Brought to You by the Letter R

The holidays are sneaking up on us so very quickly, and while the idea of crisp cool weather, warm woolen socks, the smell of fireplaces, and baked goods all sounds wonderful, I am also completely freaking out about how busy things are going to be.  I won't bore you with the detailed list, but suffice it to say there are 13 birthdays between now and then in our close family and friends (not including any that the kids are invited to from school), our baby is going to be born, plus we have Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

Holy Moses.

With that in mind, I have been working like a fool trying to get things made up early so that I will be prepared when the time comes for all of these happy events.  I am also trying to do this without breaking the bank.  Not always easy. 

My first goal was to do all of this with stuff we have on hand.  While that is probably very possible with my shameful and immense craft supply collection, the truth is that I can't find it all because it is in storage right now.  So, I am having to be a little more creative and bend a bit on the "free birthdays and holidays" goal. 

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of their paper mache' letters when they were on sale 50% off.  That made them a whopping $1.24 each.  (You can find them on their website here). I then sat down with Anna and handed her a bottle of school glue that we'd bought in bulk back when the stores had their 10/$1 sale.  She made all kinds of cool squiggles and dots all over the place on the letters, which was perfect.  After that we just let it dry and came back the next day to paint it a pretty cream color with basic acrylic paint we had on hand.  I let Anna do that too, and she did a great job.  The paint crackled just a bit around the glue, which made it look old-worldy and perfect.  After that was dry I grabbed a wipey and dabbed it in a drop of brown and black paint and basically wiped down the letter, which made it look aged and hilighted the impressions of the glue.

Here's our final result:

All in all, not a bad gift for $1.25, and Anna loved having a hand in things.  Bonus, she did it at the kitchen table, so I was able to fiddle around in the kitchen canning things while she worked on the project.  We will make sure that when we give the gifts this year they say that they are from her specifically.  She is over the moon about that, and hopefully our friends and family will be happy too.