gifts for school age boys

A Great Big Sponge is 13 oz or less

08.16.12

Is it hot where you are? It is good and hot here. Summer does not seem to be on its way out any time soon, though last week while I was at Hobby Lobby I did see an employee merrily putting up a Christmas tree display. But I am in no rush. I say bring on more watermelon and popsicles!

We have been thinking of new ways to cool down. And one of my kids’ new favorites is playing a classic game of duck duck goose, but with a car-wash-sized sponge. Usually this ends up in a big water fight. I am okay with that.

This is my newly-turned 3-year old. He is a good sport. And yes, after having him pose for that picture I had to let him unload a sponge over my head.

We thought we’d send a little heat relief to some friends in other hot places in the form of a giant car wash sponge. What could be more instantly refreshing?
We just wrapped a piece of sturdy mailing paper very snugly around the sponge, added some postage,

and it was ready to go. Really, if you found this in the mailbox, how long would it be until you soaked someone?

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 11 comments }

A Disguise is 13 oz or less

10.20.11

This week, we decided we wanted to mail a disguise.

So we put together a few disguise pieces.
It is no good having just one disguise, you have to have options.
I stuffed everything in a clear box, but it was bulging with all those sneaky disguise options, I think I may just try using a ziplock bag next time and drop that in the mail.
We’ll be sending off this complete, master-of-disguise kit in the mail this afternoon. So someone we know can cloak herself in complete mystery.

And while I have you here, I wanted to share a couple extra notes.

I have a little interview over at Power of Moms in which I bear all about motherhood. It’s an honor to be mentioned among a lot of awesome moms on PoMs.

And speaking of amazing moms, a big giant thank you to Gabrielle of Design Mom for her kind mention. (I had a darling friend call me laughing and squealing as I was starting this post to tell me about the link. Thanks for making me look awesome, Design Mom.)

Happy mailing.

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 28 comments }

School Supplies are 13 Ounces or Less

08.11.11

I have a couple things I’d like to admit.

one. I am in total denial that school is going to be starting. Is anyone else feeling this? Summer, oh summer, where did you go?

two. Despite that, when I walked into Target and and was met by all the school supplies last week, and then saw all of this back to school goodness pop up on my google reader, I couldn’t help but get just a little of that back-to-school buzz.

So, even though I am going to spend the last days of summer cramming in all the swimming, snow cones, and late night reading I can, I am kind of getting into the back-to-school thing on the side.

I thought you’d like to see something I mailed off yesterday.

Remember when my friend Sherry and I exchanged bottles of goodies via post? Well, when I came home with a bag full of school supplies, I couldn’t help myself.
I started with colored pencils.
I wrapped up a few other back-to-school goodies in tissue paper and stuffed them in too.
And of course, with all those colored pencils, there had to be something to color. So I rolled up a few coloring pages.
In it all went,
and the lid went on.
On went the stamps. (I checked USPS postage rates, and 5 first class stamps were enough to mail my 5 ounces of goodies.)
And the only thing left to do was drop it in the big blue mailbox.

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 61 comments }

A Pair of Flip Flops is 13 Ounces or Less

07.14.11

Since starting my series about happy mail, I have heard a suggestion from a few of you I’ve been dying to try. And finally this week I did it. I mailed a flip flop.
Just four stamps, and in the big blue box it went.
The other flip flop goes out next week.

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 53 comments }

Make-Your-Own-Cone Tattoos

06.28.11

When I told my kids I had a couple sheets of tattoo paper on hand you would have thought I’d just told them they were each getting a new puppy. (We are not going there, by the way.)

We’ve been playing around with the endless possibilities of drawing some custom tats or picking out premade designs. While we were playing we discovered you can layer homemade tattoos. And that sealed the deal.

I drew out some cones, some ice cream flavors, some toppings. (You can see other custom Silhouette projects I did here and here.) When my daughter had her cute friend over, I let them go to town. And here is what they picked.

They’re both soft serve fans. I can respect a good soft serve, but I’d go for the scoop and hot fudge myself.

By the way, today is the last day to enter a certain giveaway I have going on. I’ll announce a winnetright here tonight.

{ 10 comments }

Those Balls Your Kids Always Want to Play with at the Store are 13 Ounces or Less

05.12.11

I opened my email one day to find a note with these adorable pics in it.
You are looking at two little cousins, one who decided to mail her cousin a ball, and the other who opened her mail box to find it. Thank you, Brenda, for sending these. I do not think these sweet cousins could be any cuter.

Of course that put me over the edge and we had to try this ourselves.

Sharpies were essential so we pulled out our favorite colors. We stamped a couple balls and decided we needed extra decoration.
So we scribbled on foil with our sharpies and cut out a few stars and ran them through the sticker maker for a little extra flash.
This is my daughter and her cute friend who came along with us for icees and then to the post office to get postage.

I asked my post office worker to just give me stamps so I could take a picture for you before I mailed them. He gave me two 98-cent stamps for each. And now we have the balls all set to send out. We are waiting for a couple certain occasions and I am getting near giggly just thinking about it.

