Family Memory

Most of my siblings' families have settled pretty far apart, and with an upcoming reunion, I thought it would be a fun idea to make a family memory game featuring everyone's faces.

 

We liked it so much that we made them for both sides of the family.

The pink one is an envelope I made myself out of piece of card stock.  The yellow one is a manila folder I covered in paper.

Both are laminated with velcro closures.  Each person has two photos, each photo has its own color border and the back says "Do you know your family?"  Each photo is also laminated.

See that accordion action?  That's all me.

You can play it like traditional memory or you can organize the cards into families or you can play match-the-parent-to-the-kid.  It's pretty versatile, I think.

 

It's a good toy in light of the fact that our kids are going to actually be seeing all their cousins for the first time in a long time--maybe this way they will know some of their names! :)

Shirts! And a lot of them!

I've been making t-shirts and onesies as birthday presents, baby shower gifts, and Christmas presents for a while.  I take lots of time to very little time to design them depending on how well I know the kid.  Is that ugly?  I hope not.  And frankly, with my skills it probably doesn't make any difference how much time I spend designing them; they'll all turn out about the same.

Here's a couple for Baby Caitlyn:
(The colors on the blue one look weird in the picture, but they were cute in the RL (real life).  What?

I think the arrow is pretty funny if I do say so myself.  It's not pointing to the Gerber baby on the label, but rather to Caitlyn's face.  In theory.

Here's one for Rachel's 1st birthday:

And the back:

All ready to be wrapped:

The problem with these presents is that I'm usually in such a hurry to get to the party that I take the worst pictures! :)

I spent a pretty long time drawing these toe-shoes for a little girl who loves dancing. What is it that compels me to draw what is probably available as free clipart online? I don't know. But I did, and I think they turned out pretty cute.

Gavin's Soccer shirt:

The bottom:

I did this same concept with a baseball and bat, and it turned out pretty cute too.

Simple little Milla shirt:

Sorry about the wrinkles in all these pictures.  It was late at night and I just wanted to go to bed!  The shirts looked absolutely marvelous when folded. :)

And one I made for my brother with a permanent name badge on the front:

The back had a prospective logo for a business/restaurant idea he has with which he will someday make bank.  Maybe he'll give me a share or two for making him this awesome shirt.

I have a couple others more recently made or to make that I'll post after I send them off.  It really is fun to make these shirts.  I hope that they are enjoyed!

Play Kitchen: Painting

After sanding and cleaning the cabinets very well, I painted them all with a coat of primer.  I skipped one of the doors for some reason, and I can tell you that I'm definitely a fan of primer.  It makes everything look so much better.

After the primer, I did about 2 coats of cheap walmart paint before I gave up and used some paint from Kwalls.  I did not buy paint for anything in this project. I only used what was on hand.