wonder, “Why did we move to Reno?”

(Also, as previously mentioned, Isabel & I suck for not taking more pictures of US together. Our friendship has been commemorated with some crappy photos of me pregnant & moving, and some random shots from baby showers…)

(Seattle Aquarium with Lil May’s BFF)

And then BACK to California for my Dad’s wedding. (That dapper gentleman is my Grandpa, surrounded by grandkids doing the group-picture-get-in-close-hug.)

And I can’t help myself & have dragged the girls up to Lake Tahoe EVERY WEEK this summer (so that living in Reno can seem cooler, and I can say, “And Lake Tahoe is SO CLOSE, we go every week!”

But look at the beautiful scenery, can you blame me???

So since I’m driving my 3.5 year old & 7 month old down to drama central (also known as “home”) in SoCal in 2 weeks, and I need your help. How can I keep them happy in the car for 10 – 11 hours BESIDES portable DVD players, wrapped dollar store gifts, lifetime supply of Pringles, and Raffi CD’s. And also, why do I forget about the living hell that is traveling with small children every single time I plan a trip? Do you think Bella has this problem with Renesmee?

PS – Was I too subtle about the Reno thing? Sorry if you love Reno. Maybe we can meet up for Awful Awful burgers & you can tell me why it doesn’t suck, I mean what I’ve overlooked…

]]> http://www.holaisabel.com/2008/09/17/apryl/feed/ 8 http://www.holaisabel.com/2008/09/15/where-i-celebrate-being-an-adult-by-sleeping-in/ http://www.holaisabel.com/2008/09/15/where-i-celebrate-being-an-adult-by-sleeping-in/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:01:58 +0000 Isabel http://pathfinder.xssl.net/holaisabel.com/?p=1766 I’m Janssen – I blog over at Everyday Reading about books, supposedly, but more often about how partial feeds make me crazy and how I’m totally Team Jacob, except when I’m Team Edward (I suppose that last bit is technically about books, but I’d be more likely to categorize it under “mouth-frothing obsession” than “reading” ).

I also occasionally write about the trips my husband Bart and I take because we currently don’t have any kids (or money, actually, since we’re both in grad school). When I think of the trips we’ve taken since we got married, I always think about the one that made me first feel like a real grown-up.

Four months after we got married, we realized Bart had a free plane ticket that we needed to use, so on a whim, we decided to go to Chicago to visit his aunt and uncle whom he’d lived with for a few months during an internship. After all, who wouldn’t want to go to Chicago in the middle of December?

We had grand plans for the trip – the site seeing, the museums, the culture, the grown-upness, etc.

The first day we were there, we got up, dressed in about eighteen layers (Chicago is cold!) and took the train into the city. We walked up and down Michigan Avenue, going into the American Doll store (squee! Am I the only one who spent approximately a year of my life memorizing the catalog?), and checking out my first Apple Store. It was an amazing, fun, freezing day.

The next day, we had planned to go to the Art Institute. And then, when our alarm clocks went off the next morning, we realized “hey, we don’t really want to go. We feel like we should, but frankly, we’d rather stay in this king size bed and enjoy the fact that finals are over and that we’re on vacation. Also, is it even legal to set an alarm while on vacation?”

This was a total breakthrough for us. We’d always been the kids on vacation, the ones without much of a say in what we’d do or see (also, both of us have parents who are really into museums). Now? We could say “we’d rather spend this vacation sleeping in, staying up late playing cards, and seeing exactly zero works of art.”

And that’s what we did.

It’s been almost three years since that trip, and it’s still one of the best weeks of my life.

(P.S. We went on a cruise a while after that and watched the entire first season of 24 while on the ship. People kept saying how crazy it was to do that while we were sailing into Jamaica and Grand Cayman and Mexico, but it was the ultimate “this is our vacation and we’ll spend it however is pleasant to us” moment. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.)