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.

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!

The holidays are around the corner and a custom made board book for your child or relative will make a great gift. We love making personalized memories for our customers.

Please keep in mind we will be cutting off holiday orders the Friday after Thanksgiving; November 25, 2011.

Don’t have little ones of your own or want to give a book as a gift to someone you know who is just starting their own family? Gift certificates are available and transferable to anyone you choose. All you have to do is let us know the name of the person you are giving the gift certificate to and we’ll take it from there. We will accept holiday gift certificate orders through December 9, 2011.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to contact us any time by visiting our Contact Us page.

We wish you the very best and memorable Thanksgiving and holiday season. Many blessings to all.

Thanks for stopping by.

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 17^th. 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.

A great gift for any new mommy or even a seasoned mommy…how about a grandmommy? If you would like to order a Hullabaloo Story for Mother’s Day. To guarantee delivery your order and pictures must be to us by Thursday, April 14th, 2011.

Just before I mailed out some of our holiday orders, I snapped a couple of pictures. We had a great holiday season and enjoyed making so many books for little hands to open up on Christmas morning… including my own nephew who got a custom set of family flash cards. Each card had a photo of him with a family member and their name on the card, each was laminated. We also made him a magnet of him with our daughter last summer reading together. They both love the magnet and the flash cards. The holiday ordering season was hectic but fun, we look forward to making a lot more books this year for more little readers.