4 Hour Gift Tags

So I was at Target looking for small Valentine's Day gifts for my host teacher and classroom assistant and I found these cute little cookies. They're from a company called Emily's and they're dark chocolate covered fortune cookies with quotes and fortunes relating to friendship inside. They came in a nice little package and were $4 each. Sold.

I figured I would make little gift tags for them using my Cricut machine and call it a day. I already had the students' Valentines ready so that would leave me plenty of time to work on the lesson plans that are due this Thursday. Again, that was the plan. And since most of you reading this are either members of my family or have worked with me in an academic setting, you get that my plans don't always work out.
I don't know if anyone reading has ever owned a Cricut, but I will tell you that it is not always a cooperative machine. I have this theory that it was created by three, 55 year old women with limited knowledge of computers. I mean, that's really the only explanation. However, it (usually) does what it is supposed to and it does it pretty well. That is, if you take care of it properly and remember to replace the cutting mat every century or so. Honestly, you're supposed to replace the cutting mat every 3-4 months depending on how often you use the machine. I've had mine for well over 6 months and I've abused it. It's silly, really, considering a new one costs $3. But I just have to be a rebel. Needless to say, my paper would not stick to the cutting mat and the machine jammed about six times. Six. Take this image, then super-impose me banging my head against my textbook.

So what did I do? First, I ordered 4 new cutting mats off of amazon. They'll be here on Thursday. Then, I glue-sticked my paper down. Like a professional. I figured it was worth a shot, and it actually worked fairly well.
THEN I completely forgot that the Cricut does not just print out lettering ready to go. The middles of the O's and the A's and the D's and the B's had to be manually pasted once I pried them off of the cutting mat I had just glued them too. It was a lot of fun, and caused me to miss witnessing Cee-lo petting that mysterious white cat on The Voice.

Finally, at 9:30pm, 4 hours after beginning my gift tags, they were complete. And incredibly underwhelming. But they're finished and ready to give to my teachers tomorrow, so that's really all that matters.

I'm going to try not to DIY anything for the rest of the week. I have a long weekend coming up that should be filled with work, work, and more beautiful work. And possibly planning a new, ridiculous class project that my co-op will cringe at.