Rock Your Christmas Card!

My 3 sweet munchkins with Santa last year. :-)

I read an article recently in which a magazine reader asked, "In this day and age of e-mail and facebook and instant technology, Christmas cards seem a little old-fashioned. Should I even bother to send any this year?" I would like to answer that question with a resounding "YES!!!!" Yes, they are old-fashioned, and that is what I think makes them so great. When you walk into someone's home you don't flip open their laptop and start surfing their facebook account. You do, however, peruse the photographs and cards fixed to the fridge and say, "What a cute kid! Is that your niece?"

Now, more than ever, is the time to go back to the days of ink and paper and stamps and envelopes and show friends and family that you can put a little more heart into their Christmas greeting than a click of a mouse. There is something meaningful about holding something in your hand that came from the hands of another, and it is a special experience that I, for one, will never give up!

One year, being my crafty self I decided to hand-make all of our Christmas

cards. Were they pretty? Yes. Did it make me crazy? Most definitely. Luckily, with sites like Shutterfly you can do all the hard work with just a few clicks- no glue stick required! I was just checking out Shutterfly's immense collection of holiday photo cards, and I got even more excited to start designing my own. What I love best about their collection is that you can add not just one, but up to 12 (yes, TWELVE!) photos to your card! My friend, the budding photographer, gave us a great deal on our family photo shoot and I loved pretty much every shot she sent me, so I'm just glad I don't have to pick just one!

Shutterfly also has every design you could hope for, from modern to classic to downright funky. If you still need an idea for your family photo, an online photo card site like Shutterfly is a perfect place to get some inspiration. Once you're ready to design your own card, the other great thing about Shutterfly is that they work with your budget- you can search the cards by price! Perfect! If you're more concerned with the design, you can search by the number of photos you want to use, the format (flat or folded), paper type, card size, color, or designer. I just love it when these places make it simple for me.

Once you get hooked on their photo cards, you can check out all the other fantastic ways you can use your family photos, with everything from birthday invitations to wall calendars (Christmas present for the grandparents, anyone?) and more!

I'm off to go design mine now...I'll be sure to take a pic when they arrive!!

Spiritual Sundays: Thankful

For the beauty of the earth,

For the beauty of the skies,

For the joy which from our birth

Over and around us lies,

Lord of All to Thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise!

What are you thankful for this holiday season?

Thanksgiving Placecards

I never have time to do papercrafting, so I always try to find good excuses to sneak it in...this time it was to make these elegant little Thanksgiving placecards to be sold at a silent auction to benefit my daughter's preschool. With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I thought they would be both beautiful and useful- a great combination when it comes to a silent auction!

If you've never done papercrafting but you'd like to give it a try, placecards are a great place to start. For these I simply picked out some patterned paper I liked at Michaels, then teamed it up with two solid colors of cardstock and matching embellishments.

Use a solid color 12x12 piece of cardstock and cut it into 9 4x4 squares. Each of these will be folded in half (or "tented") for your placecard. Then simply cut the patterned paper slightly smaller (or not, as seen below- I just made it 2x4 to fit the front of the placecard) to serve as your mat, then cut the other solid cardstock smaller than that and adhere it on top.

Some helpful hints:

- Ink the edges!! It will give it a more finished look. Take an ink pad and simply run it around the edges of the paper. Using a brown ink pad and scuffing it along the edges will give it a nice aged look.

- Use a paper cutter for quick, straight lines. These run about $10 and are SO worth it!

- Corner rounders or paper edgers (like scissors that cut a pattern into the paper) can add interest and class to your project.

- Use the right adhesive- a glue stick will work fine for bonding paper to paper, but if you are adding any kind of fabric or metal embellishments, you might want to consider glue dots or special double-sided tape made specifically for those kinds of materials.

Have you crafted anything for Thanksgiving? Leave a comment and share!

Short & Sweet: Fairy Calendar Art!

Remember my goal of doing non-novel-length posts? Well, I'm going to give that a shot again! I was at my favorite bargain spot, the Goodwill Outlet, When I spotted this beautiful calendar. It was outdated, of course (2008) but I just loved the art in it, so I bought it for $0.25.

I brought it home and dug out some 12x12 LP/scrapbook frames I'd bought at Michaels awhile back on sale for $5.00 each (I've found they often go on sale at this price). I had intended to use them for some of my favorite scrapbook pages, but I never got around to it, and they were perfect for these calendar pages. I had Starlet pick out her two favorite, which I also loved, because the one on the left looks just like her and Little Boo together, and the one on the right looks just like her dancing with big brother Monkey playing the flute in the background!

Cut, framed, and on the wall in the girls' room! Ta-da! Instant fairy art. You could do this with any old calendar if it's got great art you want to save. Could I have been a little more creative with them? Yeah, but I'm trying to keep it simple, remember?

Got any super-simple beautiful thrifty projects to share?

The Great Halloween Feast

Since I pretty much fell off the face of the blogosphere last year, I thought I'd share some photos from our "Halloween Feast of 2009". It wasn't actually a feast- more of a nice dinner, but I decorated more than usual because we were supposed to have family come and have a real feast, but Starlet was sick with strep throat so we decided to keep our germs to ourselves and the rest of the family took the feast elsewhere. There's still time to dress up your table if you haven't made preparations already- here are some ideas that might help you out!

