Our Prophet

This is a clip from the Priesthood Session of General Conference (of the LDS church) in April 2008. President Monson always tells the best stories. He never fails to make me smile. I can't wait for Conference this weekend! I'm definitely feeling the need for a spiritual boost.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head!

Yesterday was kind of a poopy day over here and today I've decided it's because Spring isn't doing what I want it to do. I want warmth and sun and it's cold and rainy instead. I know rain is part of Spring just as much as sunshine is but having to still run the heater is bumming me out. So, to put myself in a better mood...a little creation. Something cute in honor of rain!

Click to enlarge. Right click. Save image as. Save.
Print. Share. Enjoy.

(Bottom floral artwork from Promise Collection by ShabbyPrincess. More fabulous free downloads at ShabbyPrincess.com)

Random Insightful Quote of the Day

When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible.
~ Frederick Buechner,'Whistling in the Dark'

Alphabet Treasure Hunt

This is a little activity my mom came up with for me when I was two. She made two copies of each letter of the alphabet. Then she would post one set all around on the walls at my eye level. She would give me one of the second set of letters and tell me to go find the one that matched. My mom was pregnant with her third baby in three years at the time (and insanely morning sick) and this game gave her the ability to rest while I would go on a hunt and bring the letter back to her. Over the years there were other variations, and of course there were times when she could look with us instead of handing us the letter from the couch but this is the general idea. There is actually an article that she wrote all about it in the November edition of knowonder! magazine*. Her article is called "The Amazing Alphabet Adventure" and it's on page 112. You should definitely give it a read. My mom is a mother of 6, she did daycare in our house for years and know she's a elementary school teacher for kids with special needs. She is a veritable fount of knowledge when it comes to creative/educational activities for kids.

Moving on to "little Amy's" present day story. I don't think I've mentioned it on this blog before but my son Alexander is going to be three in July and he's never said a single word. He babbles in his own little boy language but never a word in English (or Spanish. The doctor asked me that once when I said he doesn't speak English, "What language does he speak?" Totally didn't get what I was talking about. So I told her he speaks Curious George.) I know there's plenty of kids out there who didn't talk right away but we can't help but wish he could say things like "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "Yes, mother I am now ready to be potty trained."

Anyway, the reason I share this here is because I've noticed lately that I've been putting off teaching Alexander a lot of different things because he can't talk yet. I've been waiting and so focused on that one thing, I've been slacking in other areas. I've realized now that just because he's delayed in that one aspect, doesn't mean he can't learn things like matching and recognizing his letters, which is all this game requires. So I decided to give my mom's idea a try.

I used velcro for the wall posting, in case you're interested; loop half on the wall (semi permanent but that's how serious I am about this) and the hook part on the back of one set of letters. 

Good letter cards can be used for any number of learning games so I wanted to share some printables. **Free Free Free!** Get all three sets and then you can mix and match as your child becomes more familiar with the upper case block letters.

Upper case print/block letters. Full jpeg alphabet in zip file. 

All Arial font except "I" is Lucida Fax (to distinguish between lower case file "l" and upper case file "I".)

Click for 4shared download

Lower case print/block letters. Full jpeg alphabet in zip file.

All Arial font except letter "a" (to simplify as possible writing guide) 

Click for 4shared download

 Both upper case and lower case cursive letters. Full jpeg alphabet in zip file.

All Learning Curve font with "guidelines" added.

Click for 4shared download

If you read my post from last Thursday you'll remember that I printed my cards out on regular printer paper and then laminated them. Of course you can use whatever paper/card stock you want and they don't have to be laminated to serve their purpose. I just wanted mine to last a really long time.

Here's Alexander trying to get the matching A to stick to the wall, too. Sorry son, no sticky on that one.

I effectively posed this picture, because I called him to me and handed him the A and pointed to the A on the wall. So, no he didn't magically learn "A" overnight. I figure we can practice and have a lot of fun! Here's to better teaching and communication! 

