My Thirty-One Gifts Party

I'm having a party on May 12 for my friend Stacie who sells Thirty-One Gifts products and you are invited to participate virtually by going to the website at Thirtyone.com and then giving me your order any time before the party. Or if I know you in person (or we've been blogger friends for a long time), I can give you info to come to the actual party.

If you order anything at all or if you come to the party, your name will be put into a drawing for this awesome tote below with lots of pockets. It works great as a diaper bag, church bag, pool bag, fun on the run bag, whatever!

Thanks to my daughter's friend for modeling

Thirty-One Gifts has so many products like lunch bags, fashion purses, organizing bins, jewelry, bins, caddies, wallets and more!

And lots of the products can be personalized.

So if you'd like to order any of this great stuff, just let me know!! I can get answers to any questions you might have about the products.

 

I'm a Winner!

I went over to Shauna's site Trying 2 Stay Calm (where there are LOTS of giveaways) and entered a giveaway or two. I really wanted to win the personalized trivet like this one, but with my last name. There were 190 entries and I won! I just received my package today and am so excited. I got the trivet, a bookmark with a "V" and a set of bookends (which I asked for with the letter "T" to give as a gift). Go check out American Personalized Products and buy your own or buy a gift or two. Thanks, Shauna!!

Sharla's Cute Car Cozy

Look what I got from Sharla at My Little Gems! She makes these soft, portable car cozies. Your child can store one little car in each of the 6 pockets and then pull them out and drive them on the built-in road. My son Alex has a big collection of Hot Wheels, but I have no idea where he has hidden them. Since he's at school, I had to use this bigger car that I did find. So you'd have more room with regular-sized Hot Wheel or Matchbox cars.
Then we he or she is all done, you can fold it all up and your child can carry it around. Isn't it the cutest idea?

Thanks, Sharla! My only son is 13 years old so even though he is keeping his collection, he won't be using this. I'll be giving it to a sweet little boy as a gift. Think he'll like it?

If you'd like one, hurry over to Sharla's blog or her Esty shop. As she says on her blog, she is a stay-at-home mom who only works on these in her free time so she doesn't have a large inventory. So hurry over before they're gone. Or if you are craftier than I am, you can check out her tutorial that she was nice enough to post and you can make your own.

She also has a kit to make this cute magnetic Christmas advent calendar. Fun!

Candy Bouquets

Last month, I saw great photos of cute candy bouquets on Fun Snacks 4 Kids. Then with the bake sale coming up, I decided to put some together to sell there since it is something I can put together ahead of time and isn’t perishable. I looked for the book that Rach mentions using, but Barnes & Noble didn’t have it and I didn’t have time to order it. So I just bought lots of glasses and sundae cups, a variety of candy and craft supplies (including a hot glue gun). Then several of us got together and put some bouquets together just using our own creativity. Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos of the individual bouquets, (I was so frazzled with everything that I wasn’t thinking ahead to a blog post. What was wrong with me??!) but I do have a few photos. In the photo above, Elisa made this first one and I made the other two quickly as demos right before I took everything to church to put them all together.

It’s hard to tell how cute they are with them all close together, but they really were! Before taking them to the bake sale, I wrapped them each in cellaphane and tied each with a ribbon. That made them extra special.

They were very popular at the bake sale. We made 23 of them and sold 22 (and gave the last one to the family who we were doing the bake sale for). I’m sure we’ll be doing more of those for parties and gifts, but next time bigger and better! Thanks to Elisa R., Denisse, Veronica, Elisa M., Alexander, Margarita and Jocelyn for putting them together with me. You guys were so fun and creative!

I Have Space on My Wall!

I was just introduced to this great screenprint on Robert Ryan's Etsy shop by reading a Design Mom post. I LOVE it and wish I could buy it right now--straight from London.

My New Cutters

These were among my fun kitchen gadgets that my parents gave me for my birthday. I had two of them on an old POST of fun gadgets and now I have them!
I used two of them last night when making treats for friends. These are the Chewy Cocoa Brownies that I posted before, but this time I cut them with the cute heart cutter.

Then I made the Easy Cream Cheese Danish with jam as a variation. I absolutely LOVE LOVE this cutter. I think they look so cute. I'll have to try my other cutter soon too.

