It's Time To Rock the Block With Close To My Heart

Hello and welcome to a special CTMH blog hop, where we are gonna "Rock the Block"!  If you're just starting out, or if you're arriving here from Georgia Hauglid's blog, you are in the right place.  When you're done here, you'll move along to Sheila Bennet's blog.

So, why the special blog hop?  To celebrate Close To My Heart's new Rock the Block promotion!  For a limited time, when you place a minimum order of $25 from the Autumn/Winter 2011 Idea Book, you can get two new products for just $15: the My Creations® Collage Cubes (a Spring/Summer 2012 sneak-peek product!) and the exclusive My Acrylix® Rock the Block E-size stamp set. That’s a retail savings of almost $30! You're going to love the Collage Cubes and the Rock the Block stamp set, which work together for interactive, 3-D fun.  And now you have 33 consultants sharing great projects made with these special products, so you'll have plenty of ideas when you get yours in hand!

We spent this weekend traveling to visit my family for early Christmas.  Plus we had an extra trip in there for a Master's Degree graduation. (Trust me, this IS relative, I promise.)  This amount of travel with three kids is NOT fun for me.  So I decided to use these products to make some travel games.  I still have to come up with more, but these two helped keep my kids busy for at least an hour, which was a great help.

First up, an old standby: Tic-Tac-Toe

I used Holiday Red and Sky for this game, using papers from the Believe paper pack and some cardstock.  I cut my Xs and Os using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, and I sponged the edges of everything with coordinating ink.

I used one of the background stamps in the stamp set to add a design in Holiday Red to the pattern paper in Sky with white dots & stars.

For my second game, I got all educational and made a Magic Square Game.  This is a math game in which the numbers need to add up to 15 in ALL directions, including diagonally.  For younger kids, they can skip the diagonal portion or they will get too frustrated.

For this game, I used Sky and Sweet Leaf/Ponderosa Pine, again using paper from the Believe paper pack and cardstock.  I again used one of the background stamps in the set, to make the Sky on Sky dot pattern.  And I used the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge to cut the numbers 1-9, even numbers from the Sky pattern paper and odd numbers from the Ponderosa Pine cardstock.

Next up, I plan on adding games for longer trips.  There will be one where they try to find signs matching all of the shapes I include on the blocks, and another to find certain colors of cars.  I even had a request for a picture puzzle from one of the kids.  These are all games that don't take long on their own (depending on where we are driving), but will break up the monotony of car trips for all of us.  The great tray that the blocks come in is awesome for keeping this all together on a lap, and we just stuck the entire thing in a big ziploc bag when no one was playing.

I hope you enjoyed your stop here.  I'd love to hear your comments on my games, and any ideas you might have for more, lol.  And feel free to become a follower or subscriber while you're here, and maybe even become a Facebook fan!  When you're ready to shop, you can visit my website 24/7, or contact me for personal assistance.

When you're ready, let's hop on over to Sheila's blog and see what great idea she has for us this time!