We are having a cozy evening in front of the fireplace (fake). We are doing a dramatic reading of The Modern Magi by Carol Lynn Pearson, ISBN# 1-882723-21-X. I would recommend this story to any who haven’t read it. We read it to our family yearly. Keep the tissue box handy. We will have pauses during the story for singing Christmas carols. We will also have our secret sister reveling. Should be a good night. (I hope).
Take care and remember the reason for the season.

Lisa

Easy idea for a gift for Dec. Enrichment

We are focusing our Dec. enrichment program on service. We made the easiest gifts to go along with this. We got a 1 1/2 in solid wood block (if there is anyone in your ward who gets craft things wholesale, these are very inexpensive). Then, we painted them with ordinary craft paint — solid color of either all red, blue, green. Then, 15 minutes later they were dry, and we tied 1/8 inch ribbon in differing colors to make them look like presents. We had also typed up a scripture about service (Mos 2:17) onto cardstock and cut them out like a card and put a hole in them and tied them onto the ribbon on the present. They turned out great!

At Enrichment, we are going to challenged everyone there to take it home and do an anonymous act of service for their families over the next 24 hours. Then, they are to leave the present at the site of service. The recipient then has 24 hours to turn around and do an act of service for someone else in the family, leaving the present as well, and have the present keep going up till Christmas. If they are single or in a circumstance where they can’t physically leave the present, they can put it on their windowsill as a reminder to do an extra act of service (more than what they would typically do for someone) each day until Christmas.

We hope it will be great — the presents were all done for about $40 for 100 sisters!

Jennie in Sacramento

by: Leanne In Michigan

Twiggy Stars:

Just pick up some twigs outside ( need 5 and trim them the same length with scissors ) and hot glue the ends together to make a star ornament. Glue on some potpourri and add jute for a string.

Decoupage plates with pictures from the Ensign:

Using a circle cutter, cut out a picture of a Temple etc. and decoupage it onto the back of a clear glass plate.  We also spray painted over the back to have color on the edges.  Use some iridescent and add glitter…so pretty.  Or decoupage tissue paper on the edges instead of paint.

Paper Temple Molds:

I bought a terra cotta mold of the Nauvoo Temple ( $25 ) and used printer paper.  Some of the sisters chalked some of it such as the trees using colored chalk.  This takes about 15 min. for each mold to dry in the microwave…Time consuming, but the sisters loved it. When done, they can be placed in a shadow box on display or just hung up on the wall, or in a plate stand.

You can always make the Patriarchal Blessing Envelopes that have been
mentioned so much lately. I have made 2 this week for our Enrichment on Thursday and they turned out so gorgeous! I used antique looking brads and small tassels to close them.

Savior Ornaments:

We used clear glass ornaments and placed a Greg Olsen picture of Jesus (printed out on cardstock ) inside.  First we added a bit of iridescent Easter type grass stuff (found it at Hobby Lobby ) in the bottom of the ornament.  Next we rolled up the picture and placed it inside with tweezers and placed the top on for hanging.  This was a fast one and so beautiful.

Marble Magnets:

We used the RS Seal (not the foil stickers from the bookstore… they won’t stick ) and decoupage them on the back of a flat marble (from the dollar store ) and added a magnet.  Since they are kind of heavy, a thin magnet won’t work.  We used a round thick magnet from Hobby Lobby and glued them on with Amazing Goop brand glue.  I’m not sure if plain old hot glue will work.  The instructions are from www.mormonchic.com website. We didn’t do these for Christmas In July, but we did make them for our sisters as a gift from the RS Presidency.

Good luck and have fun!

By: Jennifer in New York

Picture thanks to HFPE Group

This is the easiest craft ever.  You just have to copy The Living Christ on to vellum paper.  It is the cloudy paper you see allot on wedding invitations.  I went to Staples and got copies there.

Then I ordered pictures of Christ in the red robe from the distribution center for .50 each.  The picture you have to cut down to fit the 8×10. When I introduced the craft, I bought a very nice frame, so it looked great.

We advertised it as a great gift for Mothers day, Christmas etc.  Especially if you had a large family.  One of our sisters bought 10.  We also did the Proclamation of the Family.  You can put a picture of your family or the Temple behind it.  One of the sisters put a picture of her parents in white behind it.  She said that they looked like angels.

