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.

The Perfectly Imperfect Goodwill Butterfly

Meet Mr. Wooden Monarch Butterfly. He is getting ready to get painted. Don't get me wrong, I love me a good monarch butterfly, but he doesn't go with my daughter's room. And he only cost about 25 cents. Sorry Mr. Wooden Monarch Butterfly. Your black and orange just have to go. So we spray-painted him white.

Since he was to live in Starlet's room and I am trying to spend more quality time with her, the two of us (well, three if you count Mr. Wooden Butterfly) sat down with some mod podge and sponge brushes and some paper shapes cut with my Quickutz (I let Starlet choose the patterned paper and pick what shapes she wanted) and went to town. She only let me mod podge two of the shapes.

Is it perfect? Nope, far from it. I should have sanded down Mr. Butterfly's rough spots and probably primed him first (once a monarch butterfly, always a monarch butterfly) and I don't think I personally would have chosen to place the big flower right on his little body, but he now hangs in Starlet's room over her bed as a happy reminder of a fun afternoon. He looks like he might even land on her giant Pink Metal Goodwill Flower. Fun times.

Have you done any perfectly imperfect projects lately? Leave a comment and share!

Goodwill Goodies

So today I hit my favorite place to shop- the Goodwill Outlet Store! All of the following items cost me less than $5:

First, how cute is this shelf? I know, it's completely random, but the wood color matches my kitchen and living room finishes and the wood tones in my office. And it's a teeny tiny street scene! Behind glass! It's just one of those things that I can imagine my kids staring into and dreaming of the little people going into the little stores. (okay, I admit it- I'll be staring into it and dreaming of the little people going into the little stores too...)

Speaking of tiny cute things, check out this bookend/pencil holder/mail holder!

And last but not least, these two beautiful little music boxes. Well, technically the one on the left isn't an actual music box- it's just a small pedestal/stand thing that plays music. The one on the right has a clear plastic piece inside that allows you to see the workings of the music box- the kids loved that one!

Here's a closer look at the pretty shamrock inlay in the music box. I am a box person, I

can't help myself!

Have you found any beautiful thrifty goodies lately? Leave a comment and share!

CVS Savings

Along with trying to get back into blogging, I've also been trying to get back into couponing. I've been able to hit CVS the last couple of weeks, so I went in with $8 in Extra Bucks to spend. I did two transactions:

1. Azo Itch Relief- on sale $6.99, get $5 ECBs, used $2/1 printable

Colgate Total Advanced- on sale $2.99, get $2.99 ECBs, used $1/1 coupon from 10/3 SS

Dial 3-pack bar soap- on sale $1.99, get $1 ECB, used $0.35/1 coupon from 10/10 RP

Dawn Hand Renewal- on sale $0.97, used $0.50/1 coupon from 9/26 P&G

Brach's Candy Corn- on sale $0.99, used $0.99/1 coupon from CVS coupon-printing kiosk (woohoo!)

Total after coupons and ECBs = $1.41

2. 6 Renuzit Adjustables- on sale $0.88 each, used buy 6 get 6 free coupon from 10/10 RP

Total after coupons and $2 ECBs from first transaction: $0.85

So I spent $2.26 total out of pocket and I now have another $7.99 in ECBs to use next time (same amount I'd brought with me!)! Could I have done better? Probably, but I was tired so I didn't feel like getting all mathematical. And I forgot to ask for a raincheck on the Purex 3-in-1 sheets (B1G1 @ $7.99, use 2 $3/1 from 10/10 RP = $0.99 each) but oh, well! I'll stop at another CVS later this week and see if they've got them. :-)

Have you gotten any good deals this week? Leave a comment and share!!

The Perfect $5 Fall Jacket

The last time I posted I mentioned going to the Goodwill outlet where I picked up a very fine crock. I also snagged this super cute fall jacket- don't you just love the red color and the gorgeous pattern in the lining? Because the Goodwill outlet is pay-by-the-pound, I am pretty sure I paid less than a dollar for this jacket (I bought ten items and paid $7 total...you will see more of those items in future posts!). The only problem was that it had two buttons missing!

I was going to be in the neighborhood of a fabric store today, so I brought the jacket with me so that I could match up some buttons and thread (and buy needles...how sad is it that I don't have needles??!). I found some buttons that weren't an exact match, but they were close enough that you wouldn't really notice a difference unless you were actually comparing buttons. I spent less than $5 on materials.

After a few minutes of handiwork (and only a few expletives), voila!

How cute am I? LOL! LOVE the color and LOVE the fitted look. I can't wait to wear this to the pumpkin patch next weekend. ;-) (by the way, a special thanks to my husband's grill and the timer on my camera for taking this lovely shot)

Have you picked up any great thrifty finds lately? Leave a comment and share!

Comeback Take 2?

I have been so inspired lately by surfing from gorgeous blog to gorgeous blog (Abby's Garden, The Shabby Chic Cottage, and A Little of This, A Little of That) and I realized- I WANT TO BLOG!!! Problem? As always, TIME!

But today I came to a realization: I can still blog, just maybe on a slightly smaller scale. I don't have to publish a fully illustrated novel every time I post. So I shall start now, with the photo you see above. Ahem.

This morning I was watching Martha Stewart (I call her my grownup Mr. Rogers) and she was addressing viewers' kitchen organization problems. A photo popped up on the screen, and I thought, How on earth did Martha get a picture of my kitchen utensil drawer???! Well, of course it wasn't my drawer- it was a viewer's, and Martha shared her advice: clear out some space in that drawer by gathering some of your more frequently used items and place them together in a container (I believe she used the word "crock") on the countertop.

