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 ;)

Bespoke Notepads

At Christmas I was trying to think what we could give to our children's teachers that would be 'homemade' but wouldn't take too much time as I was really busy with several large assignments at church.

So the cogs got rolling, and I thought why not design an image on photoshop and then get it printed on a notepad.....and of course I got carried away with myself and ended up making quite a few of them (and I'm still getting bespoke orders now!).

I then attached a small pencil using ribbon or twine and then put the pad in a cellophane bag, to some I put some adhesive magnetic strip so that they could be used on their fridge.

You could easily use a word processor to design something bespoke for a teacher, family or friend....or for you!!

These notepads have been great for Christmas presents for teachers, friends and families...and have helped put a few extra pennies in my pocket too :)

If you live in the UK, here's my facebook page where you can buy these notepads along with other things that I've created...the page is called KugAlls Kreations.

I also have a facebook page to go alongside this blog (I haven't got around to finding out how to do a facebook icon to this blog yet), so for now here's the link to KugAlls.

When I count my blessings plaque

I originally saw this quote at a ladies house I was visiting with one day, and thought it was lovely, and thought it would make a perfect gift for a member of my family.

I decided to make one, but of course being me I had to give it a teeny tweak....I used MDF for the base (18mm thick), and thought chalkboard paint would be perfect for where the numbers have to be written on (making it very easy to change as the family grows).

I used the same process for this plaque as I did for my previous Christmas DIY plaque (click on this link for tutorial), so it was fairly quick and easy to do.

The only change was when I was doing the chalkboard hearts.  I still chalked the outline from a heart template and then just painted it in with three coats of chalkboard paint (it doesn't take too long for each coat of paint to dry).  I then rolled up a stick of chalk in some white tissue paper and tied it with a pretty ribbon.

I'll be making another one soon for my grandmother, I'm thinking that I will use a lighter shade of paint for that one....and of course she will need an additional heart so that she can write in the amount of great-grandchildren!!

Don't forget to count your blessings, whatever they may be :)

Christmas 'Tag'

Several weeks ago a good friend of mine, popped over for a play day....and boy did we play!! ;)

We were chatting about how we wanted to help spread the Christmas cheer into our local communities and to be more unified as church members, and this idea was miraculously born!  Somehow it all came together soooo quickly and we couldn't stop high fiving and squealing with delight to each other (no joke!!).

Materials needed

Tag

Long ribbon

Red sharpie (felt tip)

Sakura Souffle - white (my new found love)

Distress Ink Pad - walnut stain

Christmas 'Tag' poem

1. Write Christmas 'Tag' using the red pen and then use the white Sakura Souffle pen to make snowflakes...this pen is magic, when you write it will be clear but wait for a couple of minutes and it will magically turn white!!! LOVE!!!

2.Then use your distress ink pad to dab along the edges of the tag and the poem, then use a glue stick to attach the poem.

3. Thread through a long piece of ribbon (I love red and white gingham for anything Christmassy) so that the gifts can be attached, mine measured about 50cm.

4. Attach your small gift that can be posted through a letter box eg a christmas decoration, candy canes, chocolate bar, cd, bag of sweets, dvd etc.

5. Next, post your Christmas 'Tag' to your friend, family or someone in your community and quickly run before you get caught!!!  Or you could also put it in a jiffy bag and send it through the post to someone further afield.

And not forgetting (because I almost did, lol!) here's the poem that you need to attach to the back....

In case you can't read that, here it is.....

You've been 'tagged' in this Christmas game,

Now find somebody else to 'tag' the same.

Attach a small gift to post through their door,

And see how the Christmas cheer spreads even more!

This is a great activity to do as a family (my kids love being secret gifts ninjas...yes they hide, crawl, roll just to get to somebody's front door, haha, love it!!!) or youth group and doesn't cost much either, but helps to share the Christmas feeling with everyone.

