ABC Animal Book (Deployment gift)

 

I have a neighbor who is very sad about going TDY (Temporary Duty) for 6 months to Afghanistan (no they really don’t seem to be pulling out). She will miss all the holidays and birthdays for her 3 small children (ages: almost 1, soon to be 3, and 5 in spring). I wanted to do something to help her stay in touch with the kids.

I immediately thought of little cute cards for her to send home to them. I finally decided on a card a week, and thought that ABC card would be fun. I told her, she can tell the kids, she will be home before “Z”. I wanted the little ones to be able to see all the little animal cards mommy was sending home so I made up an album and place corner tabs for every card with a little label that said the name of the animal and the letter it represented. The front of the book says “How may weeks until mommy is home? Count the missing animals to find out” .

My hope is that it will be fun way for her to keep in touch and a cute way for the children to count down the weeks until she gets home. I also added a birthday card for each child and card for each holiday she will miss.

With all the work I put into this, it surprisingly only took 5 days from start to finish. I packaged all the cards up in a little box for her to pack in her bags, and gave the kids (and dad) the Blank Album to put the cards in as she sends them home. I left plenty of space for pictures of mommy in th front and back of the album  -- so the kids can “see her” as they look at all the cards she sent to them. I was going to pre-pay the postage for each card but have since found out that the military covers the coast of postage for our deployed troops.

I cut all the animals at what ever size each would have a good fit on a 4X 6 card.

I used only five cartridges on this project: Animal Kingdom, Create-a-critter, Designer Calander, Everyday Paper Dolls, and Zooballoo.

I printed the cover using Microsoft office and I used old sticker letters to place in the corner of each card. I also embellished come cards with googol eyes, stickles, brads & gems. I added a note of caution “not safe for children under 3” but hope it will be a book that the kids will share with an adult.