DIY Stocking Hanger

I made this Christmas stocking hanger for our family last Christmas as our mantle was looking a bit overcrowded!!  I used wood for my back board, but mdf would be fine to use, and cheaper too.  My wood measures approximately 81cm x 22cm, with a thickness of 2cm.  I sanded it all down just to get rid of some rough patches and make it nice and smooth, and then applied 3 coats of my chosen colour.  Then using a Sharpie paint pen I wrote all the wording on which was easy peasy as I used the same technique as my 'Silent Night Christmas board'

As I was shaking my Sharpie paint pen to get more paint on the nib, I ended up having some lovely white 'snow' fall onto my board, so then I had to adapt what I'd planned and do the same all over, which was rather fun!  Luckily this crafting mistake didn't end up in tears but I think it actually gave it that finishing touch.

Once the writing was all dry, I attached two sawtooth hangers to the back a few inches from either end, and then screwed in the hooks evenly onto the front of the board....Ho Ho Ho our stocking hanger was finally complete!!

A Very Happy and Belated Merry Christmas to you all,

Love

Young Women's Camp Cup Song

I loved the cup song from the first time I heard it...and years on, it's still one of my favourites.  I've never quite mastered how to do it mind you, I normally end up slapping myself and banging the cup all over the place, lol!!!  But it's on my bucket list so one day I WILL master how to do the cup 'routine'.

I wrote these words to the tune for our Young Women's (YW) camp and the girls really enjoyed singing it and quite a lot of the younger YW had never done it before.  

Even when we had 'down time' the YW enjoyed getting the cups out and singing different songs, practicing and teaching each other.

Here's the video that I made showing our YW doing the 'YW Camp Cup Song'...unfortunately the audio isn't too clear to make out what they are singing, but it was fun putting it together...and one day I will do a video of a couple of the YW singing it, hopefully some time soon?!



And I thought you might like the words to the song too...I know, I'm too kind, lol??!?

Enjoy singing your heart out while tapping n slapping those cups.

Nautical Boodle Headbands

Another post about what we got up to at Young Women's (YW) Camp.  We found lots of great headbands on Pinterest, but to make the ones we liked, we needed to use 2 t-shirts and cut them up into strips.....errrr too much to ask the girls to bring 2 shirts to camp to cut up; too expensive for us to buy them new and would take far too long for all the girls to cut up!!

Bing!!! Inspiration came....use boodles!!  Boodles is t-shirt material but in a nice long, thin thread, so perfect and soooo much quicker and easier for all our girls to make their headbands, yay, result!! 

Boodles are available from Hobbycraft (UK)

We put all the different colours out and let the girls choose their own combination, some went for just 2 but some chose 4 colours (3 strands of each).

They cut their 12 chosen threads to 40", don't worry about them being exact as they get trimmed later....and yes it's quite long but everybody's head size is different, so better to go bigger than smaller when doing a project like this.

We then followed the instructions off the video link below....I had watched this video several times before camp but I found by the time I got there and with all the rushing round etc I'd forgotten exactly how to do it, lol, so I'm glad we had wi-fi available so I could watch it with the girls the first time and have this lovely lady talk us through it....




I practiced the nautical knot using just 2 strands and ended up making a ring, lol...you could easily use 4 lengths of boodle and make a nautical bracelet too :)

And if you've got any left, in my house the boys like to tie it round their heads as it instantly makes them into ninjas (?!!?!), and my girls love plaiting them and making bracelets.  Lots of people crochet with boodles and make some beautiful things.  

Have fun creating and making with boodles.

Pearls of Wisdom Poem & Bracelet

For Young Women's (YW) camp this year we went with a nautical theme, to go with this years Mutual theme.  So of course, we tried to find everything that was 'sea worthy' for our YW camp 'cruise'.

We found these cute pearl bracelets and tutorial on 'thecraftyblogstalker' so we bought hemp twine and a load of pearls, with the idea that the girls would share 'pearls of wisdom' each night to everyone or to a particular YW (it was really lovely and quite entertaining too).  With each 'pearl of wisdom' shared they would get a 'pearl of wisdom' for their bracelet.

We bought the 1mm hemp twine thinking that would be small enough to fit through the holes and a selection of different sized pearls.  We ended up having to buy 0.5mm twine, and we found only the 8mm and 10mm pearl beads fitted comfortably on the twine (I wriggled a metal skewer in the holes if they were a bit blocked) for our bracelets.

We gave each girl four strands of twine already knotted (as described in the blog tutorial link) at the beginning of camp, but in the end the girls made all different sorts of bracelets....unfortunately this is the only one I got a photo of.

And here's the poem I wrote to help the girls catch the vision of what we'd like them share....the idea came to me during the midnight hours, or as we like to call it in our Presidency 'creative hour' lol!?!

(poem can only be used for personal use)

Enjoy hearing and sharing those pearls of wisdom.

'Kinder' pillow treat

I don't know how many times I've bought the 'Kinder' eggs, chocolate etc before, and it was only the other week that I noticed (while I was trawling the sweetie aisle to get some inspiration for YW camp) that it actually says kinder!!!  Doh!  How have I missed that all these years!??!

So I then rushed home with my chocolate stash determined to find a quote from General Conference that used the word kinder, and instantly loved (and remembered) this quote from Gordon B. Hinckley.

I then used glu dots to stick the chocolate to the card so that the Young Women could keep the handout after camp (hopefully some of them did??), and then popped them into a sealable cellophane bag.  Job done....and now the agonizing wait to give them to the girls!!  

