Carly's First Quilt!

In our church, we have a program for our young women, ages 12-18, called "Personal Progress."  If you aren't familiar, here is a link to view:  https://www.lds.org/youth/article/introduction-personal-progress?lang=eng.  It's a great thing to get young girls involved in.  Carly's first value completed was knowledge.  So she could move on to her very first 10 hour project!  She decided she wanted to do a baby quilt.

I already had some fabrics on hand...cause you know, I am rich and collect stuff I don't need.  Right?!  Not!  I just have a hard time passing up adorable fabric when I'm buying yarn or scrapbook paper.  I'm an intermediate seamstress myself...all self-taught.  So I do browse the fabrics at the craft store when I go.  Anyway, I had purchased in the past some Berenstain Bears patterns because my children adore those books.  Well, that is exactly what pattern that Carly was drawn to in my stash.  So we next decided on a pattern.

We decided to go with a tutorial I had pinned on Pinterest.  You can view that awesome step-by-step tutorial here:  http://christaquilts.com/2012/07/19/diy-quilts-1-the-jolly-jellyroll-quilt-supply-list/.  It's a great for those who need some guidance, like myself!  :)  We just altered it a touch to our skill set and tool set...and voila!  Carly has a brand new baby quilt. 

Carly spent hours (13, to be exact!) cutting, machine sewing blocks, and then strips together; ironing; pinning; more sewing; and then learning a blind stitch by hand to do the binding around the edges.  She really was a fast learner, and at the beginning of each step, I showed her what to do, and let her go from there.  She did amazing on it!

She plans to keep this quilt as a keepsake for her very first baby.  Since it's primary colors and Berenstain Bears, it can be for a baby boy or girl.  And it also has a school theme to it.  She said she would like to keep all of the Berenstain Bears books we have as she gets older and moves into having her own family, to go along with her new quilt.  I told her to go for it!  I'm happy that she's interested.  So stay tuned for future sewing by Carly. 

Felt Nativity Set

Over the past few years I have really started collecting Nativity sets.  For a few years into our marriage, I didn't have any.  Then I started buying them after Christmas on sale, and friends even bought a couple of sets for me.  But with Shelby, my 1 year old, it was hard to let her handle any fragile sets or small pieces.  Yet I wanted her to have something for herself to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ along with the rest of us...something she could touch, feel, and play with as I talked to her about Christ.  Therefore, when I came along this pin: http://whatmadeleineloves.blogspot.com/2011/12/felt-nativity.html on Pinterest, I knew it was something I had to do for my baby girl.  Bonus:  I didn't have to buy a single thing to make it as I already had all of the supplies in my craft stash.  After a week or so in my spare time, I had it completed!  It was really fun!  And I will admit that although she didn't take the interest in it right away that I thought she would, she did like to carry around one piece at a time and she knew it was "hers."  I look forward to seeing how she interacts with it next year when she's a few months older and can understand a little more about our Savior's birth. 

Missionary Farewell

We have a dear, sweet friend who is leaving tomorrow to serve an 18 month mission in Ecuador for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We love her dearly and she is like family to us.  She is 21 years old, and for the last 6-7 years has readily babysat our children.  They adore her because she has been so involved and sweet to them.  (She even would attend their ballgames and school events.)
Because of her specialness to our family and others in our local ward church family, many of us wanted to surprise her with a going away party, and luckily, I got to head that party up!  So I really wanted to make it thoughtful presentation and here are the things I did.  I looked up Ecuador and its country flag to mimic and hang up; learned facts about the country and printed them on signs to hang around the room; looked up scriptures related to missionary work to place on the tables; and my kids and I made these cute button bouquets in Ecuadorian colors.  Then I went to the Dollar Tree store and bought matching tablecloths and so on to make up the tables. 
My family and I went the evening before the party and made up a room separate from where we were having another "meeting" on Thanksgiving and being grateful.  But everyone knew that was just a cover for the real celebration, except my sweet missionary friend.  So we began our meeting the following night and had our opening prayer and song, and then we let our friend in on the secret that we had another party in another room prepared just for her!  She was so surprised (which isn't always easy to do!) and she was loving it!

We had had sisters in the church bring pies as a cover for our Thanksgiving theme, so as we played games like fill-in-the-blank for this song:  http://www.lds.org/churchmusic/detailmusicPlayer/index.html?searchlanguage=1&searchcollection=1&searchseqstart=270&searchsubseqstart= &searchseqend=270&searchsubseqend=ZZZ, and translated Spanish words to English, we ate our pie and socialized and shared our gifts and testimonies of missionary work and Jesus Christ to her.  It was really a special evening, and totally worth the effort.  Thanks for looking and reading all of this -if you have!

