I'm a little too excited about these books...

I've been eying this 39 Clues series for a while now.  I like Rick Riordan (from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series) who wrote the first book plus the overall story arc.  There are ten books (or possibly more, or maybe the later ones are another series) written by various authors.  I finally decided they would be age-appropriate for Zack and I to read together so it's our first "summer project".  We're reading a little every day (and he's begging for more! Me? I read the whole thing to start with or I wouldn't have been able to stand it!).  

There is a mystery for the child heroes of the book to solve plus plenty of adventure and danger.  Until this year I've been limiting the amount of "high peril" (as it's called in some book reviews) in Zack's reading material, but he's matured a lot since starting school.  I still don't know where the quite right lines are, but I'm glad we're reading these!  

There are lots of hard words, I've discovered, that I didn't notice while previewing it (all the six year olds tell me what rendezvous means!).  But, he hasn't lost patience so here we go, off on our 39 Clues adventure!

Cardmaking

A group of ladies at my church wanted to try out some card making. We have a workday twice a month in the summertime and do a variety of projects such as sewing pillows for a hospital ministry called Lifeline Chaplaincy, making towels for the Salvation Army, making up a lot of casseroles to be frozen so that when a family has and illness there is a ready-made dinner to take to them, even double-bagging recycled grocery bags or sorting supplies for the Micah 6 Food Pantry. The group sends a lot of cards to the elderly, ill, or home-bound in the church or known by the church.

This project had each person making two cards - one to go into the class stash of cards and one to take home and use.  I was really nervous about setting this up! I go to Cheryl's classes and I love it, but I see how much goes into the planning and how hard it is to design a pretty card that people can actually make easily and quickly. Cheryl is mighty good at it but she has lots more experience! This was the design I came up with. I knew I didn't want to use any heat embossing or hand cutting this first time and I wanted to keep the stamping to a minimum.

I chose a variant on these large cards because it was fun and easy to use the Big Shot for the Top Note and the Bird Punch. The stamping could be done and then punched out so that it would be easier to get it straight and centered and all that. The only technique involved was inking the edges of the punched pieces with a sponge, which everyone really liked doing. Interestingly, the hardest part was tying that ribbon in a bow!

I forgot some supplies of course. I hadn't made all the card bases but I left my paper trimmer at home. I also forgot envelopes but I can bring those to people later. I almost ran out of ribbon - I didn't realize how much it would take to make that many cards!

Here is one of the cards they made - didn't they do a good job?

I thought I was being soooo clever...

All the local grocery stores quit carrying the Ramen I like, isn't that terrible?? I'm a little bit of a Ramen junkie - I like to have it (dressed up a little!) for lunches. A little while back I found I couldn't get the Lime Chili Shrimp anymore so I started buying the Lime Shrimp. Now it's gone too and all they have is Chicken, bah.

So, I bought a whole case on Amazon! Isn't that a super idea?   I have this free two-day shipping deal right now through Amazon Mom (which is available free for anyone who is a parent/grandparent/caretaker - check it out!) so I thought, why not? And it's been great.  EXCEPT, I forgot how SPICY this kind is!  It's much much spicier than Lime Shrimp.  And lucky me, I have a whole case :)