Our friend Jaxon had an assignment in his class where he asked friends and family to send postcards and notes claiming they met the Gingerbread Man on their road trips and travels. I leveled up on our adventures and had a TON of fun in Photoshop adding the Gingerbread Man to some photos and sending fun messages to Jaxon’s kindergarten class.
I had the pleasure of creating stickers to commemorate the two Hike it Baby 30 Challenges for 2019. In previous years, they used to have four challenges every year, but decided to cut it down to just two in April and September. You can see the stickers I created for 2018 here.
For 2019, we stuck with a similar watercolor and ink style and I made the April sticker quintessential to spring with blooming crocus, green grass, patches of melting snow, and the sky streaked for a sunrise.
In an effort to get more folks out on trail with their kids, they created a secondary challenge called Take it Outside. Participants received a sticker that loosely coordinated with the HiB30 sticker along with two sheets of little stickers to use on a calendar page that they printed out. Each day on the calendar page gave ideas for a daily activity designed to motivate people to get outside every day. I love how these turned out and it was awesome to see folks using the calendar page and stickers throughout the challenge.
Here’s the calendar page that I created for participants to download and print:
They received this sticker sheet in the mail shortly after signing up:
You can see a mini version of the Take it Outside sticker too!
When the September challenge rolled around, I created a new sticker and we added a few more hikers to the artwork, wanting to give more of a community feel. The Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina were the inspiration for this sticker.
To go with the September sticker, they did another Take it Outside challenge for new members too, this was the coordinating sticker.
My friend Jen has a kindergartener and his teacher was working on a project with the class; teaching them a bit about geography. The teacher sent out a paper to parents asking them to ask friends and family who don’t live in their town to send messages claiming they sighted the Gingerbread Man in their city or sometime during their travels. If they could include a photo, then fantastic. She even went on to say that email messages are fine, and even fictional messages are okay so long as they help the kids learn about different places on the map. They were mapping each sighting on a big map in the classroom.
I kicked it up a notch and had WAY too much fun in Photoshop. Here are the messages I sent:
“Hi Mrs. B's Class!
We are the Wong Family: Alex, Bill, Tommy and Matthew. We're friends of Jaxon's. We were exploring Arches National Park in Moab, Utah earlier this year and you wouldn't believe who we ran into: The Gingerbread Man! He must have been on vacation, exploring the desert. He was so nice by sharing some gumdrops with us and we shared granola bars with him on the trail. He totally photobombed us too! What a stinker!
Love, Tommy and Matthew Wong (ages 10 and 5)”
“Hi Mrs. B's Class,
It's Tommy and Matthew again, say hi to Jaxon for us, we miss him! We were on a road trip with our parents and we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah to see if we could watch some race cars break land speed records. Lo and behold, we saw The Gingerbread Man too! He was scoping out some rocket cars and enjoying the weather. Thankfully it wasn't too hot, but wow, it gets bright when the sun reflects off of the salt! Sunglasses are a must! Wonder where he was headed next?
Best, Tommy and Matthew Wong”
“Hello, Mrs. B's Class,
Tommy and Matthew saying hi and sharing yet another Gingerbread Man sighting. He must have had the same road trip plans as us this year. We ran into him in the north shore of Lake Tahoe, California and he joined us for a swim in the crystal-clear water. We bid farewell when we got wrinkly fingers and advised him to do the same. Since he's made of gingerbread, we didn't want him to get soggy!
I hope he had a great time on the rest of his road trip!
Adios, Tommy and Matthew”
“Hello Mrs B's Class,
It's the Wong Family again, Tommy and Matthew. We were hiking with some friends in Big Cottonwood Canyon in the snowy Wasatch Mountains of Utah this week and we ran into our old friend, The Gingerbread Man. He said he was hoping to get in some skiing before another snow storm came through, and we hope he found some slopes, because it's supposed to snow again tonight!
We hope you're staying warm this winter.
Cheers, Tommy and Matthew Wong”
A big part of me hopes my youngest son’s kindergarten class does a similar activity… so I could make more photos. Hahaha!
I started doing design work for Hike it Baby a little more than a year ago, and it’s been SO much fun to create whatever I can for them.
Every year they host hiking challenges that encourage families to get outside with their kids. Up until 2018, they had quarterly challenges in January, April, September, and November, and the goal is to hike 30 miles in 30 days or spend 30 minutes outside three times each week. Participants can log their miles or time on the Hike it Baby website, they’re entered into drawings to win awesome prizes from sponsors, and they get to join in a Facebook group solely for participants of each challenge where we share photos from our hikes and encourage each other to keep getting outside. We get to see some pretty epic photos from hikes in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Oregon coast, the mountains in Alaska, and even some great hikes in Japan. It’s an inspiring group to be a part of for those 30 days.
Everyone who registers for a Hike it Baby 30 challenge also gets a sticker to commemorate. In the past stickers have always been a solid color with a fun little graphic. The color and design is different each challenge and participants love to collect them. I had the privilege of designing two of them from 2017; the brown sticker with the foxes and the navy blue sticker with the buck and fawn.
For 2018, the folks at Hike it Baby decided to up the ante on the Hike it Baby 30 stickers and they asked me to do a landscape watercolor painting for the four challenges; each representing the season and a different landscape in the Hike it Baby world.
I was so pleased with how these turned out in sticker form.
January Challenge - still one of my favorites!
April Challenge
September Challenge
November Challenge
Three of these designs made for great t-shirt designs too.
More than a few people have joked that we can’t possibly go back to the older style anymore, so we’re brainstorming ideas for 2019. We shall see how it turns out!
When my family first moved from southern California to Utah, our son had just turned two and we were excited and a little apprehensive about moving to a place with a real winter... you know, the kind where it snows and the temperature might go below 50°!
I wanted our holiday card that year to reflect our new home and I thought of the card I sent in 2008. We didn't have an opportunity to take any family photos, so I created a watercolor painting of the three of us and printed them on watercolor paper on my trusty HP printer.
Notice I have no holiday cards for 2009 and 2010. I was a brand new mom on maternity leave in the winter of 2009. It took me almost six months to even main his birth announcements! And 2010? It wasn’t happening.
For the back, I just happened to take a lovely photo of our son admiring an ornament on my grandmother's Christmas tree a few weeks before Christmas. It worked!
I totally scrounged together whatever pieces of scrap card stock I had to print these too. Some had purple card stock, some had navy blue, some had a lighter blue. And I just changed the color of the text on the back to fit with the card stock. I even used leftover envelopes I had from a previous project.
It was created last minute and in a bit of a rush, but it's still one of my favorite holiday cards that we've mailed.
