An UPlifting evening: YWIE

A lot of you who have been around for awhile know that I serve with the young women in my church. For the majority of my adult life, I have been lucky enough to serve in this organization. Young Women's is pretty much my favorite place to be.

Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by such awesomeness all the time? Between the girls themselves and the other women I serve with I am pretty much the luckiest gal ever.

Twice a year we hold larger than normal activities. At the end of the year we hold an night called Young Women in Excellence. We have a special evening geared around a spiritual theme and we allow the girls to display something they have accomplished during the year.

Our theme this year was "Be UPlifting". We of course used the Disney Movie UP as part of our theme. Hence the mini UP house at the beginning of the post.

We decorated the room with lots of color. Colors that we pulled from the UP house and from this poster that I made (of course using PicMonkey). That banner is made from paper goodie bags I bought at Zurchers. I just bought a variety and then sewed them all together. I ended up getting two big banners out of four packages of bags.

For our program we watched a really powerful video about serving called LIFT. If you haven't seen this video yet, I think you should. It has such a great message.

Then we had a guest speaker talk all about how we can uplift others through service and through our example. We were so lucky to have our speaker. She is such a great example of this principle and I am glad the girls were able to learn from her.

After the program, we had refreshments and walked around the room to look at all of the girls' displays.

This UP house was quite the hit. I am gonna be honest, it was SO much fun to make. I was a bit of a nerd about it. Making this house really was a labor of love.

I used images of the house I found on the internet to construct the frame of the house. I constructed the house out of foam board and hot glue. Needless to say I severely altered my fingerprints by the end.

I covered the exterior of the house with paper. Lots and lots and LOTS of paper. I went through a lot of glue sticks, of both the regular and hot glue variety. I cut strips, punched out circles, and made windows all of paper.

Then of course, I added balloons.

The house isn't to scale and it is missing a few key items (like the front railing and the hose). However, I still love it.

We also found these really cute colorful sodas at Zurchers. They totally reminded me of the soda cap pin that Ellie gives Carl in the movie.

We had such a great evening. I love my girls and I love being in Young Women's.

Like I said earlier, I made this poster as a decoration. I ended up using this background for a lot of things. I used it for the invites and for the programs as well. I just omitted the words on this poster so that I could add the information for the invites and the programs.

I wanted to make this poster available for anyone who wanted to use it. So here it is. You can right click on the image and save it as jpeg. I find as a jpeg it prints better as a photo. I printed mine off as a poster at a local store and I was really happy with it.

I hope you find this idea useful. At the very least I hope you love this poster and can find a place to hang it. Thanks everyone for reading!

Stop by tomorrow for details on how I made the invites for this night.

Thanksgiving Rock Turkey Craft

I love setting the Thanksgiving table. One of my favorite things at the Thanksgiving table, besides you know the food, is a really cute name place card. This year, I made really cute Rock Turkey name place cards for the kids Thanksgiving table.

 

There were so easy and fun to make.  This is also a pretty kid friendly craft.

 

All you need is: rocks brown paint felt google eyes hot glue I started by spray painting all my rocks brown.

 

I cut out feather shaped pieces of felt in orange, red, turquoise, and yellow. I also cut out tiny beak shaped triangles.

 

Then hot glue the google eyes and the beak onto the rock.

 

Glue a yellow, turquoise, red, and orange feather together in a fan pattern.

 

Put a large circle of hot glue at the base of the feather fan and firmly press the rock onto the glue.

 

Let the glue dry to make sure it sets. You can be done here, or you can add a name tag to make it a place setting for the kids' Thanksgiving table. To add the name tag, just print off the name on a piece of card stock and cut into strips.

 

Set the Rock Turkey name card on top of a stack of cute patterned paper plates. This makes a place setting any kid will LOVE.

 

Napoleon Dynamite Halloween Costume

Best. Costume. Ever.

Also, I didn't sew one thing. Not a one.

In fact, all I did (besides gather and buy) was cut out and iron on the "vote for pedro" onto a ringer tee.

I found the t-shirt and the moon boot shoe covers on Amazon. I used Expressions Vinyl and my Silhouette to cut out the words.

I found the wig and the glasses at our local Zurchers party store. Aren't they pretty much perfect?!

We threw it all together with a pair of jeans and this boy's best Napoleon Dynamite face. 

Perfection, and by far the easiest costume I have put together. Woot!

The Best Cornbread

I am not feeling very chatty today. I am running low on sleep and patience. We have a sick kiddo in the house and while he might be responsible for the lack of sleep, it is the other Little Men who are responsible for the lack of patience.

Man, it isn't even Halloween yet either. They really haven't had any sweets yet, so I am trying to figure out why they are being so very special right now. There is lots of crying, whining, and complaining.

You know that moment when you are being bellowed at from multiple children all yelling "MOM!" and everyone thinks there catastrophe it by far the most important? That is what it is like around here today.

I kind of want to yell "MOM" back and see what happens. I am pretty sure it will just add one more voice to the chorus. It might make me feel better though.

A couple of wees ago, I made this, what I am deeming The BEST Cornbread, to go with our Potato Cheddar Sausage Soup. I am really wishing it was yesterday so that I could have a big old slice slathered with butter.

I feel like cornbread right now. Well I feel like any good and therapeutic chunk of warm carbohydrate. Bread fixes everything. Well, I guess unless you are gluten intolerant and then it is the problem.

But for me bread fixes everything.

And I could sure use some today.

I highly recommend trying this cornbread out. The reason I dubbed it "THE BEST" is because I have tried tons of cornbread recipes out over our 14 years of marriage. I always come away with an "eh". I never hate them, but I never love them enough to use the same recipe again.

The search has ended. This is the bread. I will use this cornbread forevermore. It is that good. Hence the me wanting it to fix my bad day.

So if you love bread or are having a rough day or are having a good day or are having soup or chili or tacos, you should probably make this cornbread too. (PS I know that sentence was grammatically the worst)

Here is to better days full of less whining, from both the kids and me!

Ninja Halloween Costume

Here is our family Ninja. This costume came about for one reason and one reason only. He wanted two swords. Ninja swords to be exact.

Once it was decided he could be a ninja and have two swords, he also decided that it was important that he wear all black.

I made an executive decision to put on this gold dragon. Turns out he was okay with wearing all black with just a touch of gold. Whew.

I drafted and made this costume up with no pattern. I used three different types of fabric. I used a knit, a sweatshirt jersey, and a rayon satin. I used the sweatshirt for the shirt and the pants. I used the knit for the mask. The satin was the sheath.

This ninja is pretty happy with his new threads. He was all ready for some ninjaing. That is totally a word by the way.

He has already taken his costume for a test run and it kept him fairly warm and got him lots of candy. Win. Win. The last costume of 2015 will be up tomorrow. So exciting.