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 46 comments }

Eggs in the Mail

04.07.11

It worked.
If you missed it, you can get postage details right here.

I am now sending more little eggs on their way.

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 46 comments }

Plastic Eggs are 13 Ounces or Less

03.31.11

There is something I love about bright plastic Easter eggs. I picked up a row of jumbos at the grocery store last weekend.

I got thinking about the fun of discovering eggs during an egg hunt, and thought it might be fun to discover one or two in a mail box.
So I packed a few up with goodies,
stuck on a label and a few stamps,
and am dropping them in a big blue mailbox today. For all the happy mail I’ve sent up to now, I’ve had postage added at the counter. Mostly because I like to walk up and nonchalantly drop a shovel or something else on the counter, like mailing plastic shovels is just something I do. Also because I love the workers at my post office and because I always meet the nicest people in line. But today I’m trying stamps. We’ll see if they go.

If they do, I will be filling a few eggs for grown ups too. Because when else do you get to be surprised by a plastic egg after the age of 12? I’m just needing a few good things to tuck inside? Sudoku? Hmmm. Any ideas?

<<UPDATE >>
It worked!! I ended up having to change postage, here’s what I used:
I mailed 1-ounce eggs using a 98-cent teton stamp + a postcard stamp
I mailed 2-ounce eggs using a 98-cent teton stamp + a forever stamp
You can see US postage rates for first-class mail right here (scroll down to “packages”).

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 100 comments }

Silly Putty is 13 Ounces or Less (+ Printable Label)

03.03.11

It has been a while since I’ve done a post about happy mail. I am brimming with all kinds of new ideas, so I think you’ll be seeing more happy mail around here. (If you’re new here, you can see more happy mail ideas at the end of this post.)

Did you ever do this with silly putty as a kid? It was my favorite. I also liked to make bubbles in the putty and pop em.
This week I put together a package to mail that was nice and simple. I used an empty plastic spice canister, tucked in a roll of newspaper and couple eggs of silly putty, and mailed it off.

One little canister, hours of fun.

I’m including the label, incase you’d like to use it. I originally made this to send out with my Christmas cards this year, but now I use it for everything. Do you like it?
(I like to print on this full-sheet label paper,which is a complete steal, 100 sheets for ten bucks.)

Either Download from DropBox by clicking here: Mailing Label
or download here: Printable Fold-over Labels (3917)

and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 17 comments }

Homemade Stripey Sidewalk Chalk

09.21.10

As you may remember from once or twice before, we are all about hopscotch on this blog. And now that school is in session and tomorrow fall will be official (in the N. hemisphere anyway), there are plenty of reasons to play. A game of hopscotch, of course, requires chalk. White chalk will do, but pretty stripey chalk will do even better. So we thought we’d better make some.

By the way, all pictures are courtesy of my husband’s iPhone. My poor Canon is in the shop again. I miss it.
We developed this chalk recipe last year with the leftovers from an art project I did for my daughter’s class. The best part about this homemade chalk is that it is c-h-e-a-p. And it turns out great chalk. Go to your hardware store and pick up a five-pound tub of joint compound or drywall mud. You’ll pay five bucks at most. We had a giant leftover tub, so we went with that. For a mold, we used IKEA’s water bottle ice molds.

Other materials we used were powdered tempera (liquid tempera works too), a few baggies, and we decided to add in a few strips of our favorite colors of tissue paper, which worked great with the chalk, and adhered well too without any fuss.

Dump or squirt your tempera into your joint compound and mix well. The powdered tempera will keep the whole thing a little drier, and make it a little more like dough, while the liquid tempera often turns out a little brighter.
We added a few stripes of tissue paper, just for decoration. We found that overlapping tissue paper colors does NOT work as well as spacing out the stripes. The spaced stripes held out better when the chalk dried. Glitter is also fun to dump into the molds before adding the chalk dough.

Depending on how thick your joint compound is, clip off a corner and pipe it from your bag, or pull out a handful and press it into the mold. It’s fun letting the kiddos experiment with different pieces of tissue paper and different colors of chalk dough.

This is the hardest part. Leave it alone and let it dry. Depending on how wet it is, it will take two to three days. When the top of ours was mostly dry, I tore off the scraps of tissue paper and popped the chalk out of the mold to let the bottom dry.

Give them a couple days and you’re ready to go. Aren’t they pretty?

While my daughter was hard at work producing chalk with me, I thought you might like to see what the boys were up to. The 5-year-old found an umbrella (what is it with kids and umbrellas?)

and the baby tried his first experiments in color mixing. Very fun.

But back to the chalk. We’re planning on giving these out for my daughter’s star student week in class. We did another DIY art supply for my son’s school bday favor last year and they went over well, so we thought we’d give these a try.

Good luck! And if you try, I’d love to hear how it goes.

{ 10 comments }

T-Shirt Bags

09.09.10

Hello! I am here today to spread the word about t-shirt bags. Are you familiar with them? I learned about them from (who else?) Martha Stewart a few years ago. Is it too much to say that they’ve changed my life? Probably. But I really really really love them.

