Hullabaloo Stories Design Blog
Welcome to Hullabaloo Stories! Create your own family stories with memorable books, projects, printables and more.
With several special holidays coming up, now is the chance to order your gift before it is too late. Easter is a great opportunity to capture photos with the kids, all dressed up in their “Sunday Best”. Why not take that opportunity and turn it into something imaginatively creative with a custom made board book to share with your little ones for years to come?
Believe it or not, Father’s Day is our busiest holiday here at Hullabaloo Stories. Women seem to plan out their gift giving much more than men do. If they are anything like me, they wait until the last minute and it’s is either breakfast in bed or hand delivered flowers for the Mrs. on Mother’s Day.
Perhaps, now is the perfect opportunity to begin dropping hints or sharing ideas about a custom made story to share with your children, made with the loving hands of a professional educator at Hullabaloo Stories. This way there won’t be a chance of waiting until the last minute to make your day and an extra special memory to cherish beyond Mother’s Day.
Check out some of our previous Father’s Day themed books, here.
We hope the upcoming holidays are filled with laughter, fun, love and memories. Happy “Spring” holidays.
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When it comes to a mother’s love, it is an endless love. A love that is very difficult to describe. This year, I was inspired by my love for my children to make them each their own book about the 10 things I love most about them. Of course, there are so many more than 10 things I love about each of them, but I was able to find a way to narrow it down.
While typically Mother’s Day is all about giving something to your mom, I also like to celebrate the two beautiful little lives who made me a mommy.
I cannot wait for them to see these books, I feel like its just a little piece of the love story I share with my children.
To celebrate all the mommy’s out there that inspire me every day, Hullabaloo Stories is partnering with the amazing Ana from Bluebird Kisses to give away one of these little treasures to one lucky mommy. Check out the give away here. Make sure you like Bluebird Kisses Facebook fan page and comment on the post about our give away to enter. You get an extra entry for commenting here…so let’s hear it…what do you love most about your little one?
In addition, to celebrate Mother’s Day, we are offering free shipping in our Etsy Store (we do have gift certificates!) use the code AMOTHERSLOVE until April 30th.*
Happy Mother’s Day to to all the amazing mommies out there.
*Orders submitted and processed (meaning we receive all your photos) by April 30th will be shipped in time for Mother’s Day.
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A fun post for today…it’s “Leap Day” so let’s leap into reading for this year. Inspired by Dr. Seuss’ quotes, check out our printable bookmarks in fun Dr. Seuss patterns. Click on the link below to see all the books marks we have created (the quote should be printed on the backside to create a two-sided bookmark and, if possible, we recommend you laminate the bookmarks)
Download these bookmarks in celebration of Read Across America Week
Check back on Friday for a fun post after we deliver these bookmarks to one lucky local elementary school with a lot of ideas about how to encourage a love for reading in your children.
Source: 30 Dr. Seuss Quotes to Live By
So here is the idea. Get a copy of the book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” and each year, at the end of the school year, have your child’s teacher write them a little note inside the book (think of how someone signs a high school yearbook). This activity would take place every year, K-12. On the day of your child’s high school graduation, give it to them as one of their gifts. It will also add some nostalgia to the occasion reading through some of the comments made by past teachers.
Sounds pretty simple right…well we want to make it even simpler by having your very own copy shipped directly to your house!
Hullabaloo Stories is giving away TWO copies of Dr. Seuss’ book Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
How to qualify for the giveaway is really easy.
- Go to our Facebook page and “Like” our page.
- Tell us how you have shared this post in the comments below, here, on the Hullabloo Stories blog.
- Some examples include a post on your own Facebook account as a status update, a blog post on a blog that you own/contribute to or comment on another blog, providing a link back to this post, a "pin" on Pinterest, or even a post on a forum; and
- If possible, please provide the link of the location where you shared this blog post with others in your comment below.
- A winner will be chosen at random on Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM PST and we will post the winners name/user name on both Facebook on the Hullabaloo Stories Fan Page wall and here on the Hullabaloo Stories blog as a comment on this blog post by 6:00 PM on that same day, Sunday, March 4, 2012.
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Good luck and thanks for helping to spread the word about this giveaway.
Use modern technology to engage your children in reading? Yes you read that right. Reading with your child can incorporate modern technology, these varied formats can help to engage them in the process of reading and help them to understand the idea of the book.
Since we are celebrating Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ birthday lets look at the world of Dr. Seuss and all the ways to read his books. Besides the traditional hardcover books there are so many ways to engage your children in the world of Dr. Seuss.
This is the first in a series of blog posts about various formats of multimedia.
Today we will look at movies, in recent years there have been several Dr. Seuss books made into movies (Dr. Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat and Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas), the most recent movie was Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who and this Friday The Lorax is being released nationwide. This movie is based on the story The Lorax , a story largely about ecological awareness, even though it was written in the early 1970’s the message still rings true today and is an important message of taking care of our environment. The story is engaging and as always, Dr. Seuss’ books are entertaining and imaginative. The movie will likely be just as entertaining, especially considering the cast of stars lending their voices to Dr. Seuss’ characters.
Taking young children to the movie theater can be really fun, but also overwhelming if they do not have a concept of the story before seeing it. One strategy to help your children understand a movie is to sit down with them and read the story. But instead of simply reading cover to cover, ask them questions. Have them predict what is going on based on the pictures and pick out what ideas seem important to them. This will give your children confidence in their own reading (pre-reading) skills and some ownership in the story.
