Hopeful Homemaker

My grandma turned 80 years old this week.  I had a hard time thinking of a simple, inexpensive, but thoughtful thing to do for her until I thought of the numbers.  Then it hit me:  8 children, 80 candles.  So we went to work.

I grabbed my pack of 80 candles I’d purchased months ago at the dollar store (Relief!  We hadn’t broken into them yet!)


I divided them into sets of ten candles, keeping like colors together, and tied each bundle with a different colored ribbon.


Then I took a picture of each of my children holding one bundle and added text to the photos, counting from twenty (my youngest) up to eighty (my oldest.)
















I printed the pictures and mounted each one on a piece of pink cardstock.  On the front I added a picture of the cupcakes we baked in her honor.  I scored each piece of cardstock along the left edge so the little booklet will easily bend for her to turn the pages and stapled them together with pieces of ribbon to tie over the staples.


There were a million things I would have liked to add to this project, like notes from my kids for sentimental value and embellishments for the sake of making it prettier.  The problem was that I thought of the idea late, and now her birthday has already passed, and I knew that if I didn’t mail it the moment I finished I might lose the courage to get to the post office at all.  So this is where the project ended.  I thought it was a fun idea, though, that could be used for other birthdays.  Now it’s en route to her, and I hope she likes it!