I purchased most of the decorations from the Dollar Tree- the only ones we already had were the large candleabra and the wall sconces (and the framed picture, of course, but that's always there with the sconces).

We just used a black plastic tablecloth and paper plates and napkins.

I really think that the candles were a nice effect. I especially loved putting candles right in front of these little gargoyles to illuminate them. Creepy.

Peat moss also looks quite creepy when paired with some random plastic skulls scattered about!

For dinner I made Dinner in a Pumpkin (find the recipe here) along with cornbread pudding. Yummm.

Here's hoping you have a spooooooky Halloweekend. :-)

30-Minute Toasted Pumpkin Seeds! YUM!

I'm a little pumpkin, orange and round!

Here is my stem, there is the ground.

When I get all cut up, don't you shout!

Just open me up and scoop me out!

We had family pumpkin carving night last night! Well, we had kid pumpkin carving night last night. They had a blast and each made up their own designs (well, Little Boo had help from Daddy).

The pumpkin in the middle is Monkey's. He decided he wanted it to be scary- the mouth on the forehead, an eye next to the nose. He said that he wanted it to be really scary so that it would scare all the trick-or-treaters away and we could keep all the candy for ourselves. Hmm...I like the way he thinks...

Today Starlet and I made our family's favorite toasted pumpkin seed recipe. It's super easy, and if you've never roasted your pumpkin seeds before, I recommend having a box of tissues handy after you make your first batch. You will be shedding tears for the thousands of pumpkin seeds that have gone to waste over the years. It's a tragedy, really.

Ohhhh the golden crispy deliciousness! Here's the recipe:

No rinsing or soaking required- just get rid of any guts still clinging to the seeds.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Bring salted water and seeds to a boil- 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds; 1 tablespoon of salt to every cup of water. (I usually reduce the salt by about a quarter- today I did 2 cups of seeds and I omitted 2 of the tablespoons of salt and they were just fine)

3. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and drain water from seeds.

4. Spray a cooking sheet with oil. Spread seeds across the pan in a single layer. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees until golden.

5. Take them out of the oven and allow to cool. Then start eating them, realize you can't stop and devour the entire batch.

6. Go to the store,buy more pumpkins just for the seeds, make new batch, repeating steps 1-4, and this time instead of starting to eat them, put them in an airtight container and hide them where only you can find them. Because then you won't have to share.

The end! Enjoy those yummy seeds!!!

Do you have any tasty pumpkin recipe traditions? Leave a comment and share!!

Spiritual Sundays: Chester the Church Mouse

"Reverence is more than just quietly sitting..."

Yeah, but quietly sitting is an awfully good start, don't you think? We have been having some serious problems with quietly sitting at church, and so I decided that a Family Home Evening lesson on reverence was in order.

I searched the internet looking for ideas that might help with my reverence topic. One of the first sites I found was from The Family Home Evening Spot. It was there that I found this poem:

“What If … ?,” by DaLee C. James, Friend, Sep 1996, 22

If a mouse would ride to church

In your pocket on this day,

What might he tell his family

That he heard you do or say?

Would he tell them you were reverent,

And you listened to your teacher?

Or would he say he’d never seen

Such a noisy creature?

Would he tell them how he loved the songs

You sang so sweet and clear?

Or would he groan from all the talking

That entered in his ear?

Could he take a little snooze

As you walked nice and tall?

Or would he scream with panic

As you galloped down the hall?

Would the little mouse get seasick

From the tipping of your chair?

Or would he feel safe and cozy

As you quietly sat there?

Would the chapel be a reverent place?

The sacrament the same?

Now tell me, would the little mouse

Be really glad he came?

If a mouse would ride to church

In your pocket on this day,

What might he tell his family

That he heard you do or say?

I LOVED this little poem, and I knew that my kids would love it, so I decided to actually make a little mouse and call him Chester the Church Mouse. I created him in about 5 minutes using an old baby sock, a rubber band, some felt, googly eyes, my hot glue gun, and a permanent marker.

After reading the poem to the kids, I picked the child who was being the most reverent while listening and I told them where Chester was hiding. The child brought Chester in to Family Home Evening and I explained to them that Chester was going to come to church with us on Sunday. During Sacrament Meeting (when we are all in the chapel/sanctuary together) he would sit with whichever child was being the most reverent. He did not like to be around loud noises or wiggly children, so the person would have to be very quiet and still, or else Chester would want to go somewhere else.

Well, Chester made the journey to church with us today and he had two very reverent children to sit with. When one of them would start to get a little wiggly or noisy, I would *help* Chester move over to the other one who was being quiet. On occasion, the children would forget about Chester even being there and start to get a little rambunxious, but once they saw me move Chester, they would remember and get very quiet and still again. And they were very pleased to have him come back and sit with them.

I'm sure Chester probably won't be with us forever, but the goal is to have him be the reminder and to get the kids into the habit of being quiet and reverent at church. It was such a relaxing experience for me to actually be able to sit and listen without constantly saying, "SHH!", breaking up arguments, and trying to keep them from kicking the backs of the seats!

Here's to Chester the Church Mouse.

Anyone else have any tips or tricks for reverence, or any other FHE ideas that have worked well for your family? Leave a comment and share!

To learn more about what I believe as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, visit www.mormon.org.