Excellent last minute Mother's Day craft gift!

(Mom if you are here, just look away now and come back after you get my card in the mail)

Having no time to breathe means that you may have to resort to store-bought cards and little else for the moms in your life.  But I stumbled on this tutorial today, and decided to procrastinate on packing for my trip long enough to make 3 sets of them.
One for my own mother, who I admire so much and with whom I have developed the greatest friendship.  Every year I learn that I'm more like her than I thought and now I hope I can retire at a reasonable age and follow her example there as well!
One for my mother-in-law, who never ever makes me feel I should be something different from what I am. She's been that way since the day I met her - a divorced single mother dating her (marvelous) son. Mr. Wonderful must be that way for a reason!
And one for my step-mother who deserves a medal because she is in love with my father, which has saved him I am sure, and she's such a generous person.

If you go to the link at "Mufn Inc" (here it is again), you'll find the free printable cards, the free printable tutorial to include, and instructions on how to make the tissue paper flowers (assembled, but flat-packed for mailability!)  genius!!

Our little bunny garlands...

I spotted this printable from Hello Clementine on etsy yesterday and fell in love! I'd been wanting to sew some banner or something for Easter but just never got to it. So this seemed like a craft project for the kids AND a nice touch for our Easter decor before my in-law families come over tomorrow!

Well, we've been busy here at our house today - preparing Easter Bread and desserts, lamb, vegetables all ready for roasting...vacuum, spit and polish...the works. And I didn't get too much participation from my kids on this craft - Teen Wonder had to be somewhere and Wild Thing was only interested in directing what to dress the bunnies in. Nana (aka Mom) did most of the work.  And we have 2 cute garlands - one in the dining room over the buffet and one on the mantel in the living room.  The pictures aren't the best because it's night and there isn't very good light. But I won't have time tomorrow...

It's hard to appreciate from these photos how cute these look in the house - we have a little California East Bay stucco box (aka "bungalow" or ?? "more like a little casa") - anyway, the square footage and scale is pretty small, the ceilings are high, the windows are large...and the decorations are pretty minimal this year. I put bunches of daffodils all around and the little decorations we do have are scattered around (thanks to Wild Thing and Mr. Wonderful, otherwise I would have been frantic this week!).

But these bunny garlands really added that missing touch for Easter.  Blessings to all!

Last minute Valentines - yikes!

For weeks (at least 2 or 3), I've been thinking to myself "hey, Wild Thing needs Valentines for his class - we'd better get on it!" 

 

Some years I'm good with the standard Spider Man valentines - especially if I find something early enough that all the good designs are not gone from the shelves. 

That didn't happen this year.

BUT - I know that there are all kinds of talented designers out there who offer free printables for just such an occasion.  I visited one of my favorite papercraft sites, The Toymaker - and in the Holiday section under Valentine's are these adorable heart cookie cards.  I love love love this website!

So, some cardstock, scissors, dumdums, and gluestick later - plus Wild Thing signing his name to 24 of these babies - we had a bag full of Valentine goodness for his class party tomorrow.

Yay!

(I actually have another last-minute Valentine project to post, but I haven't taken a photo yet. Plus the recipient may actually see this post before he sees the Valentine...so that one will have to wait.