Jellie Beanie

Please forgive me if I've let you down by skipping a day or two of writing but I've been a bit busy and haven't had a lot of blogging time these last few days.

Tis the season for being extra busy we all know, but my niece Irene, who will be 30 in just a week, was not surprised yesterday by her "surprise" birthday party. She said she calculated when it would be. My sister Linda has a family Christmas party a week before Christmas so she knew it wouldn't be then. It hadn't happened yet, and there's no way her 30th birthday wouldn't be considered the event of the decade for those who love her. So yesterday she "kinda" knew.

But I had to make a favor for her party, it's my thing, you know, especially for my family.

Jellie Beanie is Irene. As a baby we would sing "Reenie, Reenie, jellie beanie". You know silly things you do and say, sing or act out for a baby and sometimes they just last. Reenie, Reenie jellie beanie lasted for a long time and even her nickname "Reenie", but she grew up and now she's Irene. Irene's younger cousins have all heard the jellie beanie name and called her that, all but Jessie. Jessie is my brother Bob's daughter and 7 years younger than Irene. Jess could not say Irene or Reenie. Called her DiRene. For years. We would say Jess, say "I" and she would. Then we'd say, say "reen" and again she would, but as soon as we said, now say "Irene" she would look up, say DiRene, and her face showed her bewilderment as to what these silly questions about Irene's name was all about.

So anyway, I needed jelly beans and then what to put them in?

I was thinking and at the time saw that I had a little brown paper bag sitting on my printer. I bought batteries for my camera and am just in the habit of saving the paper bags that still look like you can fold them up and they look like new. I also save the big brown paper sacks (so hard to come by these days) because they drain the oil off french fries better than anything you've ever used and makes them taste better! Try it!

So anyway I see the little brown bag and folded up it looks like an envelope so I decide to run it through my printer and see if it is something I could print on. It was. I headed off to Michaels craft store and bought small white paper sacks and also little plastic candy bags for the jelly beans. I printed the same design on both sides of the bag just in case the two-sided printing caused any problems, this way I could at least have the printing on one side.

I again used a picture of Irene and with a print shop program used color saturation to make it look like a cartoon or drawing and matched it to a picture I found on line and just cropped Irene's head into the picture. I loved the way it came out and this is easy, you don't have to even get fancy. Just put names on the bags and I bet kids would love opening up their personalized brown bag lunches. Or even as a gift wrap for those tiny gifts you put in a tiny box, this is a little unique.

By the way, the brown bags come out really cool when you print on them, has an old fashioned look.

Here's Reenie, Reenie, jellie beanie's party favor.