Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Suggestions for a Food Storage Presentation

Anyone out there have great ideas for a 30 min. presentation on food storage???  - I'll be giving a thirty minute class that repeats three times- estimated total of 140 women???  ANY ideas to make it fun, guilt free, fear free, but still motivating, etc.?  There is a gigantic diversity in the economic situations of the class members...   help...

Royal Princess Activity Day

The following ideas are a conglomeration of ideas from Sugardoodle and Family Fun.

I am delighted with how this weeks activity went.  We have a very small group- only four kids and here is what we did:

For this activity with my favorite group of 8-11 yr. old girls we had a princess  birthday party.  I found princess party invitations at Dollar Tree.  On the blank where it said birthday girl- I put "you".  When the girls came we had pink birthday cupcakes using this recipe, a plain white cake mix with white chocolate pudding, a layer of strawberry and a layer of butter cream frosting (you can't have too much frosting!).  Delish!

We played princess party games.  Instead of pin the tale on the donkey we played "smack a kiss on the frog"  and the blindfolded girls tried to get their paper lips onto the frog's.  We also hid a fake diamond and the girls tried to find it playing hot and cold.  For our third game we filled a glass pie plate with candy conversation hearts and gave each girl a pair of chopsticks.  We gave them one minute to pick up as many hearts as they could (no cheating by scooping)!

I had found some cute notebooks at WalMart on clearance for only $1.50 a piece.  I copied a group of quotes about the princess within and being a daughter of God, printed them on cardstock, mounted them on adorable scrapbook paper and placed them randomly in the notebook.  I also made a daily prayer and another daily scripture study chart to add to their books.  Here is the file of everything I used- although it didn't load the correct fonts, etc.  We took a few minutes to go over the quotes and discuss how they made us feel. 

We also watched this video about sometimes feeling like an ugly duckling.  Each notebook was placed in a gift bag- (their birthday present)- oh, and the crowns are from dollar tree in packs of 25-  with a box of conversation hearts and a bright colored pencil. 

To finish the activity we opened our gifts and then each girl wrote one thing that they liked or admired about each girl in that girl's book- so that she'll always have a reminder of some of the special things about herself.  It was one of those days when everything just fell into place and everything felt "right"- I'm so grateful!

Random and Real

Here is the keeping-it- real photo of all the Valentine projects that didn't turn out right or that I didn't get finished- and there isn't much hope of getting to them....

And for the random:

Did you know that having an eleven year old that bakes awesome brownies and chocolate chip cookies is lethal to your waistline?! 

And our local radio station writes the names of both teams playing in the super bowl on an egg and then places the eggs in the microwave-and zaps them- the first egg that cracks is predicted to be the losing team- and they have been right for the last TEN years?  Weird.

Small Framed Silk Ribbon Embroidery

I haven't done much silk ribbon embroidery in a long time.  I've been feeling the urge to pull out all the stuff and enjoy it again.  I decided to do a little Valentine floral and was trying to decide how to finish it off when I found these little frames in the dollar section at Michaels.

I spray painted it the color I wanted and here it is!

I tried out a hot pink Frixion gel pen (made by pilot) (via Bari J.)  to draw a pattern directly onto the fabric.  Jet pens.com has a better selection and better prices- you can use friction or an iron to make the marks vanish.  When I was done stitching I just ironed my fabric and the bright pink ink magically disappears- very nice for all sorts of fabric crafts.

Victorian Rose Label

While I was busy making subway art packaging I decided to use some of my Victorian looking scrapbook paper to make a few more envelopes to slip small gifts into.  I also made rose stickers by printing images onto avery package labels and cutting them out with a 1" circle punch.  I chalked around the edges of the stickers as well.  I finished off by tying bits of crochet lace around each envelope and used the vintage rose label below to address the package that I put everything in- (I printed the labels out on avery package labels paper, too). 

There is a copy of this free victorian rose printable on the sidebar under the freebie section or you can link to it here.

Great Blog

New-to- me blog:  Twig and Thistle, (via craft),  Tons of great printables and craft ideas- check out their "older entries" to see all the goodies- like these adorable printed brownie bags- genius (picture from their site)!