the sweetest soap box

I'm going to share a little secret.  For those of you who blog, this won't be news to you. For those of you who don't blog, and wonder why people like me spend so much time and energy blogging it will answer that question.

When you have a blog you have a perpetual soap box.  Blogging is at it's core totally egocentric.  We bloggers work under the delusion that we always have something important to say, and that people are interested in our opinions.

Can you even imagine the gall?  And yet here you are reading my blog. Reading my opinion.  Ha!

You, my friend, are an enabler.

And I love you for it.

Here's a little Valentine craft I made for The Boy's teacher out of a real soap box.  It was moi easy and super cheap cheap cheap.  Just the way I like it.

I used Margie's papers because the girl hooks me up and the cuteness of her design work makes my crafts look good with minimal effort.  That's how I roll.

So.  I used a soap box.  I wrapped the box in paper and decorated it all up fancy.  I cut a slit in one end of the box and threaded ribbon through.  I cut the top of the box off so that when you hold the ribbon and slide off the paper, you can see the little treat inside.

To make the coordinating card, I hand cut hearts and sewed them zig zaggy onto pink card stock.  Then I used white ink to add a little doodleage.

Doodleage.  That's my new word.

This project is so easy you could have little kids do it for their teacher.  I thought of having Thom make it to give his teacher, but the super controlling, anal side of me won out as it is want to do.

Don't worry. It fades a little with each baby that arrives in our home.  By the time Frankie is Thom's age I will probably just let him give his teacher one of his old Hot Wheels or something.

Here's another supa supa cheap-o ideer that came to my brain.

I sewed M&Ms inside of glassine paper shaped in a heart.  Sounds kinda stupid, but it's pretty cute once you get some schmuckada on it.  I did mine on the fly.  I'm sure you could come up with other ridiculously creative ways to decorate these hearts.

You are crafty like that.

And Valentine's should be creative and most of all cheap.  We are just coming down off Christmas spending for crying out in the night.  I'm sure your mother informed you that money doesn't grow on trees. Let's keep that in mind shall we?

simply the sweet life

Well now here we are on a Monday morning. Just like that. Good grief. What happened to last week? 

I guess I was so busy getting ready for CHA that the days slipped past me.

Here's what I have for you today: 

Please click on over to Simply the Sweet Life magazine and check out the Valentine's ideas in the Winter issue. One of which comes from little ol' moi.

Also, here are some pics from Margie's booth at CHA.  They aren't grand photos. The lighting in the convention center was crappy.  But you'll get the general idea.

The little masterpiece below was made by Jen Jensen.  I like to call her "The Desert Rose" because she lives in a very small town in Southern Utah. She's like a little hidden treasure.

I created a kite for the booth using Margie's "Jubilee" line of papers.

I stitched the paper together to form a patchwork that looked like fabric.

The tail wrapped around the wall. I used everything from muffin cups to tickets on a roll in the tail.

My good friend Jen Vu tagged along with me for the weekend. We had such a fun time together. She also created the most amazing bird cage using the "Vintage Whimsy" line.  I didn't get a usable photo of her project but it was a site to behold.