Now, I know that this is not rocket science. I have seen these "crocks" at many people's houses, but for some reason today I thought, Yes! A crock! That is what I need! And I happened to be going to the Goodwill outlet. So while I was there, I put myself on the lookout for my very own crock and I spotted this little beauty. It is simple, solid, a perfect size, and come on, who doesn't love sugar?

The end.

P.S. Crock crock crock. I just love that word. Crock.

A Fairy Special Birthday!

It's hard to believe that my little fairy princess turned ONE on Thursday! It was enough to make me want to blog. ;-) Well, the party did, anyway! I feel bad abandoning my blog, especially when I spend so much time gawking at so many other FABULOUS blogs like Penny Carnival, I Make Stuff, and Thrifty Decor Chick.

So I have returned to share this beautiful party with you all! All parties must start with a theme, and ever since Little Boo was born people have told me she looks like a little elf. Well, I wasn't really into the whole 'elf' theme, but I thought maybe we could play off of that and do a 'woodland fairy' theme! So I set up a little photo shoot in the back yard and took many adorable fairy photos of my very photogenic angel. It took me all of 5 minutes, and the photos are just precious! I included one on the invitation along with a poem that said,

Peek into the garden and what do you see?

A sweet little fairy sitting under a tree.

Her name is Little Boo and she’s turning one!

Won’t you join us for an afternoon of magic and fun?

Then of course I added the date, time, and place (by the way, I did not write this poem- I found it on another website, but for the life of me I can't find it now! Sorry!). I wanted to include a picture of the invite on here but they were e-mail invites (I got going on this kind of late...happens when it's the third child!) and I couldn't figure out how to turn my Word document into an image file.

Anyway! Let's move on to decorations, shall we?

This was the setup for the food table. I just used a green sheet which I spray-painted with some glitter paint (you can't really see it in this photo) and then I bought fake flowers from the dollar store and popped the blossoms off the stems (the kids had a blast helping me with that part) and sprinkled them about the table in a whimsical fashion!

On the menu were these lovely little nests filled with dijon chicken salad...

Some delicious toadstools...

A garden bounty platter (aka, veggie tray)...

And of course some fairy fruit salad!

Here are a few of the cupcakes on display- I didn't want to overwhelm the table by putting them all out, but they were so pretty I had to display a few of them! I purchased just the iced cupcakes from Wal-Mart (their whipped icing is SOOOO GOOOOD!) and then I purchased the tiny sugar flowers and butterflies from a baking supply store. I also bought edible glitter which I sprinkled over several cupcakes.

You might have also noticed in the 'tablescape' that there was a little stand of minature cupcakes off to the side- this stand was actually a votive candle holder, but the mini cupcakes fit into it perfectly! I made Little Boo's smasher cake separately, and I had plenty of batter left over (her cake was just 6" around) so I thought the little bitty cupcakes would be kind of fun and cute. :-)

We played two little games at the party; for the first, we had Little Boo sit in her high chair in the living room. All the guests gathered around her in a semi-circle, and everyone got a sheet of paper and a pen. When I said, "go," everyone had 10 seconds to draw a picture of her. After 10 seconds, they had to pass their paper to the person on their left. I then started the time again and the next person had to continue the drawing. We repeated it several times until the portraits were complete! There was quite a lot of laughter and groans, especially when people got a picture and they couldn't even tell what it was!! I gave the younger kids pieces of paper and put out crayons so they could just draw their own pictures without having to participate in the paper-passing. Little Boo loved being the center of attention!

The second game began with me reading a tiny scroll, supposedly left for us by the fairies. In it the fairies explained that they found out it was Little Boo's birthday (Serendipity Squirrel saw us getting ready through the kitchen window) and so they had snuck into the house and left fairy wishing stones for all the guests to help us celebrate. I had gone to a local store that specializes in gems and unique rocks and raided their $0.25 bin for cool-looking rocks, and the kids helped me hide them all over the living room (above Little Boo's reach!). We had little gold and silver favor bags with tags with each guest's name on it for them to put their fairy wishing stones in. The reverse side of the tag read,

It's time to celebrate the birthday of a precious little girl!

You are a special person in her "fairy" little world.

We are so happy to share this magical time with you;

This wishing stone will bring you luck and help your dreams come true!

And yes, I did think that poem up myself! :-)

A few other little party touches:

- We printed up some wallet-sized prints of Little Boo's fairy photos for our guests to take home with them (we had mostly family come).

- Plates and napkins were a simple solid pale yellow from the dollar store.

- I used green leaf lettuce as 'bedding' for the nests and the veggie tray, which was a simple touch that really made them look nice.

- We had notecards and pens and a basket with a sign asking guests to please write a note for Little Boo for her to open and read on her 16th birthday.

- A few of the decorations, the notes, the portraits from the game, and prints of photos I took at the party will all go into a time capsule for Little Boo to open when she turns 16.

Just so you know, I found many of the recipes I used by simply going to a recipe site and typing in search terms of things having to do with my woodland fairy theme, like "fairy", "nests", "flowers", etc. This would work with any theme you choose- just envision it in your mind and start typing in words that describe what you're going for!

Hopefully I will be back soon with more beautiful thrifty ideas for you! School starts this week, so it'll just be Little Boo and me at home. I'm going to try to make naptime productive!