The girls loved them, and were the same as me about not noticing that it actually said 'kinder', glad I wasn't the only one, lol!?!

Just right click on image above 

& 'save as' to your computer

(for personal use only)

Now that our camp is over, there will be more Young Women's camp ideas coming your way soon....seriously can't wait for next year, I love our girls!!

20+ Ideas for memorizing the Articles of Faith

Memorizing the 13 Articles of Faith can seem like a mammoth task to anybody - old or young...I personally still get a bit muddled up trying to quote #10!!

So a while ago I printed up the Articles of Faith on A4 card for my kids and laminated them (of course!), they are now regularly used around the home - in bedrooms/kitchen/before family scripture study/FHE to help and remind us of them.

Recently I made some smaller cards which have the first letter of each word each of the Articles of Faith, this is great to help the older children, and super for popping in your Sunday bag to help keep them entertained during sacrament.

Thought I'd look online and find some other great ideas to help my children (and me) become better at learning and memorizing them...lots of links & pictures are below. 

 Articles of Faith Memory Quest -- lds.org

Articles of Faith flashcards -- All Things Bright and Beautiful

1st Article of Faith -- LDS scripture study for kids

8th Article of Faith -- LDS Games

6th Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Articles of Faith cards -- Latter-day chatter

Article of Faith posters -- A year of FHE

Cross Connections: 10th Article of Faith -- lds.org 

13th Article of Faith fill in blanks -- LDS Games

4th Article of Faith maze -- lds.org

4th Article of Faith -- lds.org

1st Article of Faith -- LDS Games

Articles of Faith bookmark and other activities -- 3 dinosaurs

2nd Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Activity Book:Article of Faith -- LDS Greats

Articles of Faith keys -- Finch Family Games

11th Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Teaching the Articles of Faith -- The Giggly Girls Guide

(LOADS of great ideas to help learn AoF in the link above)

Articles of Faith Jeopardy -- Shannon Makes Stuff

4th Article of Faith poster -- lds.org

Articles of Faith Punch Card -- about.com

1st Article of Faith coded message -- lds.org

Articles of Faith badges -- about.com

Articles of Faith Ice Cream Chart -- about.com

Hope you and your family enjoy learning the Articles of Faith

again and again and again :)

DIY Cup-a-Soup

This is soup-er quick and soup-a-licious...I couldn't resist it sorry!!?!

We have a lovely old gentleman who lives across the road from us, sadly his wife of 70 years passed away a few years ago.  Over the years that we have lived here (7 to be exact), we have grown to love Mr & Mrs Yates, they have always be so kind to us and love having conversations with our kiddies.

We regularly take Mr Yates some dinner, cakes and drawings...my kids love to draw some very interesting things & feel that Mr Yates should be the recipient (maybe this should be the feature of my next post, lol!?).

Anyways, I had some large clear disposable tumblers left over from something and spied them the other day when I was making soup.  And lo and behold the literal 'cup-a-soup' was born, haha!!

I poured the soup in, covered it with clingfilm and instantly a platform for the roll to sit on is made, ta da!!! 

Now cover the roll and hey presto you have a soup dinner ready to be transported to neighbours, friends, family with no worry of having to track down your soup bowls.  

And if it's still hot when received, the recipient can dunk away with their roll, drink/slurp/spoon the remains and then put the tumbler in the recycling bin = no washing up (particularly handy if the person is poorly).

Well that's all the inspiration for today...probably loads of people have already discovered this phenomenon, but I was amazed by it so it just had to be shared, lol!!

Soup is back on the menu :)

DIY Sharpie Tea Towel

A quick, simple yet thoughtful gift to give to family, friends, teachers etc....and its ready in five minutes, well if the kids cooperate!!?!

Materials needed

Sharpie pens (or fabric pens)

Plain tea towel

Lots of hands to trace!

I drew round all the kids hands (preferably get an adult to do the outline as the material needs to be pulled tight so that the pen doesn't go off at random angles!!) and then they wrote their names inside their handprint.

 I traced the phrase 'many hands make light work' from a printout I whipped up...and from experience I made several different font sizes on the one sheet so that I could find the right fit without having to go back and forth to the laptop/printer :)

We gave these to each our mothers for Christmas, they'd also be great for Mothers day.  Hey, why not let the kids go wild drawing any sort of pictures on a tea towel, although I think an embroidery hoop might come in handy to keep the material taut for them as they draw...we wouldn't want any tears now ;)

General Conference Oct 2014

I can't believe how quickly Conference comes around!!  

Yesterday my lovely friend (who's three days away from having her sixth child!!) invited a group of us to her house and let us loose on all her craft items to make conference bags/activities for our kids...it kept mine quiet for the majority of one of the sessions which was brill :)

I had Conference Booklets printed for our notes this year, even my four year old was keen to have one....he's filled pages with lots of lovely letters.  My six year old was chuffed to bits with his drawing of a Minecraft scene on the back cover...well at least they are listening??!?

After Conference I was just downloading some of my photos off my phone and spotted this one, and thought it went perfectly with a quote from President Uchtdorf's talk.

Can't wait for tomorrow :)

Temples are more than stone and mortar

Boo hoo, ohhh how I missed blogging!! 

Recently I've been extra busy with family, work and church, but hopefully over the summer (if the kids will let me) I'll be able to start sharing some of the things I've been up to recently.

But in the meantime, here's a photo I took of the Preston Temple with a great quote from Thomas S. Monson.

I'll be in touch soon, woohoo!!