Office At Work : kids crafts

Keep the kids busy with Easter craft ideas

StephB — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:37:39 GMT

The school holidays are upon us again, so here’s a couple of Easter projects to keep the kids occupied, without breaking the bank. It’s easy to find Easter craft themes and you can get hold of craft supplies such as coloured feathers, pom-poms and googly eyes easily and cheaply at local stationary suppliers. Time to get out that glitter and glue again!

Make an Easter basket

Turn an old ice-cream or yoghurt tub into an Easter basket. Cover with wrapping or craft paper and make a handle with ribbon or old fabric. To decorate, the kids can print out and colour in Easter clip art, and stick on sequins, feathers and coloured paper shapes. Line with shredded paper or coloured tissue and voila, a magnificent Easter basket ready to fill with Easter goodies. Use for an Easter egg hunt or fill with home-made biscuits or treats for a thoughtful present for relations.

Soup up Easter lunch

Make Easter lunch extra egg-citing (sorry) for the kids with a special Easter menu and place cards for each visitor. Stick the place cards to thin card for extra strength. If they’re feeling more adventurous start with one of the basic place card templates and enhance with Easter clip art, pens, craft feathers and lots of imagination.

Let me know if you have any more!

Spring comes to Office Online

StephB — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:07:56 GMT

Well it’s four days into March and I’m very happy to see the first of the spring flowers out in the garden and a hint of milder weather to come! We’re celebrating spring-time on Office Online with a bonanza of free resources for you to use and enjoy.

Planning a wedding?

Visit the Templates section for some really useful planning resources, including invitation templates and budget planners. There are lots of other templates you might want to use for your wedding from photo albums to place cards to gift trackers.
Set up an Office Live Workspace for your wedding planning, so you can share ideas and keep plans in sync with your fiance, relatives or bridesmaids. You can keep some folders private so you can keep share dress ideas with your girlfriends but keep them hidden from the groom, or keep those embarrassing baby pictures for the best man’s speech a surprise! After the wedding use your Workspace to share pictures and track your thank you notes.
Browse templates categories and wedding clip art for more DIY wedding ideas!

Make a Mothers Day surprise

Kids love making home-made Mothers Day cards – it’s a guaranteed hug and smile from Mum! Starting with a template from Office Online makes it easy to get results they (and you) will be really proud of :). See if Mum deserves a Mothers Day certificate for something a bit different!
Browse the Office Online clip art collections to illustrate their Mothers Day creations. Try flowers, Spring or hearts for starters.

Share your Spring creations

If you’re getting creative with Office and come up with any Spring gems don’t forget to upload and share your templates so other Office Online visitors can benefit from your skills :).

Making thank-you cards easy

GillLeFevre — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:13:25 GMT

Embarrassing confession: for whatever reason, I always struggle with thank-you cards. My excuse is that the effort involved in getting Christmas cards out to family and friends around the world leaves me so exhausted that I can't even think about thank-you cards until February, by which time they're out of date and not worth doing.

This year, I've put Office Online on the case and as you'd expect, it's looking a lot easier!

First of all, there's a thank-you card template. There were hundreds of templates that came back when I searched for "thank you card" but this was the only one that had the quarter-fold approach that I was after. (Although I've just discovered there is also a similar photo greeting card available which is also quite handy.)

Yes, the template is a bit dated (and it certainly demonstrates how much Microsoft Office has improved the graphics in recent versions) but it's going to be fine as a starting point. I'm going to edit it so that the cover has a different graphic (probably a family Christmas photo) and being really efficient (ok, I mean really lazy!), I'll also look to use mail merge to customise the text for each recipient.

Then all I need to do is sign the cards and send them -- and even I can get that done before Blue Monday.