Train Tickets for "The Polar Express"

Next Saturday will be our church's Christmas Party. I am so excited! First, I have to admit that the first time I watched "The Polar Express," Adam was just 3 months old, Carly was 2.5 years old, and I was 24 years old. I cried through most of the movie just because I thought it was soooo magical! Anyway, it just so happens that the hostess for our church Christmas party picked the "Polar Express" theme, and I immediately "jumped on board" to see how I could help! She asked me to make the train tickets!! :) :) :) I really wanted to make these train tickets special, so I went browsing the web, the local scrapbook stores, and so on. I found this awesome shiny gold paper at Hobby Lobby. However, the price was 1.99 per sheet. :( Quite expensive...especially when you know you have to make 50-75 of them...you want them big enough to be "punched" by the conductor...and you have other parts that need to be purchased to make the tickets. So I settled on making the trains themselves gold instead of the whole ticket. :) Then I had some baker's twine in red and green. I had this idea that the "stamp" on the ticket should say the date of the event, along with "One Round Trip Ticket." I worked for a few days trying to figure out how to make text in the shape of a circle (I know you could probably do it,...I'm just not tech saavy). Finally, I gave up and asked for help from others. I found another lady from church who asked me what I wanted and she had the computer file to me the very next day! Yay! All set to begin my production. :) So here they are! I used my Cricut machine, Gypsy, and various Cricut cartridges to produce the tickets and circles and train cuts. I know they are not fancy...but it was all I could do with a million other things I have going on right now during the holiday season...and my friend who is the hostess of our church party liked them, so that is what counts! Thanks for looking!

A Gift for Her Baptism

Yesterday we had the privilege of attending a baptism of an 8 year old little girl that used to be in my Primary group. But her family moved close to an hour away, and we no longer see them much...other than through Facebook. ;) I was so excited to be invited to her baptism! She is sweet and her family is the best. So we went,...but I had to take a gift to just let her know how special I think she and her family really are. So I crafted this scrapbook album. It's a big step for a child to be baptized and take on the name of the Lord, so I wanted her to remember this special day with details, pictures, and a book to hold the memories for the rest of her life. Thanks for looking!

Super Saturday Crafts

This year for Super Saturday crafts at our church, we did the following:

1. Book of Mormon covers - We took the cheaper Book of Mormon that missionaries hand out and recovered them with patterned scrapbook paper. You can find a tutorial here: http://www.u-createcrafts.com/2009/11/creative-guest-craftaholics-anonymous.html. If anyone wants a free copy of the Book of Mormon, please let me know! :)

2. We made Recipe board holders for those pesky little index cards that seem to either get lost or dirty during our cooking. I don't have a tutorial for this one. Sorry!

3. We also worked on "Families are Forever" blocks. These were very easy. The letters were cut using the Opposites Attract cartridge on a Cricut. Then we sanded, painted the blocks, and then glued the letters on. I finished mine with a layer of Mod Podge to complete the look. Some people chose other colors, but I liked the neutral look of shades of brown and cream together.

4. Lastly, we made cute little post-it note holders. If you are like me, you are always looking for a pen/cil and paper when out of the house for a quick note. I have given a few away but this one will be kept in my purse. Here is a link to that tutorial: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/postitholder/.

Happy crafting!!!

Family Home Evening board

I saw this quite a while back and finally(!) found the time to make one this past weekend. I am hoping to teach it as a Super Saturday craft to the ladies in our Relief Society here in our ward. It was really easy, and I think it turned out quite cute! This board will help be a motivation and a reminder to me to stay "on the ball" for Family Home Evening every Monday night. If you want more information on that activity, find it here (be sure to click on "additional information"): http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?locale=0&sourceId=17f70bbce1d98010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

A Handmade Christmas

Here are some gifts I made for others for a "handmade" Christmas. I love making things for other people, and I hope they enjoy these special gifts. Where I got my ideas: the Christ frame mat idea came from my local Relief Society "Super Saturday" at church this year; the magnet board "Sugar and Spice" idea was copied from one of my good friend's creativity; the "Family" shadow box frame was something I learned from a class at my LSS (found here: http://www.pizazzitscrapbooks.com/); and finally the multiple shadow box frame for "Hansen" was copied from here: http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=2742695&mpage=1&key=&#2744171. I am currently working on one more Christmas gift project, which I will show at a later time. And I also made some of these for loved ones: http://www.sugardoodle.net/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3077&Itemid=5. Thanks for checking out my blog,...and Merry Christmas to everyone!