I love you, little boy!

*Story has been moved to a new webpage on knowonder! Click here to see it.

Contact Paper Laminating: Tutorial

For this tutorial I decided to use the alphabet project I'm working on. I printed out letters on full sheets of paper and planned to cut the sheets in half to separate them. There are too ways you can do this if you're laminating something. You can laminate first and cut afterward, or you can cut first and then laminate the pieces. If you do it the second way you'll be cutting twice in the end because you will most likely need to cut off the excess contact paper. However, doing it the 2nd way you can leave a contact paper border. This will actually protect the paper just a little bit better since the first way leaves the tiniest window, the depth of the paper itself, for water and the like to seep in. Also, if you're like me, you might just like the way the clear border looks (makes it look really laminated); so that's the way I did it.

Print out all your pages and get down your paper cutter.

After wrecking a few pages because your cutter blade needs sharpening, switch to scissors.

Gaze adoringly at your contact paper. 

-If you're wondering where to get contact paper in the first place, you can find it with the shelf lining paper in most stores or you can swing by Amazon and you'll find it on your doorstep. ;-)

Cut out two pieces of contact paper that are slightly bigger than the item you're laminating.

Take the first piece and peal off the backing. The most effective way I've found to do this is to get a really good grip on a corner and peal the backing off in one long swoop. If I do a little and then try to adjust my angle or grip, I tend to end up with kinks in my adhesive layer. Also, remember that touching any of the sticky with your fingers will leave finger prints that you can't wipe off. So if that matters to you, try to hold by the corners and edges as much as possible.

Lay that piece sticky side up on a hard, flat surface (kitchen table). Lay your paper-to-be-laminated down on top of the sticky contact paper. The thinner your paper-to-be-laminated is, the more difficult this will be. I used regular printer paper so I started by adhering the left edge of the W paper and then smoothing the rest of the paper down from that point. The next couple of steps might demonstrate this technique better. 

Take your 2nd piece of contact paper and peal off the backing. With the sticky side down (so the sticky sides of the two pieces of contact paper will be facing each other), and starting with one edge, press firmly and smooth the 2nd piece of contact paper over the top of your printed paper. (You'll be using both hands for this, I just didn't have anyone to take pictures for me at this point.)

You'll want to go slowly at first until you get the hang of it.

Hopefully you won't have any bubbles once you're done adhering the top layer but if you do you can smooth them a little bit with an old credit card or similar plastic object. Depending on your project, a few bubbles aren't the end of the world but if you really don't want any you need to be extra slow and careful in the previous steps.

Now grab your scissors and trim off the excess contact paper until you have your desired border width (or no border at all)

For first timers I'd definitely recommended practicing on single items until you get the feel of the smoothing process. Once you develop some confidence in your skills you can move on to doing larger projects or multiples.

This picture shows the two handed system better. Smooth with one hand while using the other hand to keep the contact paper somewhat taut so it doesn't drop down and make bubbles.

Even after you think you're ready to try bigger stuff, you'll still need to keep a check on your speed because bubbles and skewed layering can happen to the best of us. (There aren't any problems in this picture but about 2 minutes later I got in a rush and botched two sheets in a row.)

So there you go! With about $3 in supplies and just a little more time and patience I will soon have 2 full alphabet sets, large and laminated. I'll be making a post (with free printables!) about the finished product and its use sometime in the next couple days but for now I just wanted to show you the laminating part. It's a simple project but I'm pretty excited about it so please check back and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Family Time Saturday

This past Saturday my family and I had the sweet opportunity to go our nephew's baptism. About 30 minutes before we had to leave our house to go to the church, Kevin mentioned that he wished he had thought ahead and got something to give "T", like scripture marking pencils or something. A little fast thinking and I had it, "I can make him a bookmark!" I finished getting myself ready and left Kevin to dress the boys while I hopped online for a quick google search. I would have liked to design something myself and make it really personal, but at that point I had about 15 minutes before we needed to be on the road.