Once the movie is over you can continue to engage them in the story by re-reading the book and asking some of those same questions you asked them before, have them discuss what they learned, create a project, a drawing or some other way for them to show you what they have learned with the story. With a story that has a message like The Lorax does you can have your child take action, check out these coloring pages we made for our kids, the Read Across America site has some ideas for doing just that. Several associated sites are offering various activities for parents and teachers to share with children, including online games. These techniques of pre and post reading can be used for any book, reading the same book or going over the same story several times can be very helpful for children to learn how to read and what the process of reading includes. For some more tips, check out this great blog post here on I Can Teach My Child
Below are some coloring book pages (in full color) click on the link above to download the coloring book pages.
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Disclaimer: The Lorax and other Dr. Seuss books are copyrighted by Random House, Inc. Dr. Seuss properties ™ & © 1937-2011. These books are available at Amazon.com and many other booksellers. The purpose of this post is to encourage parental/child interaction with these literary works and pre-reading skills and not to seek gain in the form profit by mentioning them here.
Have you joined Pinterest yet? If not you really should, its such a great way to catalog all the things you find on the internet and find even more fun stuff, especially for your kiddos. I have found so many things to keep my 3 year old occupied and have also been inspired by new recipes and projects for myself. I want to share a few Valentine’s Day ideas that mainly came from Pinterest.
This week, we worked on a project with our 3 year old. A Valentine’s Day Wreath, it was pretty simple and only took us a few minutes. We purchased some burlap and a foam wreath from our local arts and crafts store, as well as the heart. We already had the ribbon but you could also pick this up at the store while you are purchasing your other supplies.
Our 3 year old painted the heart with her washable kids paints and helped to wrap the burlap and ribbon. The only part she really couldn’t do was use the hot glue gun to secure everything into place. It was really that simple and she is very proud of it.
Another little project I am going to be doing from now until the 14th is using these little mail boxes I picked up at the arts and crafts store, one for each of the kids. I wrote on the side of each one in a paint pen, “Ainsleigh’s Love Notes” on a light purple box and “Nolan’s Love Notes” on a red box. Each morning before I head off to work I am planning to leave them a little love note for the day. To help them with their pre-reading skills I will use pictures and words to leave them with a little note each day .
This craft is all over the web, I even saw it on the Today show, here is my pin on Pinterest, these would make really fun gifts with a custom coloring book or coloring page.
The last craft I want to share are thumbprint bookmarks from Sweet and Lovely Crafts. These are so cute and would be so much better than giving out candy or those little cards from the store that wind up getting tossed. These can be altered depending on the age of your child and can give them an opportunity to be involved with their Valentine’s gift to friends or classmates.
I hope you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day with your family.
Welcome to our the new home of our design blog, we want to celebrate with a giveaway…
Are you a member of the military, or know a military dad who is away from his children for Father’s Day? If so, in the spirit of charity and an effort to give back to those who serve and sacrifice so much for our country, we want to create a book just for you. This giveaway includes two matching 5×5 books (a $64 value); one for the family at home and one for the dad/mom who is deployed.
To enter, send us the story of the deployed person and their child/children (Who knows? Could be twins or triplets or even more out there) and their special bond to hullabaloo@dc-hulls.com including a picture of the child/children and the deployed parent, by May 14, 2011. The state-side family that is selected, will then work with Hullabaloo Stories to create their own unique and personal custom story, together. We will choose a winner, at random, by May 17th. Hullabaloo Stories will then notify the winner by e-mail and let those who follow Hullabaloo Stories know via Facebook and the Hullabaloo Stories Design blog.
To enter this giveaway opportunity, you must be a military family that will be separated on Father’s Day: Click to Enlarge. We will select from stories e-mailed to us by May 14th, 2011 and announce the winner by May 17th on our design blog. By submitting your story you are authorizing Hullabaloo Stories to publish your story in a blog post, Facebook status update, and other marketing materials exclusively for use by Hullabaloo Stories and to edit your submission for grammar and content for the purpose of each intended audience. Further, by submitting your story you are providing implicit consent for Hullabaloo Stories to share your photo submissions with the Hullabaloo Stories audience and that all subjects in each photo have provided their consent for distribution of those images by Hullabaloo Stories. For all those under legal age of consent, a parent or guardian must keep record of consent of that person within each photo and provide such record of consent if it is requested by Hullabaloo Stories. Any published image supplied with your submission will be credited with the caption “Source: [Your Name]” in the image metadata. As a regular practice, Hullabaloo Stories will not publish any last names unless you indicate that you prefer your last name accompany your story submission upon publishing any materials.
Update: As a point of clarification, this giveaway is not limited to only men who are deployed. Deployed women and/or their families are encouraged to submit entries for the giveaway as well.
Good luck.
Recently, we have made a couple of adoption books and while we would love to share the photos, due to the sensitive nature of the adoption process we are unable to share the actual pages of the books. Each of the families were able to create a small piece of what their family and home was like to share with their new addition. Creating a bond for the new child in their families was very important and we are so happy to have been able to share that with them.
For more information on adoption books please contact us and we would be happy to work with you to create a family story book for your new child.
I am a very biased mommy but I loved this book. I now realize what my customers go through when trying to narrow down their photos. I finally took the stance that each month I wanted to capture what the most important thing in her life was, not just my favorite photos. It was tough but I love this book and we read it all the time. Now that she’s two I guess I better get a new book started.
I love creating books about families, maybe because that was my original intent when starting Hullabaloo Stories. This was a fun book to make, how could it not be, how cute is this little guy?
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