A hug, A kiss and good luck!

So tonight my nephew graduated! I could not be more proud of him. I always told myself that no matter what I would try to treat the first 4 the same. Last year I made this really cool lei for his older brother, so this year I decided to do the same one for Cam since it was a huge hit! More pics to come later on the graduation. Today, I thought I would do a tutorial for this lei so those who would like to make one can. Here we go....

Here is what you need to make it: 100 crisp $1. If they are crisp they will keep their shape. I just called my bank and the got me some brand new $1. Hersey kisses and hugs. I bought a mixed bag and it seems 90% of it was kisses, but it was cheaper than buying 2 separate bags.

Plastic wrap. His school colors are purple and silver, luckily I already had purple plastic wrap. Ribbon and scissors.

The first thing you are going to do is take 10 of your dollars, pinch them in the center, take a piece of ribbon and tie them in a knot in the middle. Put them aside. This is going allow you to gill in the gaps later. (give or take a few)

Next you are going to take a long string of ribbon (about 6 feet, give or take) and start at one end. Make sure you leave enough room at the end to tie the ends together. Pinch your dollar and tie a knot around it. 

Grab another dollar, pinch it and tie a knot around that one, trying to keep the knots as close as possible (see pic below). If the knots are not that close, don't worry too much about it. That is why you have the 10 tied individually (give or take). 

Continue pinch and tying until you run out of ribbon. (make sure to leave a little room on the end to tie together!)

As you can see I didn't get the knot close enough so when I held it up, there was this gap. 

I took one of the individual dollar bills and tied it in to the gap (You can do this as you go or at the end of doing your lei.)

See, you cant even tell there was a gap!

I ran out of ribbon so I cut another long one (I ended up doing 3 that were approx. 6 feet long) and started a new line. When I ran out of money, I connected the three strands of tied up money. Don't worry about having it perfect because no one can see the knots. I then held up my lei to find the gaps and fill them in with my remaining individually tied dollars.
 

Here is what it should look like once you have connected it all...

I think took my plastic wrap and cut them in to square (the size had no rhyme or reason) I then filled them with 3-4 hugs and kisses intermixed. 

I twisted the plastic wrap and tied it with ribbon. 

I then tied my hugs in to the lei. I think I did 10 of them randomly placed. 

To wrap up the lei I curled the ends of the ribbons to add texture but to hide my imperfect knots. 

Here is what is looks like at the end.

 

Here is Cam, just so you can see the length on this. 

 Now you dont have to use $100. This is just what I set for my nephews. You can cram more hugs and kisses in there and less money and still make it look good. I would not recommend using less than $50.
You also can use whatever colors you would like. Purple and silver happened to be his school colors so I stuck with those colors but feel free to add more ribbon and colors if you would like.
I am not a proffesional when it comes to these. This was self taught. There may be an easier way to do this than to individually tie each dollar in but I could just see someone cutting the string or it getting snagged and the money going everywhere. It was work to tie them individually but I would rather have that than take a chance of it breaking and losing all that money. (The first time I made this was by trial and error. It took me over two hours. This time it took me about an hour and a half, with stopping to take pictures and such, so take your time.)

I hope this all made sense and some of you are encouraged to try this. It was fun and both years it drew alot of attention. Leave comments, let me know how it works for you!

Good luck and dont get lei'd!

Silverware

As I walked down the red carpeted isle to accept my diploma, I thought "I'm FREE!!!!". Never once did I think of all of the presents that I would get. Most of my relatives sent money for a college fund. It was already late (10:00) and I never thought of going home to hang out with my family, I only thought of the last night with all of my high school friends, and the overnight curfew that I knew my mom would never let happen again. Oh the memories. My parents gave me a graduation preset of silverware. really???? Like most LDS families, especially mine, my mom expected me to follow in the footsteps of my siblings and marry young. I think that is why I got silverware. I had no intentions of moving out during college and I was only thinking marriage because it was what I thought I had to do, so why silverware?
The Christmas after I graduated, 6 months later, I received glasses, and pans, and everything that a young girl dreams of getting as a wedding gift. Sigh.
I eventually did move out, but not being a newlywed. I was a single girl who after about a year being out of high school realized I didn't want to marry young although the pressure to marry young was always there. I moved in with my brother, then out, then in with a roommate, then out, then in with another roommate and out... you get the idea. Every single person I lived with was established so I packed around all of these dishes that I only opened once to look at. Eventually I met Bryce and moved in with him. He too was established so once again I put all of my dishes in storage. One day we decided it was time to have the house to our selves. No family living with us. I sent all of the dishes and such with Bryce's mom. She was moving in to her own place and I had some things already and the rest I wanted to match perfectly to our kitchen (this is the OCD side of me) I pulled out all of my dishes, washed them and put them where the belong. For once, I finally got to use my dishes 8 years after I graduated and received them. Everything still perfect as I had received them.
The last 3 weeks, I noticed that the silverware is becoming slim to none. I have no clue why but we are running out of forks. It is annoying and we barely have enough when we have people over for dinner. I decided it was time to search out for a new set. I had no idea they were that expensive! I went to many store to find a simple set that I liked. I either hate the design, or the length, and I refused to pay tons of money for plain Jane. I finally found a set that was on clearance, it was a set of 4. There was 2 boxes left but a set of 8 wasn't enough for us. so I bought it hoping I would find another set at another location. I searched, no luck. In the process our vacuum broke so I head to bed bath and beyond to search for a new one. We ended up not finding a vacuum there but while I was there, I headed over to the silverware since plan A didn't work, hoping to find a cheap brand that was simple but not plain. My current set was a Cambridge. When I got back there everything was so expensive! I wanted to choke. as I turn to leave, in the corner was a box of Cambridge sitting in the corner. As I looked at it, it looked so familiar. I took a picture and went on my way. Since I didn't buy a vacuum I had a 20% coupon sitting in my purse. When I got home I grab the picture and started comparing to what I already had and they matched perfectly! Who would have thought 11 years after I graduated and received silverware as a gift that I would go try to find a new set and find one matching my existing set? To make things better, I used my coupon and only paid $5 more than the set I was going to 'settle' for.