Monogram Composition Notebooks

Since the last few years I have gotten into crafting, I have wanted to
make at least one thing for my kiddos for Christmas. This year I decided 

that they both needed their own notebooks to color and write in.

 They usually find mine and color all over so then I run out of pages 

to write in fairly quickly. 

A couple of months ago while I was at Walmart, I went to the crafting clearance section to see if they had anything good. They had these super cute composition notebooks for $.75. I grabbed a few of them because they were such a good deal. They are already so cute with their patterns on them, but I really wanted to make them personalized for my kids so I had to cover them up.

How I Made Them:

I have a girl and a boy so I found some cute chevron paper at Michael's that would work for them and cut it down to size. I traced the notebook and cut it out with my big cutter and scissors.

Next, was figuring out how I wanted it to look. I cut the papers I wanted to go on top of those.

To Do the Monogram Letter:

I wanted the letter to look worn so instead of just printing one out on the computer I went about it a little bit differently. 

1. I got on my cricut and cut the letter "K" and the letter "L", which are the first letters of my kids names. 

2. Then I set the silhouette of the letter on the paper I wanted it on and stamped it on. I used a sponge and dabbed it on so it would have the worn look. 

*I didn't get a picture of the other letter by itself.

3. Then I took another side of the sponge and brushed a light brown around the edges of both papers giving it a worn edge.

Lastly, I used a glue stick and glued everything on in the places they needed to be. 

Here is what they look like all done:

They totally loved them when they opened them on Christmas! I wrapped a set of crayons for each of them with their notebooks. They were already busy working on Christmas Day!!

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{Card Stock} Quiet Book

Now that my little Kaitlyn is getting older, I decided it was time to make a quiet book for her. This will give her some educated quiet time during the day and will be extremely helpful during church on Sunday's! I wanted to make it with stuff I already had so it would be inexpensive so I decided to put my Cricut to use and use paper!! I laminated everything so it would be stiffer. This way it would last longer too! I used magnets to hold things on the pages. I thought about using velcro, but this way it would be "quiet" for church!

In all it cost me about $2.50 to make. I had to buy the magnets that cost $1.00 a package. I had to use 2 of them and then I bought little tiny jewelry ziploc bags to put all the pieces in for every page to keep them sorted. 

It was super easy to make, just very time consuming. I worked on it a couple hours everyday. It took me about 5 days to complete. 

Here is a look at all the pages in the book...

This has been really helpful for her to learn how to spell her name

Cute Shapes Poem

Match the Shapes

Fun with kids songs 

I was so extremely sad about the next couple of pages. They got ruined when I laminated them:( I might redo them someday, but for now they are going to stay how they are because I was tired of working on it!

You can play with lots of different ice cream colors

Fun Game

Good for her to practice between big and small 

YUMMY Apples!

She absolutely loves it!! She has played with it everyday since I made it. She also has to show everyone that comes to the house:)

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Halloween Fun & Teaching My 3 Year Old with COINS

I hope all of you had a fabulous Halloween. We had so much fun!! My whole family slept in! Bad thing for daddy though. I woke up at 8:24am and he was is bed next to me still...his first class starts at 8:25am. OOPS!!! His second class was canceled so we both saw no point for him to drive all the way to the U of U, which is about a 30 minute drive, for 1 class. So he was able to stay home with us all day!! It was fun to have him around. We went over to his parents house in the afternoon and spent some time with his Mom. We then went Trick or Treating with the kids at 7:00. It was so fun for me this year so be able to see Kaitlyn totally getting into it. She was running up to every door and would knock and then actually say "Trick or Treat!!" She is very shy so I was a little shocked, but it was so cute!! All day today she has been saying she wants to go trick or treating! Logan had no clue what was going on, but he was so cute. Here are my two kids in their costumes as promised in yesterdays Happy Halloween & Some super weekend excitement.

They were The Princess & The Frog!! Too cute!! I love them so much! Oh and I am really sorry..it is not the best picture, Logan was not happy about being in his costume and did not like having the hood  on. 

