...4.11...Over the Weekend...

...Saturday morning...I made this cute/Cute/CUTE little gift bag...while I was waiting on my labwork appointment time...which was 1:30 PM...for fasting bloodwork...YIKES!...I'm not used to going that long without eating anything...soooooo...I told the Man to let me sleep as long as I could Saturday morning...I thought if I slept until 11...I could probably make it to 1:30 without fainting...haha...

...so I slept until 9:30...still pretty late...and then I didn't really want to do anything strenuous...like my regular Saturday housework...while I was drinking my WATER!!!

...so I made a couple of paper-y things...this adorable little gift bag for my niece's little knit ball...and here's how I did that...

...I used to make these gift bags all the time when Our Airman was little...usually for little goodie bags for Our Airman's little parties...and for Scout treats and bake sale treats and such...but I always made them out of standard thin wrapping paper...

...but we have a whole roll of this heavy kraft paper in the basement...so I thought I'd use some of that up...

...so basically what you do...is fold that into a flat tube...

...I usually put my seam off-center a little bit...but I don't think it matters...this heavy paper is difficult though...so I'd suggest wrapping paper for your first one...

...glue or tape that seam...

...then fold up the bottom...

...and fold in the corners...like you're wrapping a present...

...then open up the tube...

...and fold in the 'sides'...again...like you're wrapping an imaginary box...

...and then pinch up the triangles that you folded before...toward the center...

...and glue everything in place...and you'll have a basic bag...

...now...I'm going to draw a cute kitty-cat on this one...definitely should have done the drawing when it was flat...haha...and I'd give credit for this idea...if I could find it...like the eyelash pillow...I've seen this somewhere...and you know how my mind works...there was a mental picture of it...but now searching the web...I can't find that image again...searching for cat gift bag...diy cat gift bag...etc...gives me some really cute images...but not quite this one...do y'all do that to...I think I need a pinterest board to keep all my 'ideas'...

...so...just using a sharpie... I drew a cute cat...

...and then I cut out some pink paper for a nose and ears...

...used an exacto knife to cut out the pointy ears...and then kind of wished I had not...because it left a sort of unsightly hole in the back...I'll show you that in a minute...but definitely cute from the front...

...then I wrapped up the ball in pink paper...just cut a square...

...and gathered up the edges...

...and tied a white ribbon around the top...and it looks like what it is...a ball...ha...

...popped the wrapped up ball inside the bag...

...punched a couple of holes in the top...

...folded it over and tied a pink ribbon through it...it's just a chain stitched piece of pink yarn...and you can see the unsightly ear holes I was talking about here...oh well...

...but here's the finished bag...and I was super happy with it...I think it's really cute...

...and a cute 2 Year Old card to go with it...

...and then did I mention that Mom came for a visit this weekend...she was doing a loop visit...down to the coast to visit her brother...back to Raleigh to visit my nephews...here for a night...and then on to my niece's for the party...and then back home...

anywhoo...I wanted to make her a little bookmark to keep track of all the books she's read this year...because we talk about books a lot...and she said...I can't remember what I read in January...HA...

...so I thought it would be neat to have a bookmark that you could write them on...and for me with my reading challenge too...so just using MSPaint...(my FREE picture editing tool of choice)...I created an image of a stack of books...and just printed it on regular printer paper...

...and then I cut those out

...and lined them up with another image...the same image...and if I'd thought of it...I'd have mirrored the book part of the image...so that the edges of the books would line up...next time maybe...

...and glued those down...

...so it's like the thickness of cardstock now...

...and I won't be laminating them with tape like I did the bookmarks I made for my nieces and nephew...because I want to be able to write on this one...

...these are a lot more like those bookmarks I made years ago in North Dakota...for a swap...2011...WOW!...

...and then just cut those out and added a little bit of yarn to the top...

...I know this is a really LONG post...almost done...HA!

...and I'm done crafting now...time for my labwork...which was fine...

...while I was out (trying to combine trips as much as possible to save gas)...I picked up the groceries...

...lots of fresh fruit and veg...and we got double on the romaine...for some reason the organic that I always get was not 'available' to put in the cart...so I put in the regular romaine and wrote a note for my shopper that I really would prefer the orange organic FOXY brand if they had it...and so I got both...haha...

...and in other grocery news after MONTHS of getting chopped frozen spinach...we finally got our preferred cut leaft variety...

...the Man planned dinner with Mom...and it wound up being kind of funny...he made a delicious sort of Hawaiian themed marinade...

...I cut up the colourful peppers...

...and a large sweet onion for the kabobs as well...or ka-bubbas as we and our ND friends call them...

...and I cut up the now golden pineapple from last week...and left this week's on the counter to ripen a bit...

...and that's the funny part...when we put the kabobs together...he completely forgot to add the pineapple...haha...

...and then Mom arrived...so I made tea...and we worked on the puzzle a little bit...she's really good at puzzles...

...and she brought a book that's falling apart that she wanted me to 'fix'...

...so I glued that all up...and rubber-banded it to hold everything nice and tight...the rolled up paper bag is there to press against the ends of the pages so they remain in good contact with the glue...

...it looks like everything is nice and snug...I'll ask Mom later how it held up...

...and here she is...beautiful I know...

...so sorry I forgot to snap a photo of the kabobs...they were very pretty...even without the pineapple...and we were halfway through dinner before I even noticed that it was missing...

...then I made us a banana bread for breakfast...and we had the forgotten fresh pineapple with that...the Man did not partake a he was fasting for his labwork...so just me and Mom for breakfast...and then Mom left early in the morning to make it to my niece's party by 10...

...the Man's labwork for his upcoming dr. appointment was on Sunday after church...so he had to go all morning as well without eating...

...so for dinner Sunday...I on purpose made a batch of mashed potatoes...and we didn't eat them as mashed...but immediately turned them into potato pancakes...because what's better after a fast than potato pancakes...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!