I love that I can still keep those old, sentimental t-shirts around without them taking up valuable real estate in my itty-bitty closet. I love that those shirts are now more useful than they ever were as a garment that I would only wear while cleaning my house. I love that when I take them to the store I can be loud & proud of the fact that I love Tia Babe’s Mexican food in Santa Paula, California. Or that I was indeed, on senior cabinet in high school. And I really love that I get large, sturdy, reusable shopping bags that are made from 100% cotton and don’t cost me anything, instead of bags that I have to pay for and are often made from questionable plastics. They are such a fantastic way to reuse something that would otherwise be tossed.

Oh! I just thought of another good thing about these bags: making them is a super forgiving project. Straight cuts and sewing lines are not required. This is one of those projects that takes 10 minutes or less and non-perfectionists are invited and encouraged to participate. Those are my kind of projects!

Have I sold you on the idea of t-shirt bags yet? If not, I’ll try one more. How about making a custom trick-or-treat bag for a child you love from one of their old t-shirts? (Ah! Is it too early to start thinking about Halloween?) Or, if trick-or-treating isn’t in your future, perhaps you could make a great library bag. Martha has a nice tutorial on her website, but here’s a photographic version from me:

Items needed: a shirt, scissors, sewing machine.

Additional items needed if you want to applique: fusible web (I used Wonder-Under), iron, ironing board. (Remember to read the directions thoroughly on your webbing, in case they differ from those shown below.)

Your t-shirt bag is now finished. Easy as pie, right? You can stop here or go on to add a bit of custom magic to your bag. I chose designs that read a bit Halloween-y, but wouldn’t look completely out of place when we use them as library bags for the rest of the year.

Viola! You now have a super cute and custom bag for your child. Now go dig through your closets, pull out all your old t-shirts and get cutting. Your shirts will be so happy to be back in your life.

What is your favorite way to reduce/reuse/recycle?

What simple items make your life easier?

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Crystal stops by GiversLog a couple times a month to share her fresh ideas. When she’s not writing for GiversLog, Crystal can be found mothering, knitting, and cooking. Stop by and see what’s new at her etsy shop: monograms, Greek keys, and chevron stripes. Oh my!

{ 12 comments }

A Shovel and Bucket are 13 Ounces or Less

06.02.10

It’s beginning to feel like summertime here. So to celebrate, today I am going to the post office and mailing a shovel to a little girl I know. My local post office is starting to know what to expect from me, and all of the workers have a great sense of humor. But if they look at me strange, I’ll just explain that tomorrow, I will mail a bucket.

If you decide to give this a try, you can print postage at home and just drop your shovel in a mailbox, but it’s so much more fun handing it to a postal worker and waiting for them to say, um, I guess there’s nothing liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous?

UPDATE: Just as a little FYI, the shovel was $1.22 to mail. Not bad. And the postal worker didn’t even flinch when he had to find a place for the postage sticker. The bucket goes out tomorrow.

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and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 18 comments }

Bubble Wrap Hopscotch Is 13 Ounces or Less

05.06.10

My brother and SIL are the coolest. For my kids’ birthdays this year they sent this.
Bubble wrap hopscotch. And what do you do when you receive a package of bubble wrap hopscotch in the mail? There is only one thing you can do. Tear it right out of the package and get hopping.

So save your bubble wrap, because this is such a great thing to get in the mail. Writing the numbers is easy, just make sure you’re writing on the bubblewrap’s smooth side.
You might want to make a set for yourself.
Then just package it up and send it off. Ours looked a little like a bubble wrap sandwich.
Incase you’re interested in the rules, here are the official hopscotch rules, according to my playground experience:

1. Lay out numbers as shown.
2. Toss the marker on square one.
3. Skip square one and hop on all the other numbers, using only one foot for single squares, both feet for doubles. Then turn and hop back, stopping one square before the marker (you must balance on one foot if it is a single square), and bend over and pick up your marker. Then finish hopping home.
4. If you over throw the marker or lose balance then you end your turn. Continue with remaining numbers (2, 3, 4, 5…) until done.

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and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives (or follow my 13 oz or less Pinterest board, or see it all right here):

find postage rates for happy mail right here along with other mailing details

{ 53 comments }

$5–10 Kids Gifts that Make Me Squeal

04.01.10

This post is brought to you from Idaho! Our trip is going swimmingly, and I am snapping many pictures to share with you.

But first, I have to say how much I am loving your comments on my Ann Clark giveaway. The things you do with cookie cutters and the cookies you make and eat have me inspired. I am thinking of launching a full-on kitchen experiment to find a good chocolate sugar cookie recipe. It is going on my must-do list along with making this skirt, mussels, and artisan bread (I updated the post on making these magnificent loaves with a few details you may need if you’re missing the book). I’d better get busy.

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But first, something I promised long ago. Remember when I shared every last thing in my gift and wrapping closet? I told you I like to keep $5 and $10 gifts on hand to mix and match as gift emergencies require. Well, here are a few favorites (with more to come). Do you have any favorite emergency gifts? I’d love to hear.

Balloons
for twisting, and a good bookto show how.
(image from here)