Easter baskets and Prayer Pillowcases

We finally had a weekend with no big plans and it was so great to just hang around, do errands, and we got a ton of things done that I had been needing to get to.  I finished reviewing most of Jimmy's First Eucharist book with him, got him a very handsome suit (40% at Sears for only $30!), Robbie took Jimmy to Adoration and out to ice cream.  I went grocery shopping at Super Walmart and bought EVERYTHING I'd need for meals and for Easter, including Easter baskets!  Barbara got to go with her "bff" to a fun event at the Allen Bradley clock tower.  It was a nice weekend!

This year I made up a "formula" to help me figure out what to put in Easter baskets.  The formula is as follows. :)

1. A book
2. A religious item
3. A toy or fun item
4. CANDY

Now for example say for Barbara this could be as simple as religious stickers and fun stationery from the Dollar Tree, and a used book on amazon with free shipping.  Or for the little guys, bubbles and a religious coloring book.  Candy usually is most exciting anyhow.

This year, for books I did amazon  - BB: Watership Down, Jimmy: Rascal, Sam: First Easter storybook, Leo: First words Let's Talk book

For the fun items/toys: BB: modeling clay and sidewalk chalk, Jimmy: wii steering wheel, Sam: huge inflatable soccer ball and coloring book, Leo: Thomas bubble maker

Candy is self explanatory- reeses eggs, jelly beans, assorted egg/bunny candies, Peeps and chocolate crosses

Now for the Religious item this year, I had been perusing the "Catholic Child" website and saw these beautiful prayer pillowcases  .  I had them all picked out- St. Therese for BB, St. Patrick for JImmy, St. Joseph for Sammy and St. Francis for Leo... THEN, I noticed the price- $20 apiece!

So I came up with an inexpensive way to make them myself with iron on transfer paper and Microsoft Word.

1.First, I googled an image for the Saint I wanted and saved it to my hard drive.  I also googled a corresponding prayer for that Saint that I liked and highlighted and copied the text.

2. I opened Microsoft Word, clicked insert Word Art- pasted the prayer text.  Then highlighted it and clicked on Drawing Tools, Format, Text Effects, 3-D rotation, then way at the bottom clicked 3-D rotation options- that opens up a table where under the box for the value of X, I input 180, then click close- and this will flip the text to be mirror image.

3.  I did insert picture- clicked on the saved file of the Saint and did the same formating with the 3-d rotation and inputting 180 degrees to flip it as well.

4.  Finally I did insert word art to type in the child's name, and then did the same steps to format the 180 degree flip again.

5.  This left me with a final document that had everything flipped to be a mirror image.  I then followed the instructions on my package of fabric transfer printer  paper (mine was from Walmart for $8) to print out the document onto iron-on fabric.

backwards document:

**** If your printer has a "mirror image" option when you print out then you can skip all my crazy formatting and just make a regular document and then click that option when it's time to print, but print a test on regular paper to make sure it worked! :)

6. I washed and dried the pillowcases to make sure they wouldn't shrink, and ironed them flat.
7. I ironed on the images according to the instructions- empty iron of water- no steam- dry iron them for about 3 minutes using lots of downward pressure.
8. Let cool for a couple minutes and peel off backing
9.  I washed them inside out on cold and dried on delicates again to soften it up
10. All done!

I am really happy with how these turned out and I spent a total of $20 to make all four (you could easily spend less if your Walmart is not out of stock of their cheapest pillowcase 2-packs and you are not impatient like me and just end up buying their higher thread count pillowcases for $3 each! )  These pictures above are all pre-washing so they look more softened up now.

I am going to have them wrapped up as pictured with a little bottle of holy water for each of them to keep by their beds.

Wishing you many blessings this Holy Week!