Family Home Evening Magnet Board

As it gets close to the new year I start to have the urge to get a bit more organized, don't you?  I've had a few projects in the works.  We needed an easy way to rotate assignments and to keep track of everyone's job for family home evening.  I decided to make a family home evening magnet board. I used a picture frame purchased at a yard sale from my stash and added a fresh coat of paint.  For the inside of the frame I took an ugly metal sign and painted it cream.  Then I printed up the assignments we needed for our family home evenings onto some thin patterned paper.

I mod podged the paper with assignments printed on it to the metal sign.  I made a few glass magnets with family names on them that we will rotate each week. I'm hoping this will help to keep us more organized.

To clean up my closet, I confiscated my husbands tie rack (another yard sale find that wasn't being used).  Dear husband even hung it up for me on my side of the closet- nice guy- and now that is where I keep my necklaces, belts and scarves.  Much better than the jumbled pile of stuff that was there :o)

Favorite Things

I've noticed several blogging buddies sharing a few of their favorite things.  I'd imagine a few of you have a gift certificate to use or a gift exchange to make.  So, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and share a few things that I have enjoyed.

I love my American Eagle Jeans.  Photo from their website.  I bought my first pair at Ross- then went to American Eagle for more (Ross was out).  I have very long legs and their jeans fit great!  My petite, vertically challenged hairstylist raves about how their petite jeans fit, too.  Most complimented jeans I've ever owned... enough said.

I love my apple peeler, slicer, corer because my husband LOVES apple crisp- and this is the tool of choice for easy baking- I use it to make applesauce too.

I like my Avon waterproof eyeliner- I have small, deep set eyes- and often find myself with colorful raccoon eyes by midday. This eyeliner stays put. I do have to reapply it if I'm going somewhere in the evening. I wait for sales to purchase it half off with free shipping.  1/16/12- when I tried wearing this under the lower lash line- it smeared... just fyi

And for the kids- I know I've mentioned it before but this plasma car has been the most popular gift ever.  Admittedly our home is perfectly set up for the indoor use of this little gizmo.  We have "miles" of tile and a full "loop" so the kids can race all around the house.  It is kind of expensive but considering how popular and for how many years this has been used- almost daily- I'd say it's worth the price!

There you go- a few ideas- I hope they help!

Activity Day: Sibling Christmas Party

Activity Day is a church activity for girls ages 8-11. We try to teach them a skill, reinforce keeping God's commandments, provide an opportunity to serve and help them to have fun.  This month's big event was a Christmas party.

To give the girls a chance to serve the girls hosted a Christmas party for their siblings.  Admittedly, I should have had them help more with the planning and given out more assignments.  The girls mostly just helped at the party.

So, what is a sibling party?  We only have a few girls in our group and most of them have siblings around the same age.  We invited all of them to the house for a Christmas party.  Making it "easy" we had "fancy" food- hot dogs, fruit salad, chips and cherry juice mixed with sprite. Then we played some games like pin-the-nose on Rudolph's face and Christmas Bingo.

For crafts we made popsicle stick ornaments (see the snowman photo at the top of the post), folded fancy paper airplanes and test flew them (a huge hit) and decorated cupcakes (always a favorite). While the girls helped host the event and run the activities (with my dear hubby) I pulled out family groups and took a few photos to be used in future craft projects.  Crazy fun!

Hobby Lobby Wrapping Paper= Love

Just thought I'd mention how much I LOVE the wrapping paper at Hobby Lobby.  It is thick, beautiful, and comes in HUGE quantities (seriously, I only purchased two rolls of wrapping paper this year and unless we give each child an elephant we'll have TONS of extra paper).

They print up coordinating sets of cute paper.  So, you don't even have to think.  You just pick out your favorite and one or two of its partners.  They also offer matching tags, ribbons and bows.  They put it on sale half off almost every week in the month before Christmas- it is the best priced paper I've seen- much better than dollar tree because you get SO MUCH paper.

