Roll-A-Leprechaun @ Or So She Says

Wow, the second Monday of every month comes around so quickly!  I'm over at Or So She Says today.  I have a really fun family game for St.Patrick's Day.  Do you remember these?

Well, if you liked these games, you'll love the Roll-A-Leprechaun version.  Isn't he cute?

  Click here to check out my entire post at Or So She Says with printable instructions and drawing page.

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Leprechaun Clue Book & Printable

I don't know if you've experienced this or not, but this month we've been having a sneaky little leprechaun visit us.  He came the first day of March, and has been visiting almost every day since then.  He leaves little gifts, or messes things up.  We're never quite sure when or where he'll leave his mark. 

My darling boys brought me a paper the second time the leprechaun had visited with all of the clues written on it.  This is what the paper looked like.  Priceless!  Don't worry, I'm saving this one, but they were worried they'd run out of room on this one piece of paper for all the clues.  I suggested we come up with a clue book to keep everything in one place, nice and organized.  They were on board, so I got to work making a leprechaun clue book for them.

I used a small brown journal I'd had on hand and made a cover for it.  You can click on the image below to print your leprechaun clue book cover page.

On the inside of the book, we stamp each day, write day 1, 2, 3, 4,.... and then my boys draw a picture of what the leprechaun did that day.  There have been a couple of days he hasn't visited, so they decided to draw a big X on those days and write nothing.

This has been so much fun!  I love listening to my boys discuss the leprechaun.  They wonder how we're so lucky that he chose our house to come to, and how he keeps getting in.  

St. Patrick's Day is still over a week away, so it's not to late to start your leprechaun clue book.

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you found a little something worth your time!

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Shades Of Green

I recently adopted several boxes of craft items from my cute neighbor, Millie.  Inside one of the boxes was a pack of Crayola crayons (96 crayons!).  There's nothing like a brand new box of crayons!

The box reminded me of a cute idea I borrowed from someone when I was teaching.  We made a color journal to add better details to our writing.  The journal had a base color at the top of each page, and then as many shades as we could come up with underneath, with corresponding names.  Have you ever read the labels on your Crayola crayons?  They have the most clever names!  The idea of the journal was to help my students use better descriptive color words in their writing.  They learned to use words like granny smith apple, inch worm, or tropical rain forest instead of just green.

With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to make a green color wall for my boys (I used picmonkey to make my shades of green pages).  I need to do it with every color, but green is a great place to start.  In my box of 96 crayons, 14 of them were a shade of green.  For some reason, I didn't get a picture of  jungle green and sheen green.  

Aren't these names fun?  Maybe I'm a bit crazy, but I LOVE it!  Oh, and I just remembered Crayola's website has the perfect link for this.  Click here to see all their shades of green (and every other color).  They have 49 shades of green with names like asparagus, bottle green, iguana green... think of all the fun you and your kids could have with these.  Use these colors for art projects, sorting, matching, details, there are so many possibilities!   

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you found a little something worth your time.

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The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Are you familiar with the pancake syndrome when making your chocolate chip cookies?  I completely am.  The taste of my cookies was always alright, but they left a lot to be desired in the aesthetics department- flat as a pancake.

   In my search for new recipes, I came across one of my roommate's recipes I'd had since college (many moons ago).  I had forgotten I even had this recipe.  I remembered her making them when we lived together, and loving them.  I was so excited to give them a try.  Well, after the first try I was sold!  Thanks, Aubrey for solving my chocolate chip cookie crisis.  And to think I've had the recipe all these years!  These cookies not only stand taller than a pancake, they taste amazing!

I like to substitute 1 cup of oatmeal for 1 cup of flour.  My husband eats these cookies up, but often requests for the oatmeal to be left out.  You can try both ways and see which you prefer.  My husband (he's really not a picky eater, but is coming across as one in this post) also doesn't like nuts in much of anything, so I always leave them out, but I'm sure the nuts would be delicious!

These cookies are absolutely amazing hot out of the oven!!  They're great the next day, but you can't beat fresh from the oven.  I often make the dough, and then freeze part to pull out whenever we need it so we can enjoy the fresh from the oven taste more often.  Click here to print the recipe.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you found a little something worth your time. 

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Printable Irish Blessing

Well, it's Tuesday, so that means quote day here at Blissful Roots.  If you haven't noticed, up in my tabs you'll find a Printables Tab.  You can click on it to find all the posts I've done with printable quotes (or any other printable).

My mom has always been a big fan of Irish blessings.  I never really paid much attention to them until lately.  There are so many good ones out there, and they carry a lot of meaning. 

I really like this one.  I like having things go my way in life, but I also love the challenge of working towards something.  

Here's another one I really liked, but it was a bit long to make into a cute printable.  I do need to find a good way to display this one, though.

Click here to print today's quote.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you found a little something worth your time!

Linking up to these parties & Savvy Southern Style.

DIY Storage Boxes

I love cute containers for storage, but I really don't like to pay a lot of money for them. I'm always looking for ways to reuse items, or make new things with what I already have.

If you're like me, and you tend to collect A LOT of crafting supplies, (most are completely necessary, right?:)) then you need a place to put all of those little items.  Well, the other day I was making one of my DIY gift boxes, and it hit me, these boxes would be perfect for storing many of my crafting supplies.

I used a pad of 12" x 12" white card stock that I had bought awhile back at Walmart (40 sheets for $5- that makes each box only 12-13 cents!) to make the boxes.  For instructions on how to make the boxes, click here.  The great thing about these storage boxes (as opposed to the gift boxes) is that you only need to make a bottom box, no top!

I used white card stock for my base, and if you like the white, go ahead and leave it.  I did cut one piece of patterned scrapbook paper to put on the front of my box.  You can cover each side with a different paper, or even make the box itself out of patterned paper.  I liked the white box because I could leave it as is, or add to it.  Do whatever fits your style.

I then simply attached the patterned paper to my white box, and added a cute label on top of that.  I made a printable of the label, but only the frame part.  I wasn't sure what words to put on the labels to meet every one's needs, so you can fill in the words yourself if you'd like.  If you do have suggestions for words, I'd be happy to make a bunch of labels. 

This last step is completely unnecessary, but makes the box even cuter.  I like to add a sticker to the bottom of my boxes. I don't see it that often, but when I run out of whatever's in my box and see the sticker, it makes me smile!

You can click here to print out the frames.  These frames fit my boxes and I used a 12" x 12" piece of white card stock.  If you make your boxes from a different size of paper, then you'll probably need to use a different size of frame. 

I can't wait until I have a whole bunch of these storage boxes made.  They'll look so cute all lined up on a shelf!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you found a little something worth your time.

Linking up to these parties & Savvy Southern Style. 

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday.  She is the most upbeat, selfless, caring person I know.  There are many girls out there who don't want to turn into their mothers, but it's actually one of my greatest desires in life.  I want nothing more than to be the kind of mom she is to me (and my siblings).  Thank you mom for being who you, are and for helping me be who I am. Happy Birthday!  I love you so very much!

If you'd like a copy of these birthday quotes, you can click here.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you found a little something worth your time.