A Camping We Will Go--and a Gift Tin

Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!

Here is a quick account of my Mother's Day "surprise!"

My husband thought it would be wonderful to take the kids camping overnight---thinking it would get them out of my hair and give me a peaceful day at home by myself. (mistake #1) I, however, felt a bit sad at the thought of being all alone on Mother's Day so I decided I would go too (mistake #2). I don't camp--I love to hike and be outdoors but I don't like bugs and I prefer a nice clean shower and bedroom to sleep. But I really wanted us all to be together. How bad could it be?

So, we spent about 2.5 hours getting ready--packing everyone up, purchasing firewood, ingredients for s'mores, batteries for flashlights, etc. After we were on the road, we discovered our DVD player wasn't working. (Since it was a two hour trip to the campsite--this was not good!) Then, I decided it was a good idea to color some stamped images in the car (mistake #3)...didn't feel well for more than half of the trip. While we were driving, we watched the outside temperature gauge rise to 103 degrees (oopsie!)--not ideal camping weather but at least it wasn't raining! (mistake #4)

We finally arrived at Enchanted Rock (which is GORGEOUS if you live in Texas and are looking for a fantastic place to hike/camp!) We set up our campground and realized that during the whole rush to get packed our son, Ben, had taken off his sneakers and socks and replaced them with flip flops....eekkk!!! (mistake #5)
We spent the next two hours hiking the amazing mountains there and then returned to cook hot dogs and s'mores. After it got dark we attempted to go to sleep. My oldest daughter fell right asleep (she had a softball game earlier that day and was up late the previous night so nothing bothered her!) My littlest two were hopping and jumping all over the place and could not settle in. My husband was hot and couldn't sleep anyway.

Finally....at about 11 p.m. we decided to cut our losses and pack it up. We loaded up the car and went home. The kids all fell asleep immediately as we left the campground site....and we had a peaceful 2 hour drive home! (good idea # 1)

Next time, I am going to let my husband go with my son! The girls will stay home!

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Here is a cute little gift tin I created yesterday before the trip. I used the fun hinged window tins from Gina K's site and her Baskets of Happiness set that I love so much to create the belly band for the tin.

I used my Nestability dies to frame the image and create the belly band focal point. I traced the paper to fit the bottom of the tin and the top of the lid. I stamped the "Thanks" sentiment from the Spring Blooms set all around the lid. I adhered the chocolate grosgrain ribbon around the edge of the lid using Scor- Tape (Scor-Pal).

Materials used: Stamps: Baskets of Happiness, Spring Blooms (Gina K Designs); hinged tin (Gina K Designs); ink-black, choc chip (Stampin' Up!); cardstock-white, chocolate chip (SU!); designer paper (My Mind's Eye); Prismacolor Pencils; Copic markers; Cuttlebug (Provocraft) and Nestability dies (Spellbinders); hemp (SU!); silver eyelets (SU!); Scor-Tape (Scor-Pal); Cropadile; Sakura stardust gellyroll pen; Dimensionals (SU!); silver tag (Hallmark).

Hope you created some wonderful (or at least "funny-when-you-look-back-at-them") memories this Mother's Day!

Thanks for stopping by!