Ready for a Party

I'm always looking for fun party stuff and I found an Etsy shop called BonneNouvelle that has really cute birthday banners made from fabric. It’s such a great idea. You can re-use them over and over and they’re even machine washable. There are some great ones to choose from or you can create a custom order. She also will make the banners with your child’s name that you can use for a party or hang up in his or her room. Awesome!
There are also some adorable cupcake flags! You can coordinate the banner and flags for a fun party.

So head over and check it out.

Like I Need Another Addiction

Last week, the kids and I were in Alpine when we stopped by The Peppermint Place (a long-time fave) for some yummy candy. If you haven't been there, it's a fun little shop with cute decorated lollipops, a candy counter with all kinds of chocolate candy (even sugar-free), and some cute home decor items. They also have gelato, but I haven't tried it there yet.

I wasn't going to get anything for me when I saw this treasure--chocolate covered sunflower seeds. They were so bright and a fun little shape so I wanted to try them. Only Elisa and I liked them so the two of us shared them. It probably isn't something that everyone would love, but I like the little crunch of the coating, followed by the crunch of the sunflower seed, along with the chocolate. We finished it in a few days and now I want more. I'm already addicted to chocolate, but now this! I won't be able to feed my addiction often since I don't get over to Alpine much, but that is probably a good thing. Now I'll go back to my drooling over the photos!

Silly Stuff

Here is some silly stuff I found online and decided to share it with you so you can waste your time looking too.

Robin doesn't like to wear the Hello Kitty or Spongebob bandaids we always seem to have so I found some that would better suite him. Beef T-Bone Steak Bandaids

That site has some other silly bandaids too.

Hang Key Pete on your fridge so you always know where your keys are.

Way too gross!!! Sandwich bags with green splotches on them so no one will want to steal your food.

Pick Your Nose cups

Hotman Trivet
And lastly, Sabrina's favorite that she insisted I include. (Actually she found these more than a month ago and has wanted me to post it that whole time.) Mug mugs

Hurry over to CranialHiccups!

Quick! Head over to CranialHiccups's Etsy Shop. She has adorable bags, some crayon rolls and a couple of other items all on sale for only $10 each, but only until May 30th. That's tomorrow, people! I just found it today.

Thanks for Coming!

I never have parties for myself, but if I did, I'd love to give my friends a fun party favor like one of these etsy finds.

Handmade candles for their own party

Reusable Sandwich Pouch full of some of my homemade goodies

Wrapped Soap
Name Glass Magnets
Monogrammed clutch

Baby Girl Gifts Don't Have to Be Pink

Isn't that so cute??? I love the colors. For Heather's baby shower, I ordered a basket full of gifts from my former neighbor Angie at Mama's Sew Bizy . She puts baskets together with different fun finds from all over and handmade hooded towels and washcloths. You can see what she has already put together or she'll do custom orders. I didn't get to take photos of the basket open since Heather took it home all wrapped up. There was a handmade hooded towel with a cute bow and a washcloth or two with matching bow, a onesie, litle sockies, a toy and baby soap or something like that. I can't remember if it had anything else. So head on over to order something fun. It doesn't have to be for babies. She does baskets for teachers, older kids or anyone!

So Cute Water Bottles

I came upon earth-inspired stainless steel water bottles from Earthlust today. There are several designs that I liked and they have a great clip on the bottle so I almost ordered them when I decided to look for reviews online. People mentioned that the screw top was not as convenient as a pop top (sports top). I think that's probably true. So I went on a quest to find a cute, easy-to-use metal water bottle. I had no idea there were so many gorgeous ones out there. Did you? I'm sure if I keep looking, I'll find more, but I don't have time for that. I haven't decided which I'll get yet, but here are some of the favorites from our house.

Earthlust

Sigg

I found this pretty one at Walmart , but the reviews say the water doesn't come out very well.

This one is at Target, but the review says the thread on the cap don't fit the metal mouth of the bottle well. Too bad because it's a good price and I like it.

The water bottles at Simple Luxuries comes with a loop cap and a sports cap.

Amazon.com has many of the above and others like these.

Okay, after I got the kids involved in the search, we found way too many to put in one post. This should have been titled "More Water Bottles Than You Ever Wanted to See".