I found this Armour of God one first but I have this thing about printing only one small picture on a full piece of card stock so I pulled up a couple more (Scripture Hero and Book of Mormon) to make it a set of three. I threw them into my Corel program and did a little cropping and arranging and resizing to get them to fit.

Then I hit print. Then I did a little freaking out when it started coming out of the printer in grayscale, so I did a little "argh"ing and a little printer-settings-examining and a little stupid-grayscale-box-unchecking and hit print again. It came out right that time and I ran downstairs to my trusty roll of clear contact paper to laminate them. (If you've never laminated anything with contact paper, come back tomorrow and I'll have a full tutorial with pictures on how to do it.)

I didn't notice until we got to the church that the scripture at the bottom of the Armour of God bookmark didn't import and therefore didn't print. So I ended up borrowing a pen and writing the reference on the back of the book mark. (And I just barely now noticed that the "Book of Mormon" part on the Book Mormon book mark didn't import either, oh well.) It ended up being kind of neat because the Bishop shared the exact quote from the introduction to the Book of Mormon that is on the second book mark. After the service was over, Kevin and I offered to let "T" ride back to Grandma and Grandpa's house with us. We presented him with our little gift on the way and he told us all about how he needed one for his Bible and he was surprised that he got to keep all three book marks.

We all went to Chic-fil-A for dinner and then to Kevin's brother's house ("T"s house) for cake and ice cream. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house first, though, so we could take family pictures while everyone was still dressed up. So here's my little family in our most recent family shot. (Also, it's finally a picture of me modeling the finds I shared here and here.)

Congratulations again "T" on your baptism! Uncle Kevin and I still owe you a special day with us. Your choice! Love you!

("Aunt")

Spreading the Printable love

My brilliantly-awesomely-fantastically fabulous SIL Katie got her first submission posted at ISharePrintables! Her blog is http://www.smilelikeyoumeanit.net/ and that's also her profile name on IShare. She submitted her design for "play" personalized credit cards for kids. There's also a layout if you want to make your child a "driver's license". My nephew loves to go through his parents' wallets and pull all the cards out so Katie just made him a wallet and "cards" of his own. Fun solution to a practical problem! My son does the same thing so I will probably be using this idea sometime soon. Check it out and make sure to leave her some comment love!

Link to Pillsbury Giveaway!

I'm one of those people who "never wins" anything but I still like to enter giveaways for things I'm interested in. 

So here's a link to Tidy Mom's most recent giveaway. Pillsbury is offering  four different baking products and and an HD Flip camera to one lucky Tidy Mom reader. There are 6 different ways to enter and I already had five of them covered because I follow Tidy Mom's blog semi-religiously. So go check it out! Just remember what we talked about last week and make sure to include me in your acceptance speech if you win. ;-)

More Easter time art

I was thrilled to see that a few people really liked my Irish Blessing subway art. Thank you all for your feedback, it means a lot to me.

St. Patrick's Day is behind us and we’ve got a lot of extra time to get ready for Easter this year (it’s not until April 24th). So here is a little printable to give you a jump start. This image is sized to be an 8x10 but I printed mine as a 5x7 on some pretty blue cardstock.



I also really wanted to do something with my favorite Primary song, He Sent His Son.

I like the purple and white one the best but I wanted to share all the options I worked on. Feel free to use any of them. Just make sure you click on the one you want to make it bigger before you save or print it.

The multi-colored-pastel one is a wordle. If you’ve never used Wordle before, you should try it because it’s pretty neat and really easy to do. For this one I wanted to tie some words together so I checked the FAQs and found that you can do that by putting a tilde ( ~ ) instead of a space between the words you want to keep together. The tilde disappears when you create the wordle. Give it a try! Wordle's fun to just play with.

Happy Printing!

I'll let the leprechaun say it...

