Thank You Gifts for Teachers

We survived! Actually, we may have even thrived! This year marked a few big milestones my boys. Danny went into all day Kindergarten and Jared started the 4 year old half day Kindergarten program. They did great, and I was able to relax and enjoy some quiet afternoons. To celebrate some fabulous teachers I made these signs for them to hang in their classrooms. Using the previously scanned in images I have of my animal ABC paintings I was able to put together these names. I then printed them onto clear 8 1/2 " x 11" labels and adhered them to flat canvas' that I painted a neutral color. The velvet rick-rack was a nice touch I thought.

Brag Book - Bag Book

Props to my friend Chris for this fabulous idea. These brag books were a lot of fun to make and took only 3 bags, some digital scrap pages and a few embellishments to add a little extra somethin' something'. I did this project together with my friend Melissa to give her an experience with Digital Scrap booking. I'm not a great teacher, but she is a great student! I was so impressed at how fast she caught on! We were able to put these books together in two sittings. Considering that combined we have 7 children, and school is out for the summer, that we did pretty good!

Activity Day Girls

I have the priviledge of holding the most fun calling in the church. (he he he!) I am the Activity Days leader. I get to plan activities for the girls between ages 8 and 11. We work towards reaching their Faith in God Award and also just try to have a lot of fun learning new things.
Last week we made our announcements for our mother-daughter activity; a Girl's Night Out. It is always so fun to work with these girls. Recently we have also learned to decorate cakes, made Pinewood derby cars, Mother's Day Soap Sundaes and rice pack heating pads. They are such great girls and a lot of fun to be with!
For the cake decorating I had each of the girls come with a cake that was frosted with white frosting. I then made 5 lbs of icing. (Yes, 5 pounds!!!) and a sister in our ward brought her tools and we got to work. We were also able to acquire tools from the Young Women who had previously done this activity and I brought my fabulous set that I now actually know how to use.
Happy Mother's Day. The girl's helped me whip up these fabulous bath beads for their moms. We found a great recipe through sugardoodle.net. It was an inexpensive and easy project with great results. The frustrating part was that Dairy Queen charged me for the cups. (I know it does NOT cost .50 to make those plastic cups, but.... we'll just let that go.)
My very first activity with these girls involved 11 girls, 4 sewing machines, and a bunch of rice. We had one hour to pull it off and we did! Each of the girls left with their own microwaveable heating pack. ( I had the girls bring their own fabric from home and I also provided some).
Pinewood Derby cars!!! One of our girl's Dad is amazing with wood and more specifically with these cars. I have never seen anything before like what he has made. He was kind enough to invite us to his garage where we went pinewood crazy! These girls had so much fun designing, making and painting their own cars, not to mention racing them at the ward Pinewood Derby.

Twilight Snacks

Ah yes, that time has come again. We are counting down to the newest movie in the Twilight series to open in theaters. So of course I had to brush up on the first two movies "Twilight" and "New Moon" and what is a 5 hour movie night without a few snacks? Props to cullenboysanonymous.com for some excellent snack ideas.

This is Rosalie's Werewolf Kibble aka "Muddy Buddies" Delicious!


Blood-suckers snack, a very tasty treat... though very frustrating to make. I only burned myself once. This is Strawberry Banana flavored popcorn.


Anyone up for a vampire cookie? Yeah, I know this is a little gooey-gory, but hey, I just had to make them anyway. These are butter cookies, that I confess I made from a mix. I used Strawberry jam (with a little extra red food coloring) for the bite marks. Okay, these fortune cookies were my favorite to make. I did not actually make the cookies, BUT I did have to microwave each of them for 30 seconds to soften them. After that I was able to take out the original fortune and add in a quote from either Jacob or Edward from the first two books. It was so fun to go back and reread quotes from the books. Using www.twilight-quotes.com I was able to find quotes by character for each of the books.

So, I have to confess, I've been feeling a little self-conscious of my love for the Twilight books. It seems that they have fallen out of popularity, or rather all the hype has made them sort of a joke. After going back and rereading parts of the first two books I have fallen in love all over again. Sure, the movies are fun and cheesy, but the books are excellent. Now I remember why I bought them. They are well worth the read. If you have not read them on principle, I highly recommend that you go ahead and give them a shot.

BAGS!

This was a really fun bag that didn't take too long to make. My friend Melissa and I went in on this one together and had a blast picking out our fabric together. Our bags will match, but hey, that's alright!

We found this free Charm Pack Tote pattern on line. The pattern was designed by Emma Corbett and Lisa Harper for Buttonberry.

It was a lot of fun to make and not a difficult project. The fun part was the quilting! The pattern itself does not require all the quilting I chose to do. I used a lot more thread than I planned on, but the results were great! I simply stippled / wandered all over the bag one inch at a time. It definitely took longer than I thought, but not too long. 2 or 3 sittings and I was done with the quilting.

This next bag is so fabulous I think! I found the pattern for free at AllPeopleQuilt.com. I went under their free projects and then searched under gifts and found lots of tote patterns. This is a reversible bag with one long handle and one short handle. You loop the longer one into the shorter one and viola! This is what you get!
It's a nice size for my wallet, sun glasses and cell phone and I can just stick the whole thing in my diaper bag if I need to. I love it, and so have several strangers!
This is usually on the insdide of the bag, but sometimes I reverse it when it matches my outfit better this way.

Christmas Advent Quilt

I am very excited to see this project completed. Though I feel like it may never actually be all the way done. I'm still searching for a few more perfect embellishments for it, so it may not be fully completed EVER.

This is my Nativity Advent Calendar that I started last fall with my good friend and quilting buddy Jenni. (Who will be moving to AZ soon... sniffle, sniffle.) We used her pattern for the letters and characters and then her sisters layout for the actual quilt / creche.

How did I make this? Well, we started by making our characters. We traced all the pieces onto different scraps of fabric and then using wonder-under (it's like t-shirt iron on material) we were able to put them together like little puzzles. We then ironed our completed people onto black felt.

The quilt took a day to purchase fabric, cut, and piece. (Not bad I'd say!) The quilting of it was the fun part though. I'm learning how to machine quilt and just recently bought a darning foot. Yeah for free-motion! It was very fun to sew in curly Qs and even the words "Silent Night Holy Night" into some of the border.

I hope this will be something my boys will look forward to pulling out each December. All of the people will be hanging from the row of buttons on the bottom (which I sewed on all by hand of course!) Each day we will place a character onto the nativity and on Christmas Eve we will put on the baby Jesus.

We had an advent calendar growing up that I still love to this day and I really wanted something like that for my family. My mom will tell you that this one is a bit more complex and time consuming. I suppose she is right. (She always is!) But, I really have enjoyed this project, every step! It was a great learning experience. I made my first button hole, learned how to applique, and discovered the fabulous-ness of machine quilting! This was a great project!

I'm going to really miss Jenni when she moves. She has been my go to girl for a long time and not just for sewing, though I think she has taught me just about everything I know. She has been an example to me of a wonderful Mom and I really look up to her. I will think of her every Christmas for years to come when I see this quilt on the wall.