Not Inadequate

Here we are again at another round of Nailed It or Failed It!

(I don’t know why I put an exclamation mark there. I want more enthusiasm than a period, but not as much as an exclamation point. Exclamation points seem almost bordering on menacing with their enthusiasm, don’t you think? There should be an in-between punctuation mark. Is this where the winky-smily emoticon would come in? I hate emoticons. I feel like anyone who is not a 14 year old girl should not use emoticons. Is that mean? Probably I shouldn’t be writing all this out, lest I look whack-a-doodle. Whatever. It’s not your first day here.)

ANYway. The Challenge.

As per usual, I have a lot of excuses as to why I did not get to this until the very last minute humanly possible. But they all sound very excuse-y and lame, so I shall refrain. You can pity me and admire how quietly dignified and regal and stiff-upper-lipped I am in the midst of my suffering, though.

The first thing that caught my eye (at noon yesterday, no lie about the procrastinating), were these toilet paper napkin rings -

HAAAaaaaaNO. Not really. That looks like a lot of work, for one thing. And if you are the kind or person who uses napkin rings, you can buy them pretty inexpensively and they won’t even be CARDBOARD.

Y’all know my feelings on making stuff out of cardboard.

I really want to be doing this

  or this     or this  

but alas, we aren’t moving into the house until the 18th, so.

Instead, I’ll talk about something I’ve done with the kids – making bookmarks.

I like the kids to make something with their own hands to give each other at birthdays and Christmas. I want them to find the joy in giving, and I believe that anything you make yourself, for another person, is a gift beyond the actual item. You are giving your time and your knowledge; you think about the other person when you are deciding what to make and when you are making it and when you hope they like it. You are giving yourself when you make something, whether it’s knitting a scarf or making a nice dinner.

Big started reading like he knew what he was doing back in 2011, and inspired by pins like these -

    

- Little and I made him some custom bookmarks.

We made a ton, but these were the only ones not in use that I was allowed to take pictures of. They are not the cutest ones we made, just putting that out there.

Now that Little is turning into such a good reader, Big wanted to do the same thing for her last Christmas.

They both loved making them and receiving them, and I can see this being a gift that we make again and again.

I personally loved the paint chip ones, but Big really didn’t like how the name of the paint color was on the front. He had some very strong opinions on what he wanted to do.

I had the various colored tags with the grommets in my scrapbooking stash, and you can get the circular metal-rimmed tags at the office supply store. I use them for all kinds of stuff – labeling wires and cords, as gift tags, all kinds of stuff. Martha Stewart has a whole collection of them at Staples.

Verdict?

 

Go check out what my Twitter pals did this month -

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