General Conference Accordion Book

General Conference is upon us again!  Here is a sweet little General Conference craft we made during Family Home Evening last week that you could easily replicate.

I used this 12 apostles template by Sara J Creations.  You can download and print it for free here or create one yourself by hand.

Sara's accordion book has drawings representing the original 12 apostles from Christ's mortal ministry that children can color in and paste or tape onto the accordion book.

My kids were delighted to do this while listening to this cute song about the names of the original apostles: link here.

When I got my printer working again, I printed off photos of the current apostles and we pasted them to the flip-side of our books.  Because there are currently 15 apostles (12 + 3 who make up the Prophet and 1st Presidency), you will need to cut an additional section to lengthen your accordion book to fit the full fifteen.) 

We played the apostles song (which is set to the tune of "Jesus Loves Me), talked about the apostles then and now, and played a "guess who" game where I would give a clue and the kids would have to find the photo of the correct apostle.

This was a fun activity, but what was even more fun for me was watching my 3-year old carry his 12 Apostles Book around in his back pocket for the next few days.

If you wanted to, you could make it a "face" book of the current Apostles only and allow your children to write the main teachings from each Apostle as they listen to General Conference this weekend.

Looking for more ideas for General Conference-watching with children?  See my Best General Conference Ideas Page.

 

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Young Women Theme Wall

I love how creative my daughters are.  I walked into one of their rooms recently. It was a hot mess in there, let me tell you, but then I looked up and saw this neat wall that Scarlett had created with the YW theme as the center-piece, and I was really impressed.

All she did was taped a bunch of scrapbook paper to the wall with the YW Theme and it just made everything look "tre chic"!  

I thought I'd pass this along as an idea if any of your girls are looking for a room refresh!

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Painting Watercolor Chicks

 

It was an exciting week in homeschooling last week, as Honor had her homeschool evaluation, which is just someone reviewing samples of her schoolwork and interviewing her to make sure she has actually been taught.

As the homeschooling mama, this is a big relief to me to have this done, although I don't have the letter quite yet, we're getting that much closer to completing 2nd grade.  39 days of schooling left!

In the meantime, we've busied ourselves by diving into water color painting.

Honor's friend, our neighbor, has to stay home for 2 weeks to quarantine because she was exposed to someone with COVID in class, so that means, around 11am each day, she now has a playmate her age.  And Friday, that meant that we had an extra painting buddy.

Aren't these chicks just the sweetest?  They're so easy to do.

You basically start by painting about 5 different colored, quarter-sized circles on a page (watercolor or sketch paper works well.)  Then you add triangles for wings and beaks.  Add yellow x's of some kind at the bottom of the page to form straw.

Allow your painting to dry, and then using a permanent marker, add eyes, legs, outlines, and other details.

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Easy Temple Embroidery Pattern

 

We're still excited about the upcoming Pittsburgh Temple over here.  

I posted last week about making an embroidery of the temple design, but I needed to make a new one that was a wee bit easier for our Activity Day girls to attempt.

As it turned out, I am not going to be doing the mid-week activities, because my husband is doing the boys' activities and we can't both be at church at the same time, so as a result, I won't be doing this particular craft with the girls, but maybe someone reading this will want to!

I followed the same process as I mentioned in this previous post.  

1. Print out a photo of the temple in the size of your choice.

2. Tape to a window and trace the outline (using a pencil) onto muslin.  (For this one, instead of doing a complete sketch of the details, I just did the outline of the temple.)

3. Back the muslin with thin quilt batting and place in an embroidery frame.

4. Stitch in colors of your choice.

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Friend to Friend Drawing Time

 I can't say enough good stuff about the Church's Friend to Friend event that was broadcast on Saturday!

They did such a nice job of making it something they could participate in and feel a part of.

I blogged the other day about the rock creations that we made after being shown how in the broadcast.

Here are the drawings that my kids did during the show of a child praying:

As I mentioned before, now that my children have had a taste of Primary again, they realize how much they've missed it and they want more!

This week we had to stay home from church, and after doing the rock creations they wanted to do Primary all morning!  So, we drew to keep the party going.  

Our Primary Pictionary looked like this: There's a clown in every bunch (especially a bunch of 3-4 year olds who have never really attended Primary in their lives!)  Good times.

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Temple Embroidery Project #PittsburghTemple

I had a time to relax on Sunday, so I decided to make a little embroidery of the coming Pittsburgh Temple.  

I planned to do this as an activity for our Primary children at Activity Days, so I wanted to try it out first to see if it was on their skill level.  

Here's how you can create a simple embroidery pattern out of any temple picture:

First, print out a photo of your temple in the correct size.  It does not need to be in color.

Next, tape it to a window and trace the simplest outlines of the temple onto a plain white paper using a thin black marker.

Then place muslin cut to size over your pattern.  Trace the pattern onto your muslin (again trace it on a window creating a lightbox effect).  I started to trace using a disappearing fabric marker, but mine wasn't exact enough, so I switched a pencil, which I could easily cover with my stiches.