If you still want the free printable to make this St. Patty's Day Iron-on shirt, don't worry, it's not going anywhere. That post is here.

TOFW

I had the awesome opportunity over this past weekend to go to Time Out for Women in Nashville, TN. My friend Anna and I drove up there Friday afternoon and attended the Friday evening event and then stayed overnight and went to the big Saturday session as well. I'd never been to a Time Out before and I was amazed at the quality of the presentations. I spent about 70% of my time there crying (in a good way) because the Spirit was so strong. I missed Kevin and the boys but it was so nice to get spend time with Anna and have a little vacation.

Our trip was also extraordinarily special because Anna got a call a few weeks ago asking if she was interested in going to this Time Out and if she would be willing to give one of the presenters a ride from Nashville to see her family in Atlanta. The lady said that if we could do that, the presenter would provide two free tickets for us at will call. So Anna called me to make sure I could commit to go and we jumped on the opportunity. 

What we didn't realize was that the presenter was actually giving us her "Guest" tickets. Which meant when we got to the Convention Center we were escorted through the audience to reserved seats...in the SECOND ROW! We were sitting with the presenters and their families and friends! On Saturday we got to eat lunch with them and to kind of formally meet everyone. So fun! Then of course we got to road trip it up with the lady we were taking to see her family. Her stories are so amazing; some tragic, some inspirational, some HILARIOUS! It was awesome to get to talk with her with Anna.

Anyway, if you've never been to a Time Out for Women, Oh oh oh, you should go! Even if you left our "Guest" experiences out of the equation, the time and money were SO worth it. There are still a bunch of stops on the 2011 tour. Go to the site and check it out. I definitely would love to go again one day.

Fake Cupcake Display!

Check out this fantabulous before and after my sister did in our parents' basement. She includes a tutorial on how to make faux cupcakes.
Here's a preview of the before:

click to enlarge

Can you guess where she put the cupcake display? That's right, she made over the fish tank! She's got tons of other plans and let me tell you she's on a roll! Apparently watching Top Chef is fuel for some pretty brilliant ideas. :-) Love you Boo! I think it turned out great!

Dream Big

It's 3am and my son just went back to sleep (he has a bad cold). I needed to cool down (not really emotionally but physically, it's hot as heck in here) so I got on to do a little blog hopping. On one of the blogs I looked at they were giving away a sign that says "Dream Big."

This is a phrase I have seen thrown around on motivational signs and posters all my life, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's a lovely sentiment. Catchy.

I think that until recently, however, I had a rather problematic misconception about what those words actually meant. I spent a lot of time thinking that in order to be "Big" my dreams needed to be conspicuous. You know? *Flashy*. They needed to be dreams of Academy Awards and Grammys and Miss America and Broadway and New York Times Bestsellers. I can't pinpoint exactly what it was that originally gave me this idea; it's been floating around in my brain for as long as I can remember.

Now let me be clear, for any of you out there that actually want the things I just listed, I am NOT knocking them as dreams in and of themselves. If that's what you want, you go for it and feel free to mention me in your acceptance speech. But my dreams are actually a little different than that and thinking they weren't good enough is the problem I'm learning to fix.

I enjoy acting and singing so I just assumed I should be shooting for the oscars, but somehow I find I get all the excitement I need out of singing the occasional solo in a church program. I still think that seeing my name on a New York Times Bestseller list would rock my socks off (the money wouldn't hurt either) but a couple days ago I got something like 150 pageviews in 24 hours on this blog and I felt about as fulfilled and happy as could be.

So do you want to know what some of my big dreams are?

Alexander learning to call me Mommy.

Raising kids who know that I love them. Who know that their father loves them. Who know that God loves them. 

Learning to bake cookies without a recipe (and without trashing the kitchen in the process).

Serving on a mission (or two) with Kevin one day.

Learning to keep my house clean.

I don't think that anyone here would claim that these are easy things to make happen (except maybe the baking thing for some of you who need to come over and share with me).