Merry Christmas....and please let me know how your tagging goes, or if you're a lucky one to get tagged too!! :)

Sweet Words to the Soul

We've been playing this 'game' at the dinner table since February, at first we did it every day and now over time we probably play it just once a week.

It takes no preparation, just a family sitting around a table eating dinner together...and it doesn't even need that!!  We tend to do it when we've finished our meal or when we are waiting for pudding/sweet to be served (that makes us sound posh, like we have servants to tend to our every need, oh how I wish!!)

Anyway back to the real world where my kids are delightful, treat each other nicely and are angels all the time....oh how I wish, lol.  Seriously though as I was reflecting on one of my children's behaviour and how negative comments seemed to be outweighing the positive ones, this idea just popped into my head (I love it when that happens).

The first time we played the game, I told everyone to stay seated after dinner and to look at the person opposite them and say 5 nice things about them and then for the receiver to do the same.  Luckily we have eight people in our family, so we were all paired off.  But if this doesn't work for you, then you could do it so that they say the 'sweet words' to the person to their left??

Some of our children had compliments flying here, there and everywhere...while some were struggling to come up with just one!!  And even then, the so called lovely words were actually being a bit nasty....'Mum, dad, was I ever like this??!!!?'

So the next day we did it again...we heard 'yay, I love this game' vs 'groan, moan, not again!!!'  But it was lovely, as they sat there the words were making them smile inside and out, so that the once grumpy faces were erased.  Soon the negative feelings towards the game changed and everyone was making sure that they sat opposite different members of the family each night so that they could hear what they had to say about them.  Our two youngest children proved to be the most popular to sit opposite, everyone loved being on the receiving end of their compliments as they were sooo from the heart :)

I love hearing my children say nice things to each other, and watching the heart of the receiver soften as they are being said.  It's also nice to stop as a parent and just look at your beautiful child and see them full of goodness no matter what sort of day you've had with them.

The words of Proverbs 16:24 are still true today...

 Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.

For Peace at Home

I can't believe it's been two months since Conference, time is just flying by!!?!  I loved conference and didn't know where to start with the things I've learnt and the FHE's and activities that we've got planned....soooo excited, can you tell??!?  We decided to start with Elder Richard G. Scott's talk entitled 'For Peace at Home'.

As Elder Scott spoke the words below in his talk an image popped into my head and I sketched it down in my notebook so that I wouldn't forget.

I’m sure you can identify the fundamental principles that center your home on the Savior. The prophetic counsel to have daily personal andfamily prayer, daily personal and family scripture study, and weekly family home evening are the essential, weight-bearing beams in the construction of a Christ-centered home. Without these regular practices it will be difficult to find the desired and much-needed peace and refuge from the world.

I'm still not super duper at doing graphic images but I'm good at sharing (lol) and hopefully getting better at it as I go?!!  Well this is what I came up with.

to download file

click here

We used this talk as our guide tonight for FHE, there was sooo much in the talk that we could focus on, and I didn't want to leave any of it out, so I broke it up into smaller bite size chunks/topics so that the kids could take it all in.

I stuck a picture of the Saviour in the centre of a piece of paper and after we had read each of the quotes from the talk, we discussed them and then wrote on the paper what we could do to make Christ the centre of our home.

This is now stuck on our kitchen door as a reminder of what we are going to try to do to make our home more peaceful (here's hoping!!) and Christ centered.

For the activity at the end of the lesson, everyone got a strawberry lace and we put a big bowl of Cheerios in the middle of us all.  One by one we had to say something that made us 'cheery' (aka happy), and then we could put one cheerio on our lace...we set a time limit of 5 minutes to do it, so everyone was trying to think of things to say as quickly as they could.

It started off well with the kids saying things and quickly threading on their Cheerio so that they were ready for their next go.  It was only as we were half way through the game that the older kids noticed that every time they were saying something my three year old was repeating it and handing a Cheerio to his dad to thread on...hence his lace had lots more than the others, then everybody just went for it and shouted out lots of 'cheery' things with no waiting this time...it was really funny, and we had such good giggle at it all.

