End of the school year

School's Out!

We made it to the end of the year.  As school years go, this one was great.  I had some wonderful volunteers who really helped make things run smoothly in the library.  I am so appreciative of all the hours they devoted to our students.  I did put together some appreciation gifts to send them off on summer vacation.  

 The tags read:  "I'm soda-lighted to have you as a volunteer this year" and the one for my aide said, "I'm soda-lighted to be together again".  I found the swirl suckers on line and the candy sticks at the local party supply store.  They each got a gift card to a local restaurant which is in the pocket on the back of the tag.  They all seemed to love their gifts.

I've been on a bit of a break from my blog but, I hope to be back in the swing now that school is out and I can regroup a bit.  So thanks for stopping by and I'll talk to you again soon.

Back to School

 When it get's to be the end of July I start thinking about the first day of school.  One of my first thoughts is school supplies.  For the last few years our church has collected new backpacks filled with school supplies to pass out to children in the community who's families are not able to purchase everything they need to start school.  I have so much fun picking out a couple of backpacks and filling them with supplies, of course everything is color coordinated!  This year though, they found a place that would help with filling the backpacks so as a family, we just donated a couple of packs with money in the pocket to help pay for the supplies.  Since I didn't get to shop for school supplies this year I put together a little school supply cup for my library aide.  She loves all things purple.  The butterfly theme happened by accident or serendipity I guess.  I found the cute polka dot cup in the dollar bins at target and then just started collecting purple supplies.  When I went to put it all together I had the tape with purple butterflies, the hand sanitizer bottle has butterflies all over the label and I had been playing around with an idea for butterflies on stems.  So this is how it came together.

 I was inspired to try making some butterflies after I visited this site in addition one m 
Her butterflied just fascinated me I wanted to try to make something similar.  I used stamps and ink and scraps of newspaper for my layers.  I kind of like how they turned out.  I wrapped the wire with floral tape so I could use these in floral arrangements too.

Well I'm off to school, the second day,  hopefully to inspire and encourage more kiddos that reading is fun and the library is a great place to be.  Have a wonderful week.

I'll talk to you again soon.

May highlights

Today was the last day of school for this school year.  I think I can finally breath a sigh of relief.  This past month has been a bit frantic with all the end of the school year activities and graduations and fun family celebrations, May has been a whirl.  I did get some craftiness done and photographed and with a sweet new camera to break in I did a lot of photography.  So here are some of the highlights from the month (so far).

 Some quick thank you gifts for my library volunteers.  They really outdid themselves this year.  I would not have gotten half the things done that did get done without them.  Inside the tags there were gift cards too.

I filled the cups with a few goodies just for them and some they could share with their kiddos.  Next, I had a friend who was celebrating mother's day with several female family members and wanted to give each one of them a handmade card.

Yep there's more....

Almost done.....

Whew!  Got'em done just in time.  Then I made my mom's card but I didn't get a picture of that one.
I did several photo shoots this month and have a couple more before the end of the month gets here.

Mr. M and sweet Miss B.  It was my first time photographing an infant and young children, I had a great time.

I attended a photography workshop with my friend Sara.  We had so much fun and learned a lot too.

A shot of the "super moon" over the Sandia mountains.  And finally, I've been busy in the kitchen trying to get fresh fruits and veggies into my sweet DH.   My latest was a version of a cobb salad.  It tasted as good as it looked.

Well, there they are, a few of the highlights of the month so far.  It's been hard to get to the computer to up date everyone so I apologize for the length of this post.  But, summer break is upon us so I'm hoping to get caught up and back to a regular schedule again.  I hope you've had a great week and I'll talk to you again soon.