***Now onto TEACHING MY 3 YEAR OLD WITH HER OWN MONEY JAR FOR COINS**

Every time we go to the store my daughter sees something that she wants and asks if we can get it, as do most kids do I am sure. Pretty much every time, it's NO!! She also has been acting up lately. I think I know why. When Logan was first born she did really well having someone else around. I was really nervous if she would have a hard time with someone else needing Mommy's time more. He will be 1 in 11 days, tear. I am not sure why this happened until recently but she is seeing and realizing more that Mommy can't give her all of her attention. She has been having accidents almost once a week lately and when I finally sat her down and asked her why she said, "Because you are not there to help me." I am guessing its because I have to change Logan's diapers so he gets help but I don't help her since she is potty trained. It made me sad, but I have to realize and so does she that she is a big girl and can do this on her own. She has also been asking me to feed her meals like I have to feed Logan. 

My husband and I talked and we decided it might be good to have her earn money...just coins, no dollar bills...that just she can get. So it makes her feel like a big girl and something that she gets but Logan does not. Of course she has no concept of the actual amount we are giving her. We will give her different amounts based on what is was that she did. It is not an allowance. These are the ways we let her earn them: Help me with something, clean up toys around the house, just being a good girl during the day and listening, most of all if she doesn't have an accident during the day. We did the last one for the first few days we started this and of course she didn't have any accidents. I didn't want to keep giving them to her for not having accidents so after about 4 days I stopped and she hasn't had one since. I hope it keeps working!!  We give her the coins sparingly, not every day. Sometimes she does earn a few in a day. Just depends on how she is acting.  She loves being the BIG GIRL and earn these coins.We told her when she earns enough we would take her to the dollar store and she can buy something with her own money. 

After we told her what we were going to be doing with her I told her that she could help me make her jar that we were going to put them in. So we made it together!! It was so much fun to have her involved in it. I think she really enjoyed it too!

Here is what it looks like:

Now I am going to give you a Tutorial on how we made it!

Here is what you will need:

- Some type of jar or canister to make it out of. We used an old similac can from Logan

- Scrap booking paper

- Any embellishments you want to add to it (I used ribbon, jewels and a flower)

- Ruler

- Paper Cutter

- Glue stick

- Hot glue gun

- Spray Paint if needed

- Vinyl lettering

How to make it:

We started out by measuring the can. Then we cut the paper to its size. Kaitlyn loves pink and picked out all the papers she wanted to use by herself. 

When I measured it the can was 13" around so I cut two strips that were 7" to make it 14". It was 4" wide. Kaitlyn helped cut them out.

Next we glued that paper one using a glue stick. Kaitlyn put it all over the can and then I put the paper on.

Next we took a different patterned paper and tore it al 1" wide. I also did 2 strips at 7" long. Kaitlyn loved this part!!

Then we glued that on at the bottom of the can. 

We then went out to the garage and spray painted the lid black. I put 2 coats on so we couldn't see any writing or blue on it. 

I promise it is a solid black. I was just getting major glare from the things around me in the garage!

While that was drying we went to the computer where Kaitlyn picked out her font for the saying "Kaitlyn's Money Jar." She chose the font Lima Bean found here. We didn't end up using the purple as pictured above, We cut it out in black vinyl. 

After that I hot glued a pink ribbon around the bottom and put a flower in the middle under where the writing. Then I put some clear jewels next to that going only halfway around the can.

When the lid was finally dry we cut a circle out of the paper we used on the bottom and mod podged that to the top of the lid. When that dried, but hubby cut a slit in the top of it for Kaitlyn to put her coins in. 

She totally LOVES it!!!  Here are some cute pictures of her with it...

She is so cute!! I love her!

She is in preschool right now and is learning how to count. To help with that every few days right before bed we will have her pull out her coins so she can count how many she has!! It is a fun way for her to count. She has done very well with it. 

Just a reminder...this Thursday I will be having my very First Guest Blogger! I am so excited!! Danielle from Blissful & Domestic will be here. You don't want to miss it!! See you Thursday!

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