Father's Day 2016

Yesterday was Father's Day here in America, and the first of two Father's Days that we celebrate each year. Lucky Kim gets to celebrate American Father's Day in June and Australian Father's Day in September.

For Kim's present, the girls and I made a Chatbooks photo book featuring designs by our favorite illustrator, Dallas Clayton. We're all big fans of Dallas Clayton's simple yet meaningful style, so as soon as I saw that Chatbooks was teaming up with him I jumped online to order a book. Of course, our photo book needed a matching card, so the girls dressed in their matching Dallas Clayton t-shirts and romper from Rags to Raches, grabbed a few balloon props, and we had a little photo shoot.

Get Well Cards

Yesterday Ava and Lola were making get well cards for a family member and it got me thinking about a card that I made back in 2008 when Ava was a toddler. At the time my Grandma was in hospital and I thought that seeing her little great-grand daughter playing doctor would cheer her up a little.

So we got out the toy doctor's kit, some bandaids and bandages, and a patient - in this case, one of Ava's teddy bears. I bandaged up the bear's arm and Doctor Ava set about checking his heart rate and temperature, feeding him medicine, giving him needles, and putting spare bandages across his face!

Here's a look at the collage card I put together.

Valentine, You're a Catch!

This year Ava's class at school was not allowed to give out sweets for Valentine's Day.

I had planned for Ava to give out marshmallows just like Lola but seeing as they contain "just a little" sugar(!) we had to go with another idea. Ava was still keen to give out something to eat so we decided to go with good old Goldfish crackers.

Ava couldn't just give out a bag of Goldfish though. There needed to be a card with a cheesy saying to go with it. I'm all about the cheese when it comes to Valentine's Day!

So Ava posed for photos pretending to hold a bag of fish, I added a cheesy saying in photoshop, printed out the cards, added an actual bag of fish (well, Goldfish crackers) and, voila.. Valentines done.

Here's a look...

Father's Day Card 2014 (Australian Edition)

It's Father's Day... again!

As I've mentioned before, lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice a year. First up in June for American Father's Day, and secondly in September for Australian Father's Day. Unfortunately Australia and America share the same date for Mother's Day so I only get one special day. Boo.

This year I've been so busy with visitors, vacations and back to school that Australian Father's Day sneaked up on me. With no barrage of ads for power tools, barbecues, electronic gizmos and socks on tv it completely slipped my mind until a few days ago. Sorry Grandpas in Australia, your cards will be a little late. Nothing unusual there though!

If you've seen the previous Father's Day cards that I've made with the girls you'll know that I'm fond of coming up with something cheesy. There was the giant redwood themed "Tree-mendous Father's Day" card from last year, and the baseball themed "Number 1 Fan" cards from the year before. This year is no different with another cheesy caption. I can't help myself. I think I have a problem!

Lately Kim has been a little obsessed with wearing hats. And the girls are obsessed with wearing Daddy's hats when they can get their hands on one. With this new obsession and a cheesy catch line in mind the girls and I set about creating a card involving Daddy's hat collection.

Happy (Australian) Father's Day 2013

Yesterday was Father's Day number two for the year, otherwise known as Australian Father's Day. Lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice each year (American Father's Day was back in June), while I get just one Mother's Day.

We had organised to spend the day at Lego KidsFest in San Jose so I figured that a Lego themed card would be just the thing for this Father's Day. I played around with a few different ideas (trying to write out different messages in Lego) but kept coming back to the simplicity of a Lego heart. Much easier to make than a Lego message and it ties in nicely with this year's Mother's Day cards, which you can see here.

Here's a look at our Lego inspired cards plus a few shots from our photo shoot. I really wanted to take photos up on our roof but as always the wind came out as soon as the camera did so Ava has some interesting looking hair! 

Don't "Lego" my heart!

Happy Father's Day USA

It's Father's Day again here in the USA.

It feels like only yesterday that we were celebrating Father's Day but I guess seeing as Kim gets two of them a year (June for USA and September for Australia) it really wasn't that long ago.

Here's a look at the card I made for Kim using photos from our recent trip to the redwoods.

Have a tree-mendous Father's Day

Wishing all the Dads out there a "tree-mendous" Father's Day!

Mother's Day Cards 2013

It's Mother's Day again. And that means Mother's Day cards...

Lately the girls and I have been taking lots of photos with the hearts in San Francisco's Union Square. This gave me an idea for a cheesy Mother's Day card. Much like our Valentine's Day cards, I like my Mother's Day and Father's Day cards to be just a little cheesy. Not sappy or overly lovely-dovey, just a little bit cheesy - in a cute way.

We love Nanna!

Little Bags of Honey Biscuits

Today was Ava's last day of school for the year. Roll on the start of the two week winter break!

Ava's class celebrated their last day of school before Christmas by making Christmas crafts, watching a movie and, the kids' favourite part, wearing their pyjamas all day! Not a bad day of school.

And if all that doesn't sound good enough there was just one more treat...

Ava took bags of honey biscuits to school to give out to her classmates and teacher.

Bags of honey biscuits

Technically sweet treats like biscuits/cookies aren't actually allowed at school but we got around this by bagging the biscuits up for the kids to take home. Ah, loopholes! To make the bags of biscuits a little more festive I made cards from one of Ava's Christmas drawings and tied them on with red and white baker's twine. Ava personalised each bag of biscuits by writing a message on the back of each card. I was quite impressed that she was able to recognise each of her classmates names on the cards when handing them out. It's good to know that she is learning at school!

Merry Christmas

Halloween Cards

This year Ava and I made Halloween cards to send to her friends.

I thought we'd go for a printing technique that I haven't used in a really long time, so rather than printing the cards from our computer I made a linoleum block print from one of Ava's drawing.

We started with Ava's drawing of herself as a vampire from Hotel Transylvania. You can see the original drawing below. I resized it a little in photoshop and then traced over the print out to transfer it onto the linoleum block. Then it was time for the fun part: the carving. Ava was really keen to help out with this part but she had to give it a miss given how sharp the carving tools are and how easy it could be for her to a) cut herself, b) mess up the printing block or c) all of the above.

I hadn't done any linoleum block carving for about 15 years so I was a little concerned that it might take a really long time for me to get through it but in actual fact it was all done within a few hours. Much easier than I had expected and I found it quite a relaxing way to spend an evening.