The Butterflies Flutterby

For Christmas, Jeremy gave one of his sisters and 3 of his cousins, a whole bunch of butterflies.

…Paper Butterflies, to be exact!

This is another inexpensive gift, and once you have the tools…..you can make this gift for any number of people that you know that might enjoy them….

We had a small butterfly paper punch and I took another 40% off coupon to Michaels (Don’t go shopping there without one. You can google for one and print it out yourself.) and bought a large butterfly punch. I think that it was originally about $23 and with the coupon, I paid about $14. I had Scrap booking paper at home but in the pictures that you see here…..I actually used some paint chips from Home Depot that I got for free.

Angelica hasn’t put up the color co-ordinated butterflies that Jeremy gave her yet. (Disclaimer: I very quickly and with out too much thought threw these butterflies up on Xandra’s wall before Christmas time – this was actually the “idea” behind Jeremy giving the “wall decorating butterflies” as gifts. In the future, I would probably take a bit more time to place them better, but I was rushing and basically just threw them up therel.)

I think that we need a little back story to go along with this post…..

Angelica and Alexandra were sharing the rec room in the basement as their bedroom when Angelica was diagnosed with Leukemia. After spending the month in the hospital with either her mom or her dad, Angelica was feeling the need to be closer to us. Jon and I and the boys have the rooms on the top floor. Xani had been staying up on the top floor with us while Geli and Jon were in the hospital and so it seemed like the right thing to do, to re-arrange the rooms so that Geli and Xani could be upstairs and close to us.

This was a very good move. Geli was SO sick and needed to be close to us and Xani really needed to be close to us as well. We got a bunk bed and moved the girls into the room that we had been using as the TV/office room. The boys stayed in their room and Jon and I stayed in our room with Judah. 7 people in 3 rooms. Hah! It was awesome.

Angelica has been feeling the need for some space recently and has been feeling independent and strong enough to want her own room. We finally moved her down stairs into one third of the rec room. The TV is in the middle third and Xani is behind some bookshelves in the final third. So, the 2 girls have their own spaces and they are loving it. We have placed a monitor down in the hallway close to the bathroom and the girls rooms and so if they need us in the middle of the night, they just have to call and we can come running.

Wouldn’t you know it that since we’ve moved the girls down there, we’ve not needed it…..until a couple of nights ago and for whatever reason, the receiver up in our room was turned off. Angelica was having a bad night coming off of the steroid and was in so much pain and we couldn’t even hear her to go to her to help her. Finally Xandra woke up and came up to get us. Now we make sure that it’s on before we go to sleep at night.

We’ve moved Jeremy into the room that the girls had been in and now he finally has his own space which is HUGE thing for him right now. In the last while, he was getting quite frustrated sharing a room with his 3 year old brother who is struggling with the whole “respect your siblings property” concept. We are working with him on that one….it’s not exactly a quick learn. Not Fun!

We are still unsettled on what exactly we are going to do with Josiah and his big bedroom; and Judah is not quite ready to move into a room with Josiah and so for now…..Josiah has a HUGE room to himself, while Jon, Judah and I share the master bedroom, and……we’re all okay right now.

Okay….back to Xani’s space/room.

There is a horrible wall paper border down in the rec room (see photos above) AND the walls are painted a really nasty putty color AND….it’s kinda dark and icky down there.

I went to Home Depot the other day because I was dreaming about painting different rooms in our house. I have absolutely no energy or time or ability to be painting rooms (at this point in our lives) and yet the fact that I was even dreaming about what I might like to do in the future…..pretty amazing. I picked up a bunch of paint chips to see how the different colors looked in the different rooms and to see which of the colors we all liked.

I sat down at the table one evening and punched a bunch of butterflies from the paint chips. I put a pop dot on the back of each butterfly and then took them down stairs and stuck them on Xani’s wall. I was just hoping to brighten up the drab-ness of her space a little. After I got the few that I had, punched out and stuck on the wall – I ran upstairs to punch butterflies out of the rest of the paint chips. It is just a hodge-podge of color.

Xani was away when I did this and was thrilled when I came back. One day when we do get the rec room done the way that we would like it to be, I’ll probably punch out a bunch more that are color co-ordinated to a color palette that she chooses, but for now….there’s just a little bit more color in an other wise very un-colorful corner.

Depending on whether or not you had paper at home to use or had to buy some…or if you went and picked up some big paint chips….this is a fairly inexpensive gift and one that is easy to make and do, even for younger kids to help with.

To make this craft idea, you would need:

– Paper (card stock or heavy gauge paper works best)
– Pop dots (or some other raised double sided adhesive)
– Paper Punch (we went with butterflies but I saw a really cute elephant and I also think that different size circles as polka dots would be SO CUTE, too.)

Jeremy and I worked together punching out the butterflies and attaching the pop-dots. We put together sets of 120 small and big butterflies and packaged them as gifts. Jeremy even made origami boxes for them to be given in. I wish I had thought to take a picture. They were so cute and so very much, from Jeremy. He LOVES origami. Anyway, I think there are about 70-ish butterflies in those pictures (above) from Xani’s walls.

In all of my dreaming…..I was dreaming about painting my laundry room a bright cheery yellow color and I would LOVE to put a bunch of white butterflies on the wall to brighten up my teeny, tiny dismal little laundry room. It’s one of those things that I am looking forward to for the future, and knowing that I can just punch them out when I want them, is so much fun!

Do you have any craft ideas for decorating your house or place or work space or even just ideas that you are looking forward to using in the future? I’d love to hear some of our favorite ideas.