I really enjoyed the lesson and game tonight, but more so the game...it wasn't particularly peaceful, but hopefully we heard some of the things that makes others in our family happy, and will look for ways to make them cheery in the future.  Playing the game was easy, but the further it went on, the harder it got...but as I heard some of my children's answers it made me reflect on lots of wonderful things in my life that have brought me so much happiness and joy.  We are all so blessed in so many different ways, we've just got to stop, look and think and we will find things that make us 'cheery', no matter what our circumstances  :)

Scriptural Easter Egg Hunt

I've been asked to cover my Primary's music time this Sunday and thought I'd do an Easter Egg Hunt, so I cut out some brightly card into an egg shape and wrote different songs on...I had some left over and thought I could use them for us tomorrow to help us read the Easter story.

I looked in John chapter 20 to see what verses etc I could group together and write on the eggs and couldn't decide as it was all so lovely (cheesy but true).  So I grouped them according to the six paragraphs already highlighted in the King James Version.

Egg 1 - John 20:1-10; Egg 2 - John 20:11-18; Egg 3 - John 20:19-23

Egg 4 - John 20:24-25; Egg 5 - John 20:26-29; Egg 6 - John 20:30-31

We are going to hide them around the room and one of the children has to find number one first and then we will read/discuss those scriptures and then we can find the next one etc...once we've read them all the children can then hunt for their chocolate eggs.

Happy Easter everyone xx

Two Instant FHE games

I think I've got a bit of a wild imagination as I regularly conjure up games out of nowhere for our kids to play after our FHE lessons...though this only occurs when my brain is actually in a fairly functional mode, lol!! ;)

You need no preparation and no supplies, so you can play them in an instant.  The two games are entitled....Sleeping Lamanites and Are you Reverent??

The idea for this game came from the story found in Mosiah 24 where the Lord made the Lamanites sleepy so that Alma and his people could escape.  

 19 And in the morning the Lord caused a ^adeep sleep to come upon the Lamanites, yea, and all their task-masters were in a profound sleep.

Basically the aim of the game is for a Nephite to sneak pass all the 'sleeping' Lamanites on the floor without waking them up and escape from the city....aka get from one side of the room to the other without being detected by the people lying on the floor.  

The Lamanites lay face down with their eyes shut (no peeking!) and they are allowed one 'twitch' each...a 'twitch' is when they move their arm or leg to try to touch the passing Nephite (very funny to watch by the way).  If they miss that's it, no more twitches for that person....and if somebody does manage to touch the Nephite then they get to be the next one to try to escape the city.  I hope these instructions make sense!?!!

We played this one just this Monday after we'd a rather irreverent day at church, but we have yet to see if it's sowed other thoughts into their heads of crazy things to do during sacrament or whether it's taught them how to sit reverently, hopefully it's the latter!! p.s. I don't expect my kids not to move during church, but hopefully musical chairs is a thing of the past :)

Right how to play...one (or two) people stand at the front, while the rest of the family sprawl themselves across the settee doing things that aren't particularly reverent...eg fingers in ears, upside down, on phone, sleeping etc.

The one/two ask those on the settee "Are you reverent??", to which everyone should respond in unison "No!!"...of course, you always get someone that answers 'yes'.

Then they have a certain amount of time (we chose a minute) to get them looking reverent either by physically moving them or by giving instructions eg turn round, feet down, fold arms etc...the latter worked better for the younger ones.

We have really enjoyed playing these simple games together over the years and hopefully will have many more years of them to come, and maybe your family will enjoy them too??!

Family Chalkboard

Chalkboard paint is my new love at the mo, everything is getting plastered in it!!  I decided to make one for my brother & co. for Christmas with their family name across the top.  I think it turned out alright especially since I was making it up as I was going along.

After giving the wood three coats of chalkboard paint (my paint dried really quickly), I decided to use precut wooden letters for the name and stuck them on with my good ol' faithful hot glue gun.  I decided to keep my letters plain, but you could apply acrylic paint to add a bit of colour.

