Find Your Purpose

"You are not on this earth to be entertained." We're here to love, to serve, to dream, and to learn.

Find your purpose, and then live your life on purpose.

Can you imagine how wonderful life could be for everyone if we stopped expecting to be entertained all the time and took some time to serve, instead?!

For Times of Trouble

A quote from this fantastic talk: For Times of Trouble.

Pain is Temporary

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." -Lance Armstrong

(8x10, in pink and green)

Agency

"Mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His son." ~ Robert D. Hales (5 x 7)

The Empty Jar

I recently gave this framed (5x7) quote to my son and his new wife along with an empty jar. It really helps to understand that the temple covenants we make are just the beginning of the happily (for)ever after!

Also in 8x10:

Familiar

A favorite quote.
"Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar His face is to us." ~ Ezra Taft Benson (5x7 print)

Being in Love

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better that your dreams." ~ Dr. Suess

I printed mine on white metallic paper. It's lovely! (8x10)

Influence

“There is one thing the power of God and the power of Satan have in common: Neither can influence us unless we allow them to.”- Sheri L. Dew

8 x 10 printable

Also in black & white:

 

Turn Your Face to the Sun

I started this rooster sign about 2 years ago, finished the rooster, got sick and never got the lettering painted on because my hands were always so shaky while on Prednisone, I couldn't paint anymore. Well...I am proud to say that I am finally finished, and it's hanging above the entryway to my kitchen, in a spot that gets a lot of sunlight to reflect the metallic paints.

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. ~Maori Proverb

The inspiration comes from a photo I clipped (years ago) out of a catalog of a rooster watercolor painting by Susenne Telage called Hope Dawns. Her rooster is A-MA-ZING! I can't paint like that. I just don't devote the time to it.

But I will share how I painted the letting.

I followed this tutorial. I used an embossing tool instead of a ballpoint pen (can you see the indentation?) and I printed my font (Lobster 1.4) in light gray to save ink. It was fairly easy!

Creative Knee Patches

I've added fabric to the bottom of cut-off jeans before to make them cute when the holes are too large, but that always requires making shorts out of them. If you want to save the pants...give this creative knee patch idea a try. I promise the hardest part was ripping out the seams in the side of the jeans so you could get in there with a sewing machine.

Since I was patching my daughter's holey jeans, I made her monster a girl monster. I should have made the eyelashes black so they'd show up better, but she likes the aqua blue color. I layered a piece of pink fabric and a piece of jean material (because I KNOW she'll rip right through that cute pink polka dot print,) pinned it in place, sewed around it, and then I cut off the excess material in the inside. She says they are really comfy, which is a plus since at her age, everything is "itchy."

This star patch was another great idea, and my daughter loved picking the fabric.

One of the knee holes is pretty bad, the other is just starting, so I made a quick star pattern, making sure it was large enough to cover the existing hole, and traced it onto the jeans with a white colored pencil. Then I pinned a layer of fabric and a layer of denim to the inside of the jeans (with the side seam ripped open, of course.) Make sure that the patch is larger than the star shape.

Then sew around the star on the pencil line. (I'm thinking as hard as my daughter is on pants that I should have sewn a double seam around the star, but I'm too lazy to rip out that side seam again.)

It was really easy to sew around the star and THEN cut it out about a quarter of an inch away, instead of trying to cut out the star first and then sew it.

Remove the pins, flip it inside out, and cut away the excess patch materials inside the jeans. Then sew the jeans side seam back together.

Ta-da! An adorable "new" pair of jeans!

(Update: For another really cute idea using pockets as patches, click here.)

Young Women Birthday Gifts

Part of our birthday gifts this year for the Young Women are these cute note cards that they are to use to brighten someone else's day. It goes really well with the theme to Arise and shine forth.

I followed these directions except that I cut my card stock for only 4 cards to a page and I don't own any cute paper punches.

You know what that means, right?

Yep, I cut out each shape by hand. With about 32 girls at 4 cards each, I decided not to do several layers of the shapes on each card and only sewed on one shape per note card instead. I made a stencil for each shape and just had it sitting out to work on whenever I had spare time using leftover paper scraps from this project. I did hearts, stars, butterflies and birds. It was easy!

Then I printed out strips of paper and wrapped up four note cards for each girl.

We also made the girls cute little zip pouches.

 

May Your Life Preach More Loudly Than Your Lips

Cropped to print 8x10. 

"May your life preach more loudly than your lips." -William Ellery Channing

Cropped to print 5x7.

Arise and Shine Forth New Beginnings

For our Young Women New Beginnings night this year, we decided to use the mutual theme for the year, "Arise and Shine Forth". We thought hot air balloons fit perfectly with the theme so the week before the event we had the young women help make paper hot air balloons, modifying these directions. It was simple enough that most of the girls were able to easily make them with regular scrapbook paper and glue sticks.

 

To decorate the room, we strung crochet thread across the room (from air vents and existing screws...didn't want to make holes in the walls) and just taped up crepe paper streamers at random, purposely uneven intervals and then hung the hot air balloons with Christmas ornament wires, making sure our decorations were high enough that they wouldn't choke our attendees. ;)

My awesome friend Sara, who is also one of my counselors, made up a cute banner for the front of the room. It was lovely and dressed up the space quite nicely.

The girls also cut out small balloons for the pudding filled (YUM) chocolate cupcakes we made. We taped them to long toothpicks, (I cannot remember what they are called, but they're longer than regular toothpicks and smaller than skewers) and inserted them in the cupcake "baskets" to complete the hot air balloon theme. These hot air balloon cupcake tops were really simple so about 30 girls, ages 12 - 18 could make them, but were also really cute! Mixed among the cupcakes on the cupcake stand were hot air balloon Reese's and Rolo's. Some people don't like cake, ya know.

In my rush to finish up before parents and young women arrived, my photos were taken too quickly and this one and only shot I got of the dessert table is blurry. Buuuugs me. :(

It can be difficult to make the church building looked decorated enough to truly have that payoff for all your effort, but this time, we were really wowed. It did take time, but it was simple enough that we were able to have the girls assist us and that was what was important to me.

A Favorite Quote (x3)

"Be slow to take offense." (8x10)

Jellyfish Paper Lantern Night-light

My daughter loves mermaids and seashells and jellyfish.

We had a paper lantern light hanging in her room that we wanted to do something under-the-sea-ish with, but we didn't know what.

Well, after a few crazy days with some boy cousins a while back (love those crazy boys!), necessity became the mother of invention.

I cut off the damaged portion and I attached some wiring inside (it ain't pretty but it works) and hung some sequins and wired ribbon curls.

Voilà, instant jellyfish light!

We use an LED bulb and it makes a perfect night-light.