But my very favorite part- there are faint cutting lines on the back of the paper so that your scissors have a path to follow :o)

Dreamy.

Making Easy Filigree Earrings

Ever get in the mood for a new accessory?  I was on Tuesday.  Here is what I came up with.

Directions:

Buy some cute jewelry findings from Hobby Lobby on clearance or print yourself a 40% off coupon.

Attach a jump ring and an earring clasp through one of the loops on the outer edge of the filigree pattern.

Wear

Don't try to take pictures of yourself wearing them- you'll get lots of fuzzy, hairline, blurry, craziness ;o)

Homemade Bread and Milk Chocolate Fudge

But not together.  I spent yesterday making milk chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge.  Then I spent some time wrapping it up for gift giving.  I used small tins from Target and some gift boxes that I had on hand.

Here are the packaging directions that I followed:

• Wrap the fudge in saran wrap- to keep it clean and fresh
• Wrap the fudge in the saran into parchment paper to make it pretty
• Tie that bundle up with cute baker's twine- instead of buying the baker's twine in the candy section go to the crochet yarn and thread section- our craft store carries crochet thread that is identical to the baker's twine but TONS cheaper!
• Make little decorative doodads out of polymer clay and tiny stamps to jazz them up a bit ahead of time and then tie these on-  here is a tutorial that is similar to what I did- I just used stamps instead of nature-
• Add a tiny jingle bell- if you so desire

My husband spent the evening making his delicious bread.  He makes me 100% whole wheat no sugar (just honey) bread- for my healthy eating kick. Then he makes some that is half white flour and half wheat with some sugar in it for himself. Yep, I'm spoiled!  Both kinds of bread are super yummy and with the cold weather we've been having I've been making and enjoying lots and lots of toast.

December Activity Day

For Activity Day (girl's church group ages 8-11) we made these cute snowman treats that I learned about on pinterest (picture from pinterest).  The girls struggled  some because a few of the heads fell apart when they tried to push in the nose- but they had a blast and they turned out pretty cute!

We also made these adorable little baby Jesus ornaments.  I couldn't find any small wreaths at our craft store so I substituted little birds nests that I found in the floral section of Hobby Lobby.  The store was also out of wooden stars so I substituted "metal" star buttons.  Sweet!

Making a Forever/ Infinity Scarf

I didn't used to be much of a scarf person- but I'm changing my ways.  I made a quick forever scarf using this tutorial and my serger.  While I was at it I made two more scarves and feel so "put together" when I wear them.

If you want to avoid seams showing where you attach your pieces of fabric together- you'll need about two yards of fabric- You need that much fabric so that you can wrap the scarf around your neck twice and only have one seam that you place in the center back of your neck- not seams going every which way!  Having this much length has a perk because you will end up with enough fabric left over (from the width) to make at least two extra scarves.  So, find a couple of friends and start sewing :o)

Mini Frames for Home Decor and Ornaments

I took some time to play with these adorable picture frames yesterday.

 They are so cute and can be used as ornaments or just around the house.... fun!

I especially liked the idea of putting pictures of the Savior on the formal tree in the front room.  I found the  pictures in an old 8 inch calendar by Simon Dewey purchased on clearance from Deseret Book.

 My daughter said that in Arizona at the temple visitor's center there is a tree covered with pictures of temples- that would be beautiful as well.  Dear daughter suggested making all of your frames a rustic antiqued cream and using sepia tinted photographs.....

Can't decide what to make for dinner- try Holiday Chicken Salad- yummy- even better with an added bit of mustard.  This is one of my favorite meals to take to families with a new baby or other need.  I just send over a package of croissants from the bakery and a disposable food container filled with the chicken salad and a head of lettuce.  Nothing fancy but it tastes good!  They can grab the meal out of the fridge anytime they want to eat- no prep- and they can throw away the containers when they are done- so, no dishes!