BIG M&M Cookie Recipe

These are twice the size of a normal cookie - they baked out well and are super yum!

I used my snickerdoodle recipe, then I added 8 oz of M&M's to the dough, rolled them into big balls and then squished 5 more M&M's on top.

I first baked them up for my sacrifice lesson. When the girl's played the game and got an answer correct, they got an M&M. At the end, we talked about things we have to sacrifice for goals. I said are you willing to sacrifice these M&M's to reach your big goals? They all agreed and we went over the definition of sacrifice and then I told them they gave up something little for something bigger in return and pulled out the cookies. Of course they were all happy with their decision to give up the M&M's. Seemed to be an impacting object lesson ;)

Funny Sign

I was getting gas at Safeway and saw this sign on the gas pump:

What's pretty funny is that someone actually must have done this and then tried to make Safeway responsible for the damage it caused! So they were forced to post a sign - wondering how common it really is?

YW Bulletin Board item

I used this saying in Activity Days 2 years ago, but I thought it applied for YW too =) I am trying out out scribd to see how it works! I'll be adding this to our YW bulletin board.

Safe Place

Bookmarks with elastic

So, I saw these bookmarks in a store and what did I think, yup, I can make these all by myself =)

If you drop your book, you won't lose your place because it doesn't come off unless you take it off.

Cut your elastic to the desired length, loop a charm, bead or shrinky dink on the end and tie it in a knot, then tie a knot at the top . . . and that's the extent of the instructions. Anyone can do this - that's the best part!

I made one 15 inches, 20 inches and 24 inches as I took the average of most of the books in our house ;) The longest one is good for a school text book.

I'm going to give 3 bookmarks to each of my Beehives on their birthday for 2010. Super inexpensive. One down, only 17 sets to go - haha (we have a lot of girls and 4 new Beehives coming in this year).

These were shrinky dinks - that part did take the longest. But oh so cute =) I bought the paper at create for less for ink jet printers. Again the site for the cutest graphics for scrap booking is found here.

YW Game & Handout (idea) for Sacrifice

Building the Kingdom of God, Lesson #3, Manual 2

Here's a fun little handout I'm going to give the girls - I wish I could share the graphic, but it's copyrighted. If only I were an artist, I'd share the image with ya ;) I guess if you are a member at www.stackablecrew.com I could share/send the image with you =)

Someone had an idea to make a game out of the Sacrifice lesson, so I made a game board (how dare someone have an idea and not do the work - haha)

Board 1 found here and board 2 found here.

And here are the game cards:

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

YW Bulletin Board pocket

I guess our YW President wanted a pocket with papers for the girls to write what they're thankful for - hehe And I insisted on creating one so it would match:I will hang the pocket up and then as the girls fill in what they're grateful for, we can staple those up on the bulletin board.

YW Bulletin Board

I used shower curtains to cover the bulletin boards as they were cheaper than material by the yard, even on sale ;) And ribbon to hide the seams. Paper kept ripping and it is a pain to keep replacing. I designed everything you see (except the colored cubes logo).

YW theme we recite each Sunday (what, I should have ironed the material before putting it up? LoL):

YW President wanted this scripture up:

Value Focus for the month:

Calendar:

YW purpose:

2010 youth theme:

Logo for 'Be Strong' - youth theme:
Second bulletin board, YW motto & activities/events:
Pictures were hanging up, but we still need to cut them out and take quite a few more photos as some girls weren't there the Sunday they were taken by the stake. That and the fact that someone drew goatees on a few of the girl's pictures - have to reprint those ones.

Okay, so I cut all the girl's pictures into egg shapes to create flowers. I used a lady bug pin stuck in the middle to hold them up:

And someone actually stole the 'girl's camp' and 'standard's night' word art - rude! ;) I suppose they just didn't realize how many HOURS I spent trying to make it look nice and matching!

Invite for YWIE NB combined

Visiting Teaching Handout Jan

Found a cute web site with scrap booking images - http://www.stackablecrew.com/

January's VT lesson is 'Becoming Self Reliant'. Great message! Of course my lion handout doesn't have the copyright wording, so it turned out pretty cute ;)

Snickerdoodle Recipe

I changed up a Snickerdoodle cookie recipe and it turned out yummy =)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup butter flavored shortening

Mix butter and shortening together until combined.

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

Add sugars to butter mixture and whip for 5 minutes until batter is fluffy.

While that is mixing, measure and sift these 4 ingredients together in a separate bowl:

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Add to butter mixture:

1 tsp powdered vanilla (can add liquid)

2 eggs

Mix until combined.

Add flour mixture to the butter bowl and again mix until combined.

In a separate smaller bowl combine these 3 ingredients:

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

3 tbsp turbinado sugar (coarse sugar that gives a little crunch!)

Roll cookie dough into balls, dip into cinnamon concoction and lay on ungreased cookie sheet, bake for 11 minutes. Makes 36 cookies.

2010 Youth theme bookmarks

I just shrunk down the original image I designed to make a bookmark:

Want to print out some for your youth? 4 to a page - google doc found here.

These bookmarks are found here. The t-shirt logo for the 2010 theme is the 10 colored blocks with 10 different languages that say 'be strong'.

Primary theme 2010 necklace

Nat is visiting, so we made her a Primary necklace to match the theme of 'I know my Savior Lives':

I made a bottle cap necklace with a paper bead to match.

picture is blurry when I enlarge it, but it looks perfect when it's shrunk down for the necklace:

I used fonts Kristen, Amy, Stacy, Cheri, Sarah - Natalie's mom and aunt's names!

Want to make your own? Google Doc found here.

Reptile Zoo with Nat & Andrew