Communication Handout

Improving Communication Skills handout for lesson #8, manual 2:

Found Cheez-it's with letters on them for my handout. Filled 3x4 bags with 25 crackers. Designed a topper that says on the front 'form your words light & mild in case you need to eat them' AND 'good communication is a great blessing to a family'. On the back it says 'ways to improve communication in your family:

Be a good listener.
Accept other members of the family as they are.
Confide in parents and other family members.
Care about the interests of other family members.
Be affectionate.

Give sincere compliments and approval.

Keep confidences shared with you.

Help to create a good environment for communication.

I started with these elements:

And ended up with this layout:

Found the freebie digital scrapbooking graphics

here and here.

Silly Olympics

I did 'silly' Olympics for a YW activity competition to WIN a makeover with our Beehive girls. Most of the girls want the makeover from Susan, a gal in our ward - and 2 girls will earn them! I gathered some ideas off the Internet and made my own medals. I tied in Ephesians 6:11-18 about putting on the whole armour of God. Nice the YW has a torch as a symbol as it was easy to put on our medals:I used my flower punch in gold, silver and bronze colors after I used a circle punch for the above part:

I hot glued the gold, silver and bronze (red) ribbon on one corner of a dove chocolate:

and then on the top corner:
and did the same on the other end of the ribbon on the other side of the chocolate (my intentions when I went to the store was to buy peppermint patties as they are circular, but their packaging is a big rectangle now, so I opted for square shaped chocolates):

Here they are with the ribbons completed:

And the circles taped to the flower punch out ready to hot glue onto the chocolates:

This was the main side that would show:

And this was the back side with the message:

Here are the gold ones:
And the bronze ones:

And the medals completed:
I made 8 of each medal as we had 8 stations.

We did Javelin - throwing Q-tips - I added names to them so it would be easy to mark places.

Shot put - throwing cotton balls - they really liked their pictures on them:

Discus - throwing paper plates - labeled them with their names:

Swimming - blowing corks with straws back and forth 4 times in a pan filled with water:

Torch Relay: picking up a lifesaver from a skewer and transferring it to another skewer about 10 feet away.

High Diving: standing on a chair, dropping pennies into a glass of water - they got 10 pennies each

Archery: shooting rubber bands at a paper plate target - they got 5 tries (only had to hit the plate, not just the bulls eye)

Weight Lifting: using a hymn book balancing on each hand and seeing how long they could hold their arms outstretched

If the girls tied, I had the girls with the highest scores go again, like the archery, the top placing girls got to shoot 2 more times and the high diving top scoring girls got to drop 5 more pennies.

. . . would have had more photos, but the girls stopped using my camera and started using their cell phone cameras - I didn't notice until we were done =( Definitely assign 1 person to take photos!

We ate blue chips, red salsa and white sour cream for a snack while I gave them their medals.

All the girls keep telling me what a fun activity this was - I highly recommend it =)

It took us about an hour to set up, Bryonie (one of my Beehives) helped me with this activity as the other Beehive leader was out of town. She used the stopwatch and helped me write down scores at each station.

Pickle Recipe

The pickles I canned at the beginning of this month are awesome - go ahead and try it yourself, the recipe is easy and the process is fairly quick!

15 small pickling cucumbers

40 fresh dill sprigs

2 large onions, sliced

10 garlic cloves, sliced

1 qt water

1 qt white vinegar

1 cup canning salt (do not substitute)

Cut each cucumber lengthwise into 4 spears. In a large ziplock bag, combine the cucumbers, dill, onions and garlic; set aside. In a saucepan combine the water, vinegar and salt and bring to a boil stirring just until the salt is dissolved. Let it cool and then pour over cucumber mixture and let sit overnight in fridge.

Next day, divide cucumbers evenly into 4 jars and then divide up onion mixture into jars evenly and pour juice until jars are full (you will have left over juice). Steam bathe (bath?) them for 15 minutes. Place in cool area or fridge for 10 days. Keeps good for 3 months.