I then hunted around my local DIY store for something suitable for the chalk to sit on and found this piece of wood, I think it works quite well....sorry, I don't know what it is called but hopefully you'll be able to find something similar to it.  I used a hammer and nails to attach it, this was a bit fiddly to attach but luckily my husband was about to lend a hand...if not, you could always use the hot glue gun again??  At the back I attached a small sawtooth hanger.

Feedback...they love it and their kids can't stop writing messages on it, yeahhh, I love it when a plan comes together!!

I am a Child of God games

'Build a Beetle' is one of our family favourite games, so I thought I'd change it a bit to coincide with this years Primary theme, and we love it!!  Click on the link below to download the game and the instructions and get drawing some crazy stick people :)

Click here to download files for

I am a child of God game and Instructions

If you would like an easier version of the game, I found a similar type of game on Pinterest.  I downloaded the image and then typed the words above... 

gingerbread dice game

kinziekreations

I laminated both games to make them more durable and to save on photocopying...and the added bonus is that my kids love using the felt tips and then rubbing them out...the simplest of things amuse my kids!!?!

I am a child of God Totes

Include a die and felt tips and you have a great pressie and activity for all ages.  If you want to be extra crafty you can also make a 'I am a child of God' tote for the game to go in too.

Nephite vs Lamanite game

This game is basically naughts and crosses but with Nephites and Lamanites on the reverse side of the relevant symbols.  I made a drawstring bag to keep the playing pieces in with the square grid printed on one side and the title of the game on the other.

This is what it looked like on my computer screen.  I then printed them off onto my calico fabric using my 'How to print onto fabric using your printer' post as a guide.  Just a note when making yours, make sure you leave enough space around the edge to allow for seam allowance and more space/fabric at the top so that you can make it into a drawstring bag.  I also used the same technique for printing the cartoon images and lettering.

Unfortunately I can't share my file of this as I got my pictures from a disc I bought years ago called 'LDS Clips 10,000' by Inspire Graphics :(  But hopefully there might be some free ones that you can download on the web??

I made this for my sister's family for Christmas and they love it, now I've just got to crack on and finish making the one for us.  It makes a great family gift and doesn't cost too much for the materials etc...just takes a bit of time (and love) to get it made :)  It's also super for a FHE game and a Sunday activity.

Sunday 'cans'

I was buying for my sister (and her family) this Christmas, and she said she'd like some 'reverent' toys and activities for a Sunday.  So I looked through my pins on Pinterest to get some inspiration, and got loads, now which ones to choose!?!??! 

I decided to do some Sunday 'cans'...a small 'can' full of ideas of activities that can be done on a Sunday, plus a big 'can' that can be used to store games/book/activities etc.  I used the tutorial below from 'Shabby Beach Nest' blog to help with the general idea for making my lollipop sticks for the smaller can.

Shabby Beach Nest

101 Idea 'I'm Bored' Jar

I used some ideas from the Friend magazine to help come up with a list of activities that were appropriate for a Sunday....

20 Things to Do on Sunday

Flannel Board Sunday Box

Sunday Box: Sunday Can  

The 'Sunday Cans' labels and list of ideas can be downloaded below and then printed on your chosen paper or card.

Sunday Cans File

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Cut the paper into equal strips, then apply lots of DIY Mod Podge to the back of the paper/card strip...

Hold the large lollipop stick and the wet paper/card strip up to the light/window and line them up so that the words are central and push together hard, smoothing all out bumps.  Then lay them out to dry.

Once dry, trim off any excess paper using scissors and then brush around the edge with sandpaper, it gives them a nicer finish as you can see from the lollipop sticks as the top of the photo below.

I made some blank sticks as well so that my sister could write on activities/ideas that I hadn't listed.  

For the cans, I used my DIY Mod Podge again to stick the card to them, and then I brushed the Mod Podge all over the top of the card too, just to make sure they were stuck on real tight...and they're done!! :)