is it really thursday already?

my goodness. it's thursday already and although i had many good intentions of being here more this week, i simply did not find the time. our house seems to be a revolving door of sickness this week(sounds as if many are). but i did want to share a couple of projects we've been working on lately.

luke made homemade valentine's for his class party this friday. it amazes me that he's never pushed for the pokeman or superman store bought ones. nope. he's cut and pasted and colored hearts every year and it makes this mama proud. this year he had a little extra help from mom. i remember seeing an idea similar to this last year at this time and can't for the life of me remember where i saw it(apologies to whoever i'm not giving credit to!).

for these super sweet little valentine's sketchbooks, we took sheets of red cardstock and cut them in half twice so that we had 4 pieces. for each piece of cardstock, i cut 5 sheets of plain white printer paper. first i cut 1/2 inch off of one long side and one short side making the full sheet 10 1/2 by 8in and then cut them in half twice. this gave us 4 sets of 5 sheets slightly smaller than the cardstock(tell me if i'm not making sense!).

putting the 5 white sheets centered on the red cardstock, i then stitched straight down the middle. after stitching them, they are easy for the kids to fold in half. meanwhile, luke was busy cutting hearts out of some cute paper which he then pasted on the front of each booklet. so sweet! he later added to's and from's and taped a pencil to the back of each. i think he and i both were quite happy with the outcome.

i've also been working on these but i cheated a bit. i'll admit that when it comes to projects, i sometimes get a little bit impatient. i skip steps and take shortcuts. sometimes i need a project to take up less of my time than it should and if i still am happy with the results, i'm totally cool with cutting out a step here and there. with these, i used felt glue instead of stitching them together. totally cheating but, it's worked so far. granted they're not quite done yet. i'm really hoping to finish them up today or tomorrow so that they're done for valentine's day. my girls have been very excited about them and are even more antsy than i to get them finished and in their hair(where i'm sure they will stay for a good 10 minutes or less!). i'll update once they're done and perhaps even put in a little tutorial on how to make them(the cheatin' way).

one other thing...i think i need to make these! lOve them!

for now though, i must get back to my little sicky girl. a long day ahead of movie watching and snuggling, i think. hope you all are healthy and happy!