Pen Pal Kit

Life isn't fair. We can all agree on that. Sometimes it's even harder on kids than us adults.

We got lucky when we purchased our house. We had great neighbors! Fun, kind, and they had kids the same age as ours. Then two of the families moved. We got lucky again and had a family with three kids move into one of the houses and the kids almost instantly became great friends! Now they're moving too.

To say my boys are bummed is an understatement. In an attempt to help lessen the sorrow of losing their friends, we decided to put together a pen pal kit for each of the neighbor kids. It's something super simple, inexpensive, and thoughtful. Also, lets not forget that everyone loves receiving a letter in the mail!

What we included in our pen pal kits:

- paper/notebooks

- envelopes

- stickers

- pens and pencils

- crayons/markers

- hand sanitizer

- a bag/box to store everything in

Our pen pal kit was actually for a family of three children, so we made one generic bag with the essentials and then made three individual bags for each of the kids. 

Those bags included:

- a personalized reusable Starbucks cup

- paper notebook

- fun pen

We wanted to do You Got Booed this year for all of our neighbors (I think we'll still do it!) but because these neighbors were moving before October and we wanted to still include them, we just personalized these cups and gave them to them. I think the cups turned out really cute! And the lids glow in the dark! 

I also snagged this pen pal kit poem from Eighteen25 that we'll include as a sort of instruction page.

  

DIY Time: Snow Globe Tumbler

Have you noticed the new snow globe trend going on with double-walled tumblers lately? Maybe I'm late to the game, but I think they're super neat and wanted one for myself, but I didn't want to pay the prices they're asking on Etsy. So what did I do? I DIY'd one myself!

Since this was my first time ever attempting this craft, I didn't want to spend an outrageous amount of money on it. Otherwise why not just pay the money and get one that was already made? So I made a trip to Walmart, the Dollar Tree, and my craft supplies in the closet!

Here's everything I used:

• Double-walled tumbler
• Glitter
• Seed beads (optional - I used them because I had them, wasn't going to use them for anything else, and like the fall-y colors)
• Vegetable glycerin
• Gorilla Glue Epoxy
• Drill with 1/4 drill bit (you can use whatever size you want.)
• Paint brush
• Kids medicine syringe
• Water
• A sticker

Begin with your tumbler. Remove all stickers and labels from it. You can even wipe it down beforehand if you want.

Drill a hole in the bottom of just one layer of the double-walled tumbler. If you drill too far your drink and your snow globe will mix together and no one wants that. 

Next, pour some glitter onto the bottom of the tumbler and gently brush it into the hole with your paint brush. When I was doing this, the glitter kept piling up and I had to gently tap the tumbler to get the glitter to go down the sides and make room for more. I did the same for the beads.

I used a few seed beads in mine because I had them and I liked the fall-y colors that they added to the gold glitter. However, for this particular tumbler, I probably wouldn't suggest using any. They got stuck in the sides as I tapped them down and they don't really move when I shake the glitter up. Perhaps if I could find a tumbler with slightly wider double-walls? Either way, it was a neat idea!

Next I used an old kids medicine syringe to add the water and the vegetable glycerin. I did the water first and filled it up about half way. I think I actually went over half way, but not a big deal. Then I added the vegetable glycerin almost all the way to the top. I left a little bit of air at the top to help with shaking up the glitter.

I also noticed that it worked better adding the water and the glycerin if I tilted the tumbler a little bit. This allowed the liquids to slide down the sides of the tumbler instead of just sitting and collecting at the top.

Finally, I added a sticker over the hold I drilled and then applied the Gorilla Glue Epoxy over it. I've seen people add epoxy over just the sticker and over the entire bottom of the tumbler. The bottom of this tumbler was slightly "indented" so I just fill the entire "indent" just to be safe.

And that's it! I have a snow globe tumbler! Pretty neat, huh?!