Hullabaloo Stories Design Blog

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.

This year was extremely successful for us here at Hullabaloo Stories. In fact, we have a ton of orders already for the holidays. As such, and to ensure that we make our deadline of Christmas for our customers, we have decided to close all orders for board books for Christmas delivery on November 30th. Please have your images ready and transmitted to us, at the very latest, by December 2nd to ensure enough time for proofs and revisions.

You can still place an order for gift cards through December 14th to ensure delivery before Christmas.

If you want to place an order after these dates, you can do so, but we cannot commit to make sure that you receive your gift before the Christmas holiday.

We hope the holiday season may bestow joy, happiness and peace with you, your family, friends, and loved ones. If you have any questions, please feel free to visit our Contact page and send us a quick note.

Happy Holidays from Hullabaloo Stories

Download your free printable Thanksgiving notes for your kids’ lunch boxes from Windy Pinwheel.

2012 Copyright Christine Hull, Windy Pinwheel

Last month, we posted a downloadable set of free Halloween printables. We’ve decided to share the printables from Windy Pinwheel each month as a cross post to spread the word about each of these printables. This month, we are sticking to the Thanksgiving theme. Thanksgiving is a very special time for us all to reflect about what we’re thankful for in this world. We are thankful for our family, our children, being free from want and you, the reader of this blog. Without you we wouldn’t be who we are today, creating and sharing custom stories for you to share with your children.

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday? Please feel free to share. We would love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. Every month we will post a new set of lunch box notes. So check back at Windy Pinwheel often.

Download your free Thanksgiving themed printables at Windy Pinwheel

Surprise your kids and make their day with free printable Halloween notes for their lunch boxes from Windy Pinwheel.

2012 Copyright Christine Hull, Windy Pinwheel

My husband, a couple of friends and I recently stared a new venture for parents in the local area of Reno, Nevada at Windy Pinwheel. Most of what we post is pertinent to the local audience, but occasionally, we post things that might also be relevant to my audience here at Hullabaloo Stories. We couldn’t be more thankful for both our patrons and our fans of this site. Without you, we wouldn’t be who we are today. That being said, we have a special offering for you via our Windy Pinwheel site – Free Halloween themed love note printables for you to share with your kids.

Being a full time working parent sending my children off to school can be tough some days. There are days when I miss them so much, sending a little “love note” in their lunch boxes is a small way I can remind them half way through their day how much I love them. I like to picture them sitting at their cute preschool tables unpacking their lunches and finding a fun new “love note”.

This month, in honor of Halloween on the other blog that I write for, I wanted to share some SPOOK-tacular love notes for you to print and share with your children.

The Valentine’s Day notes were such a huge success, here at Hullabaoo Stories this year, that we thought we could make some in the spirit of Halloween. My husband is certainly a sucker for all things surrounding the Halloween holiday and enjoys it, I think, as much as our kids do. We hope you like these free printable Halloween lunch box love notes as much as we do. It brings the biggest smile to our faces as parents knowing that we made our kids’ day.

If you download the set, be sure to report back and let us know if they are a hit with your kids in your household.

P.S. Every month we will post a new set of lunch box notes. So check back at Windy Pinwheel often.

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.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day friends. I hope your day is touched by a bit of Irish luck today. St. Patrick’s Day is a really fun holiday with children because you get to dress up, be silly and there are so many projects you can do with them, like Leprechaun traps, rainbow waffles and dye everything green! You can also go on scavenger hunts to find rainbow items in your house or look for clovers, Leprechaun’s and so much more. Being Irish myself, this holiday is a great day to talk to my kids about their Irish heritage. I wanted to share a few St. Patrick’s Day things in this post.

First for even more ideas check out the collection I have started on my St. Patrick’s Day Pinterest Board

Next, I made these printables so long ago that I nearly forgot to post them. So check out all the separate files here in our 4Shared Folder.

The last thing I want to share is our project, I got this idea from this Pin and then somewhat made it my own. Instead of using old book pages, I used Irish proverbs, which the pages I used are in the printables folder. Then, I added a couple of blank green pages, printed some small shamrocks, and topped each page off with a little doily from Martha Stewart’s Craft line. Similar to these Martha Stewart Crafts Tags Die-Cut Lace). They turned out really cute. Then, I simply added them onto a ribbon to hang. They should last our family several years. The other craft we made was something really fun for my daughter. I pre-printed a shamrock on some card stock and then put the glue all over the page, then let her place all the little flowers all over the page. She did a great job and it was a nice evening project that didn’t get us too messy.

Here is the dried flowers we got at our local craft “project” store

So there it is….our projects for a lucky day! Happy St. Patrick’s Day and may the luck of the Irish be with you today!!!

I found these little tin mail boxes for our kids and wanted to leave them little notes in the weeks before Valentine’s Day. About a week before Valentine’s Day I will be starting a new job and will likely be leaving the house before they even wake up, so these will be a nice little way for them to wake up each morning. We have two children, one girl and one boy, so I wanted to make a mixture of boyish and girly love notes. I also plan to laminate these little notes before I put them in their boxes, with one child teething its best to protect these little notes so they at least last through the day.

below you will find 28 love notes that you can also use for your children. I have seen some other great ideas for home made Valentine’s Day cards your child can give their classmates or friends and also 14 days of love notes for your spouse. I will link to all those great ideas on the bottom of this post as well as my Pinterest Valentine’s Day Board. Feel free to right click on each file or click here to download them.

If you would like any or all of the Love Notes posted below, simply right click on the picture you want, save it and print it. All of these were made to be 2″x3″ to fit perfectly into their little mail boxes, you could also make little felt envelopes for the back of their dining room chairs or play table chairs, as seen at PBKids or here on the Crafting Chics Blog

Some other fantastic blog posts from great Mama Bloggers:

• Mommy by day; Crafter by Night posts 14 great ideas for your spouse, a super cute way to show your spouse a little love this time of year.
• Mud Pie Studio posts about 101 Valentine’s Day Ideas, this is a fantastic collection of various ideas from all over the net.
• Kristen Duke Photography has 10 lunch box jokes for Valentine’s Day, even though my kids aren’t in school right now I think I will print these for my husband to leave in their mail boxes since the love notes are really from me. So cute.
• Sprik Space posts 15 free Valentine’s Day printables, these are great for decorating your house, classroom or even office.
• And last but not least my collection of Valentine’s Day ideas on Pinterest, I plan to continue adding to this so please be sure to bookmark it.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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.