Last week I was going through my kids’ closets pulling out clothes that no longer fit and weeding through all their toys finding some I knew they didn’t play with any more so I could try to sell them at a garage sale. In the process, I realized that we had a lot of board games and we weren’t taking advantage of them as far as family entertainment. And when I say we have a lot, I mean a LOT! I let each kid “save” 10 board games and the rest went into a stack in our living room.

We decided we were going to do a board game decathlon. 10 games over the course of the month. To add to the fun, we made the decision to split into boys vs. girls teams. The winning team gets $20 for a day together to do whatever they want.  Each kid will also get to decide on their favorite game to “save” to be added into our permanent collection at the end of the decathlon.

Tonight was our first night in the board game decathlon. The kids picked Alphabug Soup Word Game as the game to kick off the event.

Who won?

CURRENT TALLY:

BOYS = 1 and GIRLS = 0

Boo. I guess my daughter and I will have to work on our comeback.

I’ll be sharing the games we are playing and the winning outcome just so you can have a little fun along the way with us. And who knows, you might find a new family favorite as far as board game.

The question is….will you do one of your own board game decathlons at home, too? 🙂

School supply sales are starting and among the items usually on discount are the composition notebooks. These normally sell for around $.99 but you should be able to find them for $.50 or less during school sales season. With a few simple items, you can take a plain covered composition notebook and turn them into a personalized gift for someone–or just a special notebook for the kids for school. You can see one of them that I made in the picture above. I was so excited to be able to use this type of paper as it was a perfect match for one of my coffee mugs so I now have a journal to jot down ideas while relaxing with a cup of tea! You can always use the notebooks with other items, such as a mug, to make a super cute gift basket set.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED
Composition Notebook
Scrapbook Paper
Ribbon
Stickers
Glue Stick

As I mentioned, the composition notebooks cost around $.99 at regular price at stores such as Target. You’ll find them in the office supplies aisle and they look like the picture above. What’s nice about them is that they tend to have a nice thick cover.

When it comes to the scrapbook paper, you can find them in sets, sheets or even a giant book with several patterns.

Now, if you aren’t much of a scrapbooker and/or only plan to make a few notebooks, I recommend that you check out your local craft store for single sheets. At the time when we made ours, I found a bunch of single sheets on sale for $.25 and others for around $.69. Don’t forget to check for any Craft Store Coupons before you shop!

As far as ribbon goes, you’ll only need as much as the length of the cover if you want to give the notebook a split image look using two different sheets of scrapbook paper. (Will talk more about this in a minute…) You should be able to find ribbon on clearance/discount–don’t forget to check the scraps bins at craft stores.

To personalize the book even more, I recommend finding some stickers. You can find sheets like this one at Target for around $.99 a sheet. Dollar stores typically sell varieties of stickers, too.

HOW TO MAKE THEM

1) The first thing you’ll need to do is pick out a design/theme that you want to make. You’ll need to pick up corresponding sheets of scrapbook paper, stickers and ribbon.

2) You’ll then need to cut your scrapbook sheets to fit the notebook. For a lot of mine, I put the sheet on the back cover and wrapped it around. Some fit perfectly halfway down the front, others I had to cut to fit halfway. Having it only wrap halfway around the front will allow you to use another sheet to split the front cover image.  (You can also use a separate sheet for the front and back and then glue a ribbon around the top to help secure them more. Either way, you’ll need to trim off some of the paper as it will probably be taller than the notebook.)

3) Next cut your second sheet to cover the other half of the front cover. You’ll add ribbon to cover where the sheets meet.

4) Once you have everything cut, you’ll use the glue stick to glue on the sheets, starting with the back cover and wrapping around the front. After that is on, add your second sheet and then glue the ribbon down the middle to cover where the sheets meet.

5) All that’s left is for you to personalize it for the person you are making the gift–or to let the kids go to work making their own creation.

Here are several pictures of some that we’ve made. The steps above should make more sense once you see them:

This is one my son made. He loves trucks so he was excited when we found a truck-patterned paper and some truck stickers. I added some letter stickers to personalize with his name. You can see what I mean by the split-image cover on this one. We used a truck scrapbook sheet and a red/white striped one. My son picked that one out because it reminded him of popcorn. 🙂

This is one my daughter made. We did this one differently by cutting a different sheet to fit the front and back. Instead of wrapping the ribbon down the middle, I put it across the top to help the sheets hold together better on the notebook.

This is the backside to my daughter’s notebook. She had a blast adding all the stickers!

This is one I made for one of my friends that lives by the beach….

..and this is the back cover to it. As you can see the backside is all one sheet that wrapped halfway around the front. (see above)

This is one I made for myself. I did another split paper image in the front with a ribbon divider. And….

…this is what the back looks like.

This was the notebook that they made in the class I attended where I learned about these.

And this is another one from the class. Instead of plain ribbon, they used ones with a circle pattern. As you can see from this one, the paper is divided halfway down the middle horizontally.  Yet another way you can make them.

These are fairly easy to make and you can turn it into a fun activity to do with the kids. It’s a great way to get them excited about back-to-school by creating a notebook that’s just for them. I’ve been making a lot of these as I plan on giving one to each member of my family as a holiday gift. If you watch for sales and use coupons, these really can be a nice inexpensive gift–something unique for people such as a bride, mother-to-be, etc.

Hope you and your family have fun making these, too!

One of the things a lot of us probably have lying around are CD Cases. We’ve put most of our music on some iPod type gadget or have the CDs in a case that holds several CDs at once.

This is a simple project that you can do to turn a CD case into a cute little photo frame. I thought this might be an idea for the kids to do for a Mother’s Day gift for a Mom/Grandma. All you need is a CD case, a photo and some crafty type items, such as beads, sequins, stickers, pom poms, ribbon, foam sheets, glittery paper, etc.

You can see the picture above of two that my sister and niece made together.

And here’s how they look from an angle, set-up as a photo frame:

They simply taped/glued the edges of a photo inside and put in a backing of a foam sheet or glittery paper that looked like this:

Next, they designed the outsides. The orange one is kept real simple with pieces of leftover foam sheet, glued on sequins/bead and silver ribbon that was curled.

On the other one, the picture background is a shiny piece of glittery paper. There are sequins/stickers around the photo. Ribbon is added to the top edge of the case and the outer edges are cut up pieces of colored straws and pom poms in each corner.

I love how simple this project is. I’m going to find some cute photos and materials and have my hubby sit down with the kids and design me some for a gift. The kids will love the time with Daddy and have fun making them, too. I’ll probably do the same for him for Father’s Day so he can have one for his desk at work.

Another idea is to decorate the inside of the cases, too. You might be able to cut out a circular piece of posterboard, tape it inside and have the kids write a special message like, “You fill my heart with music. Happy Mother’s Day!”

Here are a few places you might be able to sign-up for as a new Customer to get some free photos:

~Snapfish
~Shutterfly
~SeeHere
~Picaboo
~Walgreens
~Kodak Gallery

Hoping you have fun if you end up making them! A special thank you to my sister for the idea and for letting me use her examples in my posting!