I'll make these again =) I thought they looked a little wilted to me when I first opened them, but they're crisp - yea!

Cucumber Salad Recipe

1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp pepper

3 cucumbers, thinly sliced

1/2 cup red onion, sliced

1 yellow, orange or red bell pepper, diced

Combine vinegar, sugar, water, salt and pepper in a small saucepan and let it simmer just until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, let it cool to room temperature. Prepare cucumbers, onion and pepper. Add to vinegar mixture and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Yum!

Bookmark with magnet

Here's an idea I stole off the Internet for making bookmarks with magnets, works great! I used it with my lesson on Living in Love & Harmony. Just score an 11 inch long card stock at 5 3/8 and 5 5/8 and fold. Put 2 different pictures/handouts on either side and place sticky magnets on underside.I took this stuff from the lesson and used some freebie digital scrapbooking graphics: The girls got Valentine Cookies too:
Incoporated the story of The Little Red Hen because we learned importance of sharing the work in the home and I changed the 'bread' to 'Valentine Cookie' per an idea from Vonda.

Someone got a puppy!

Meet Cannella - yup, we got a puppy! So cuteness and playful:

Her name means cinnamon (which is a good description of her coloring) in Italian - Jonathan came up with that =) We will probably call her Ella for short.

Paper Cupcakes

I designed a cupcake for each Beehive, they got to choose the colors, so we could have a cute display in our classroom (mostly to make it easier for the girls to be aware of who was missing that week from church). The cupcake freebie digital kit is found on Sugar 'n spice site.

I couldn't find any sprinkles (fast enough), so I shrunk down a bunch of freebie graphics and made my own ;)

Valentine's Card for Jonathan

Here are some cookies I dropped off at work for Jonathan, I used to make a lot of what I brought so he could share with his co-workers, but he didn't like to share - LoL As if I didn't bake him up yummy stuff all the time - but now I only make enough just for him ;)

I made lemon frosting for his cookies since he loves lemon flavoring.

1/4 cup butter

4 oz cream cheese

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla (could probably omit)

1/2 tsp lemon flavoring

1/2 pinch of salt - hehe

just enough milk to make it the consistency you like

Cream butter and cream cheese together, add the powdered sugar, flavoring and salt. Add milk a tiny bit at a time until thickness of frosting is desired. Add coloring if ya want to the whole batch or in smaller bowls with spoonfuls of frosting.

I dropped off a card I made too. I cut out letters KISSES and then cut my rectangles using card stock, traced the letters onto it and then cut out some of the letter to show just enough overlap, glued the letters on the cardstock and then added cute graphics, yeah a lot of work ;)

I did a 'freebie' search for digital scrapbooking to find all the cute things I added in this card.

I typed two small love notes on 2 graphics, added some words to the graphics and printed them out and let my plotter cut them out. I added some ribbon and it was finally done =)

Jonathan found a card that said 'kisses' on it for me too this year:

Can you tell that's our word? hehe We ate at the Purple Cafe on Thursday night to beat the Valentine's Day crowds - it was sooooo yummy. We had an artichoke dip with crab on bread and a lobster mac and cheese (gruyere cheese) with these amazing crispy green onions on top. I think they should change the name to a pasta dish so it seems more appetizing, but we highly recommend it - now to see if I can duplicate it! =)

Potato Salad Recipe - Yum

Chop up 1 cup celery and 1 cup white or red onion:

Add 1/2 cup light mayo, 1/2 cup sour cream & 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 tsp kosher salt & 1/2 tsp pepper:

2 1/2 lbs boiled & cubed red potatoes, 3 hard cooked eggs diced & 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley:

I like to eat it while the potatoes and eggs are still warm, but it's super yum chilled (for at least 2 hours) too:

Valentine Cookies for the boys

I used to only make goodies for holidays for the boys when they younger and bring to their elementary school so they'd feel special, but now that they only have 1 & 2 years left, I feel like I have to do it again ;) And they loved it! I guess the moral of the story is - don't stop bringing stuff to school for your kids because they really do like it. I didn't sign love mom or anything, but they both said I could have =) Awwww.