There are others and for me everyone of them is way "bigger" than winning any number of contests. You might not think that my laundry is important enough to equal winning a nobel peace prize but I would have to disagree. I've learned that the universe really does revolve around me. It revolves around every single one of God's children individually. Everything in the universe is working for the best for each one of us and there is power in every decision we make.

So there are my dreams. What are yours?

Irish Blessing Subway Art

When I was a senior in high school I was in the combined school choir and there was a song we sang at the end of almost every performance. I’d definitely need some warming up before I could sing it today but the words have stuck in my mind over the years. So I did a quick google search to make sure I really was remembering the lines just right and decided to try my hand at some subway art.



I did it in green to display for St. Patty’s Day but I also thought a plain black and white version could be nice year round.


I sized these to be 8x10. I printed mine out on a full 8.5x11 sheet of photo paper and then just matted it with an 8x10 mat.

I've been admiring subway art for a while now but this is my first go at it. Lemme know what you think.

Voice of Truth

I was driving my son to an appointment yesterday and I was listening to 104.7 the Fish when one of my favorite songs came on. Here are the lyrics... Love it!

Voice of Truth
by Casting Crowns

Oh, what I would do to have
the kind of faith it takes
To climb out of this boat I'm in
Onto the crashing waves
To step out of my comfort zone
Into the realm of the unknown
Where Jesus is,
And he's holding out his hand

But the waves are calling out my name
and they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
time and time again
"Boy, you'll never win,
You you'll never win

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
and the Voice of truth says "this is for My glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

Oh, what I would do
to have the kind of strength it takes
To stand before a giant
with just a sling and a stone
Surrounded by the sound
of a thousand warriors
shaking in their armor
Wishing they'd have had the strength to stand

But the giant's calling out
my name and he laughs at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The giant keeps on telling me
time and time again
"Boy you'll never win,
you'll never win."

But the voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
and the Voice of truth says "this is for My glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

But the stone was just the right size
to put the giant on the ground
and the waves they don't seem so high
from on top of them looking down
I will soar with the wings of eagles
when I stop and listen to the sound of Jesus
singing over me

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
The Voice of truth says "do not be afraid!"
And the Voice of truth says "this is for my glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me (calling out to me)
I will choose to listen and believe (I will choose to listen and believe)
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

I will listen and believe
I will listen and believe the Voice of truth
I will listen and believe
'Cause Jesus you are the Voice of truth
And I will listen to you.. oh you are the Voice of truth

Irish Toasts

Health to the men, and may the women live forever!

 ~ ~ ~

Saint Patrick was a gentleman,

Who through strategy and stealth,

Drove all the snakes from Ireland,

Here’s a toasting to his health.

But not too many toastings

Lest you lose yourself and then

Forget the good Saint Patrick

And see all those snakes again.

  ~ ~ ~

'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!'

(Happy St. Patrick's Day!)

 ~ ~ ~

May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.

 ~ ~ ~

 May your casket be made from the wood of a 100 year old oak that I shall plant tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

There’s still time left before St. Patrick’s Day so I used 3 of these toasts to put together some little cards to drop in the mail or deliver with some treats.
 

I don’t know if you can tell from my photographs of the ones I printed out and put together but the “That I shall plant tomorrow” is being used as the inside of a folded card with the “casket” part as the front of the card. The other two are just flat cards. I printed mine on regular paper and then cut out the separate pieces and mounted them on cardstock. To print one of the cards, click on the image to make it larger and then save it to your desktop. Then open it or import it into a program to print it out. If you try printing one of the individual cards just from your browser, I’m not sure if it will let you size it down properly. The size they should be is about 3.5 x 4.5. The way I printed mine was all on one page like the image below and I just sized it to “fit the printable media”.

I hope you enjoy these fun sayings. There are a ton more Irish Toasts out there, these were just some of my personal favs.