Back your muslin with quilt batting and put your work in an embroidery hoop.  Mine is a 4 inch wooden hoop.

Using 3 strands of embroidery floss, stitch the outlines in a color of your choice.  I did the "shading" with random/free-hand stitches, but the rest of the piece is sewn using a "back-stitch". (Here's how to back-stitch.)

When finished, trim the excess fabric a bit and secure to the back, using your hoop as a frame.  I used masking tape to secure the fabric as a short-cut.  

You can loop a thin ribbon through the metal part to hang and display.

(As you can see in this last photo, my disappearing marker is still showing in blue.  You just rinse that off, if that's the type of marker you used.  I'd recommend just using pencil since it blends in so easily and does not need to be erased when finished.)

I really like the way this turned out!  And I enjoyed it for like two days before I gave this one away in a "favorite things" Relief Society activity.  

Now I need to make a new one!

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Flag Tshirt Craft

It's been a while since I posted a craft on here.  This US flag tshirt was so fun, because all six kids could do it, it's patriotic AND a sweet keepsake!

First, pick up a plain white tee at Michael's or wherever.

Using acrylic paint, place your handprint in the top left corner (to represent the blue field of stars).

When that's dry, use everyday masking tape to create a stencil for the red and white stripes...like this:

Do as many stripes as looks good to you and fits on the tshirt, but remember there are 13!

 I removed the tape before it was dry and then set the shirt out to dry.

Voila!

We made these on July 3rd and were styling on the 4th!

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For the Strength of My Youth

You might remember that last year we spent a number of weeks in family home evening studying the different topics addressed in For the Strength of Youth (which is a guide for standards that youth and all of us should follow to remain spiritually strong & happy!)

One of the things that came out of our discussions is the idea that my children need to let their friends know what their standards are, and that they need to start gathering friends around them NOW who want to live good standards as well, because in the coming years a lot of kids will start to decide how they want to live.  So now is a good time to start building friendships with those who want to support them in righteous living and vice versa.

We realized that as parents we need to actively help them form those friendships and practice keeping the standards in our home with their friends before they have to do it on their own out in the world. (We also need to do this because we just recently moved here and they need opportunities to keep solidifying friendships outside of school!)

To that end we started having "game nights" where they invite their friends over to socialize in our home.  As parents we give them something fun to do and something to eat and then give them space from us and the responsibility to be good hosts and hostesses and uphold our family's standards.

The first time few times we did it, the kids mostly played games.  Another game night we had was so silly and fun and ended with kids doing back flips in my living room!  I really thought, this was so delightful...and a new experience for me, as a parent of tweens.

So, last week, I wanted to have another fun evening for my kids and their friends, but wanted to do something other than a game night...so we decided to have an art night, and it was a huge success.

My kids weren't too excited to paint on canvases because we had just recently done that, so I got the idea from my Art Camp Teacher sister to make "wearable art".  We used the art of Tiff Manuell as our inspiration to make clutches.  Using some canvas material that I already had on hand, the girls painted directly on the canvas material.  When it dried, we sewed them into little clutches or pencil cases.

It's really neat to connect with friends who are so kind and good and to see these girls (and boys) building each other up in friendship and making good choices together.  I could see that these friends had just as much by way of kindness, thoughtfulness, and tenderness to share with my children as I thought we had to share with them.  That is a blessing!

I will be looking for more fun ideas to do on "game night" in the future, so if you have any suggestions, leave me a comment, please!  Thanks!

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"Remember Me"-Themed Thanksgiving

 

I hosted Thanksgiving for our family this year.  The last (and the first) time I hosted was five years ago when Guy was baptized.  So it was time.  My children were so excited to host.  They love, like I do, planning parties and being creative and planning special things for their loved ones.  So this was a really fun family thing to do together.  But with Steve working on finishing the basement, and two little babies that we didn't have five years ago, this was a major undertaking which took a lot of work and teamwork!

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Back to School Apple Craft

Hello, friends!  I hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend!

We ran away to Palmyra, NY to visit the temple, see good friends, and have a few last beach days before we really, truly go back to school for good!

Near the end of summer, however, we made this little apple book craft. I was itching to make something and to make some memories with my kids (who are no longer babies) in the process!

Here's how it's done:

1. Grab an old, thin paperback.

2. Remove the front and back covers.

3.  Sketch a pattern like I did below (looks like half an apple) on one book cover. 

4.  Trace it on to your book pages and carefully cut with an exacto knife.

5. You'll end up with a big mess of page scraps, but stay with me.  Heat up your glue gun and add a line of glue to the spine, then manipulate the pages so that they come together to look like an apple.  Play with it until you're satisfied with the look and shape adding glue as needed. During this step, we also added a small twig.

6. Finally, using red and green watercolors, paint the edges of your pages to look like an apple, and add a small leaf-shaped cutout to resemble a leaf.

And voila, you have a sweet September decoration or a nice teacher gift.

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