Courageous Parenting

I am getting ready for January's RS Activity. We are doing a Wizard of OZ theme and teaching courageous parenting with electronics: computers, phones, screen time.  This is the flyer. Found the lion & quote on Pinterest and love it! I have it laid out to print double sided.

Gum Snowman

I had fun with the kids making these cute, little snowmen. It is just a pack of gum (you can get a 4 pack of gum at the Dollar Tree) wrapped in paper and decorated. Fun for stockings or for the kids to give to their school & church friends! I wanted to pass them out to my class too. My son thought the big eye was funny, such a boy!

Stocking Clues

Our family tradition is for the children to wake early Christmas morning and open stockings. I always loved that time of sibling love, laughter and Christmas magic. 

This year I am doing stocking clues for the kids. All of our stocking are similar and have no names on them. I wrote a letter from Santa that will be propped in front of the stockings Christmas morning. 

I found clues on Pinterest.

I wrapped each child's stocking gifts in one color.

 The clues end with and envelope with wrapping paper scraps. The name of the child is on the back of the paper I used to wrap their gifts. Then they just open the stocking with the right color paper! Merry Christmas!

Hot Cocoa Gift

Cocoa to go please! Cocoa & Marshmallows already in the cup. Stirring spoon tied to the outside and just add hot water. Fun gifts!

Making chocolate covered stirring spoons and straws. The kids love the new fat straws to stir and drink cocoa.

Brown Paper Packages Relief Society Activity

 Warm, woolen (or burlap) mittens, blue satin sashes, snowflakes, a few of my favorite things.

 Brown paper packages tied up with string.

 Hot cocoa bar with gingerbread, strudel and cheese cake bites (snowflakes not up yet)

Paper to write names on for our raffle

 We raffled a Christmas Service Advent Frame. The days before christmas you open a card to read a service you will do that  day like, make Christmas cookies for a neighbor, let someone go in front of you in the line at the store, read Luke 2 etc.
We also raffled the 2x2 wood nativity.

 We raffled 2 Service Mangers with hay (or cut raffia). Our family is doing this and loving it. Every week you draw names to see who you will focus on serving in your family. Every time you serve, you get to add 1 straw to baby Jesus manger. The goal is to have a soft bed for the Christ child before Christmas day.
The plaid papers are a Scripture a Day Advent Chain Countdown that was also raffled. I printed the scriptures on Christmas paper and every day you read a scripture that relates to the birth of our Savior.

 Chocolate dipped Marshmallow stirring sticks for the cocoa bar.

This was how the paper in the other picture related to the raffle. If you wanted a service manger then you put your name on a green paper, blue paper was the scripture chain, etc.

It was a fun night. We had a 10 minute lesson on how to focus Christmas on Christ.
We learned how to make our own gift boxes with everyone folding their own papers along with the teacher. 25 min
We learned some creative gift tags that we also got to make. 25 min
We took a cocoa & treat break 10 min
We had a favorite things gift exchange. Everyone brought a "favorite thing" in a brown paper bag. We told why we brought it and did a gift exchange with our gifts. So fun getting to know the women. 15 min
Raffled gift to help our sister do Christ Centered activities in their homes this Christmas.

You are "Kneaded"

 We had a Paris themed Auxiliary brunch. I totally forgot to take photos when it was set up! Darn! But this is a couple pictures of the mess when we were cleaning. The pendants were pink and hanging with black and white photos of Paris. We used Pink, Black & White.

Cookie Bags For the Town's Tree Lighting Ceremony

I made cookies for our town to hand out at their tree lighting ceremony. Yummy gingerbread with a small frosting cup (small containers found at Walmart). I added a popsicle craft stick to spread the frosting. I love how they turned out!

Gifts

 I am tickled PINK that you're my niece!

 A gift for my niece that was having a hard time. It is a drink jar full of pink stuff. So cute!

 We feel comfort knowing we are prepared for an emergency, like a candle gives us comfort in a dark room. Our Savior is the candle in this world offering peace and comfort to all those who seek Him. Light always overcomes the dark.

Visiting Teaching for September. Our stake had been talking about 72 hour kits and being prepared so that was what I had on the brain. The VT message was on the Savior's ability to comfort us. I saw a similar idea on pinterest and totally used it. It is a jar with candles and matches. Mine is in my kitchen to use in a power outage. 

X-country Awards

The Cross Country Awards for this year! I gave the top 5 runners MVP. I also gave dedication, effort, improvement and commitment.

Zebra Cake

 I made a zebra cake for a friends birthday. The inside is way more chocolate then I wanted. I was hoping for more white. I just used sugar paper for the black stripes.

 I did some cupcakes to match. The batter is purple.

My Bird Book

Bird books I put together for cub scouts. We are going to do the cookie cutter bird feeders first. Then I will give them 25 minutes to "bird watch" (directions below) using their books. Then we will talk about what they thought was cool about the birds. We will finish by making birds out of Oreos.

My $1 store has binoculars for the bird watching!

Print out as many of this page as you need.
Below is activity directions.

 http://www.saltwater-kids.com/2010/12/thrifty-gifts-bird-seed-ornaments-for.html?m=1

Found on blog.birdsparty.com

Mountain of the Lord

Handouts. 3" temple with mints inside.
I got the printable here: http://cookienut.blogspot.com/2010/05/building-temple.html

Cub Scouts

Found this great idea and Arrow of Light Ceremony idea here:

 http://ponyexpresscubs.blogspot.com/2012/03/candy-bar-ceremony.html

Copied this idea as well for the bags to hand out what the cub scouts earned.
http://nutty4stampin.blogspot.com/2013/06/llama-ladies-summer-blog-hop-take-2.html

The Mission Impossible Activity

Notice how all the clues are things the boys learned how to do before the activity in their "Top Secret" pre-activity packet! An example of clue #2 is below.

http://craftsbyamanda.com/2014/01/scratch-valentine-gift-certificates.html

is the site I used to make my own scratch off for #6. It worked great!

 The pre-clue was the picture of the bird for activity #10. I wrote small next to the bird "house". So they had to look in the "birdhouse" for the next clue.

The dynamite and explosives that the scouts have to recover.

***We did this for Family Home Evening too. I just changed the scout stuff to "the family is under attack" and we were searching for the clues to protect the family. We used "The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

 Agent Registration and check point. We fingerprinted here and checked ID and passports.

 The enemy attacked and the scouts had to shoot all the villains before recovering a clue at the scene. One of the bears was the "sketch artist" and had drawn a picture before the activity of a "witnesses" description of the bad guy. We used that sketch to identify which villain. The clue was hidden behind Captain Hook, who was our bad guy.

The Super Sleuths!