I love sprinkles! I would have spent more time decorating them, but as I had the idea to bring cookies to school on Thursday morning that I'd have to bring them to school that day because there was no school on Friday! But they were tasty and the boys could have cared less if I spent more time making a pattern or not so messy - hehe

1 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp cream of tarter

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla - cream until fluffy. In a separate bowl add all dry ingredients and stir together. Then add to butter mixture. Refrigerate 2 hours or longer. Roll out and cut into shapes, bake on parchment paper at 400 degrees for 4-6 minutes.

Frosting that dries hard:

2 cups powdered sugar

3-4 tbsp milk

1 tbsp corn syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix together, add color if desired.

Beaded Watches

My mom picked out like 10 different beads that didn't really go together . . . ;) I was able to use some of them and by the 4th pattern, she liked it - LoL
I put together a YW value color watch too:

Jewelry Designs

I beaded a green jewelry set:

And a pink jewelry set:
Fun, fun =)

Keaton as a Red Wolf

Here is Keaton as the mascot at the High School:

He says the head part is very uncomfortable. Last time he wore it the bridge of his nose hurt for 2 weeks. So we didn't get to see him in action, he was told he was going to be the mascot the 2nd half of the basketball game (and we didn't get there until right before halftime =( But I guess the film people were there early so he ended up doing it for the 1st half.

Visiting Teaching Handout Feb

Some more self reliance stuff - I think we must have missed this in the past so we're getting it in abundance now ;) We had a church lesson on it, last month's HT and VT messages as well as this month's HT & VT message.

I used the house template from papercakesandicing blog and just used it with the scripture D&C 88:119 from the VT message for this month. My flower stem says 'Managing Resources wisely 'stems' from' and the red flower middle part says 'wise planning' and in each of the flower petals it says 'financial matters', 'personal health', 'education', 'home storage' & 'emotional resiliency'.

My handout found here.

YW Handout for Home Environment

I had the girls each choose a name for their 'home' and I made a handout for lesson #5, Manual 2 on Home Environment:

I used the quote 'Order is essential in the heavens otherwise, chaos would rule. Order is just as essential in our homes' on the temple picture and the scripture D&C 132:8 about a house of order, not confusion.

Then I incorporated 'when life hands you lemons' . . .

and gave them lemonheads instead of lemonade since it was fast Sunday!

The quote from the lesson says:

Decide now how you will positively influence your family members and home life when 'sticky' situations arise. YOU can make a difference by keeping the spirit present.

Canned Pickles

I have been doing a food co-op for the last 6 weeks and get lots of fresh veggies/fruit for $15. My friend PJ gave me a recipe for canned pickles since we got cucumbers in our last basket.

I marinated it overnight:

Then I strained the juice and brought it to a boil to make sure the salt was dissolved. Distributed the spears evenly and then the onion/garlic/dill mixture and filled the jars with the vinegar/salt juice. I boiled them for 15 minutes and they all sealed! hehe Yes, that's the best part when you're canning ;)

The recipe says to wait 10 days before tasting . . . so if this post is deleted in 10 days, then you know they turned out disgusting - LoL And if they're yummy, I'll post the recipe =)

Bracelet Redo

My friend gave me this bracelet last year - I loved the silver parts with the shiny hearts and sayings, but the smaller beads were orangish and sort of didn't really go with the sparkley red:

Another thing I loved about this bracelet was the red dangling heart charm - see it? So cute!!!

So I rebeaded it with beads that I had and now I'm really excited to wear it. It looks like a Valentine's bracelet, but I think maybe I could wear it year round if I wanted! =)