Letter Exchange with Four Crazy Kings, Part 1

Once again I prove to myself that I am the WORST PEN PAL EVER! I was so so so so so late in getting our letter exchange with Kim from Four Crazy King's daughters out. I have no excuse! I actually finished awhile ago, but somehow getting thing boxed up, addressed, and all ready to go never happened. But finally it's out the door, and Brad even splurged for priority mail to hurry it on it's way a little faster! It arrived over the weekend so now I can share what was in the package.

We sent along a little note that ER illustrated with a marker drawing and scalloped punched tags from old greeting cards. I enclosed a postcard with pictures from our home town on it for Lu and Em to see. We also sent along a few extra goodies, like these two booklets I made.
The first book is a little "story" about all three girls and the second is for coloring.

Here are the pages and the story: This is a story about three little girls. L, E, and ER. L and E are sisters living in New Jersey and ER lives in Michigan. They live 591 miles apart but still have lots of similarities.

L's favorite color is red. E's favorite color is purple. ER's favorite color is pink. But they are all colors in the rainbow. (Yes I realize pink isn't technically part of the the whole Roy G Biv thing but pointing that out didn't fit in the with the flow of my story☺)

L's favorite thing to eat is ice cream. E's favorite thing to eat is smoothies. ER's favorite thing to eat is ice cream. And they are all things good to eat in the summer! (Typo alert, L's favorite thing to eat is clearly a popsicle. Whoops, note to self do not create booklets at 2 in the morning anymore.)

L's favorite thing to do is camping. E's favorite thing to do is looking at books. ER's favorite thing to do is painting. And they are all things it would be fun to play together, if only we didn't live so far apart.

You have two little girls in your family and...I only have one. But we are all loved a lot...by our Mommy and Daddy!

For the back page I wrote a little message from ER to the girls. My point behind the book was to show that even though they live states apart, little girls everywhere have similarities and things in common. I don't know if I quite accomplished that.

I'm not a 100% happy with the way it turned out, as you can tell my binding machine had some issues, which is why it's not all one piece. Originally I wanted it to be a flap book with the last part of each section under a flap but I couldn't figure out a way to make it work and withstand busy hands handling it. So this is infinitely less interactive and cool, but since it was already way late going out, this is the format I settled with.

I found the graphics I used for the State comparison pages at Kid Zone. What I really liked is that you can save each coloring page onto your hard drive and then manipulate it as you need for your own printing purposes.

I created this when I first got Photoshop Elements and was stilll learning how to manipulate things in the program. I wish it had a more polished look, with all the pages being the same size, but this was the best I could do at the time. I glued them onto cardstock so they wouldn't be so flimsy and binded them together. New Jersey and Michigan State OutlinesNew Jersey and Michigan Flags and State Facts New Jersey and Michigan State Flowers New Jersey and Michigan State Birds The last page in the State Comparison Coloring Book, was a pretty color page featuring both the state bird and flowers.

We included a blank book with bound cardstock pages for the girls to make their own book too.

The other little fun thing we sent were these crafting kits for both girls filled with pom poms, Hello Kitty stickers, travel playdoh, princess foam stickers, pipe cleaners, and punched shapes. The cute graphic frame on the craft and collage kits is by Vicki at A Work in Progress from her kit Flutterby Flowers. It was a freebie I found but I'm not sure if the link is working anymore.

Believe it or not, the little plastic containers are from two sets of big girl underwear that Grandma Norma bought ER. Yeah, I am THAT cheap, but hey there were the right size, snapped close, and I think the label cuttened them up a bit, right? Kim also posted about the letter exchange, be sure to stop by her post too☺