It is a great craft, and much cheaper than anything you can find at the bookstore.

by: Jaymi Omaha, NE
From our HFPE Group

This month went so well. I just wanted to get on here and tell you all about it, maybe some of you would like to do some of the projects, because the legwork has already been done. Not all by me though, I would like to take some of the credit, but I saw a few things done in my hometown, St. Johns AZ and there a quite a few talented sisters out here who helped out!

We did 5 different craft projects on a Friday night from 7:00pm to 12:00pm, hence the name Fabulous Friday. The five crafts were:

1. Flower magnets - These were awesome. The sisters could not get enough of them. We bought Michael’s all out of their simple daisy’s. We put a center circle in them. Used wire to frame the petals, and put a charm on top (The sisters went crazy painting them.)

2. Pebble magnets - These were really cheap so 220 of these were made. You just take a decorating pebble (those you see in the craft section of Wal-Mart that you put in the bottom of vases. Silicon (it is more permanent than hot glue), and paper. So easy and cute for gift toppers.

3. Mini Scrapbooks - These were mini brag books. The sister that made the sample for these did a great job they are only three inches by three inches (about) just enough to put your children’s pictures in, or an address book, or journal for your child, etc.

4. The Be Boards, foot long boards and 3 ft board (Pres. Hinckley’s B’s) These boards were AWESOME! I absolutely loved them. We thought most of the sisters would want to do the 3 ft boards, but we had almost 70 of the small boards and only 12 of the bigger. They were very cute.

5. 4th of July flags for decoration. We ripped five pieces of fabric, 7 by 1 inches, sewed them together, etc etc etc. And glue gunned them to a dowel and placed them in a cute bucket with sand. They are so cute as a center piece. I loved them.

The sisters had a great night, they brought their favorite snack and we talked the night away. Pretty fun and inexpensive for the sisters.

by: Shiloah Baker

Materials Needed:

• 3-4 inch heart shaped wreath

• pink spray paint

• 1 small unpainted wooden book

• 6 inches white tulle

• pink ribbon

• white, black, and silver acrylic paint

• tiny tip paint brush

• paint brush

• hot glue gun

Spray paint the wreath pink. Paint the wooden book white. Let dry. Using the tiny tip paint brush, write the words “Book of Remembrance” in Black. Using silver paint, paint a small temple shape underneath the words. Let dry.

Hot glue the book to the upper right side of the heart. Glue one end of the tulle starting under the book, down the side, and up the other side of the wreath. Tie small bows with the ribbon and glue a few on the tulle.

These are very pretty and make great gifts wedding shower favors, or gifts for young women.

by: Aubri Larson

Applying lettering to tiles:

*The tiles can be purchased at Lowe’s or Home Depot. I used a 12×12 size.

1. Rub tile with alcohol first. This removes any dust or residue.

2. Follow Vinyl Application instructions.

( -Carefully peel the tape and vinyl away from the stiff paper backing, hold the vinyl in position and stick. Rub the entire area firmly from one side to the other with your fingertips or the sharp edge of a credit card. The vinyl has a pressure sensitive adhesive and the harder you rub the harder it sticks.

- Remove the application tape by pulling gently in a downward position.)

You can display the tiles using a decorative easel. They are available at Michael’s Craft, Hobby Lobby, or Robert’s Craft store.

The vinyl lettering can be cut into any shape, font, color, and in any quote, in any size! Your imagination is the limit. It can also be applied to mirrors, windows and framed glass.

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Aubri Larson is a small business owner of Wall Words By Design- Great craft ideas or kits for HFPE. You can fully customize these for the sisters in your ward. A very extensive list of ideas and great customer service!

This super easy clay pot Christmas tree has a photo featured here.

Directions Found Here:

These are mainly pictures for ideas on doing your own 6 Be’s crafts. These have been submitted by those on our HFPE Group.

We also share links to craft instructions on any 6 Be’s Crafts found online. Please share any that you have or know of!

A website that we recommend for the vinyl lettering is: Wall Words By Design

6 Bee’s, patterns and pictures by: Genevie Doyle and available at the Deluxe Edition.

By: Shiloah Baker

A mission is a big deal in our home.  It does not matter if our son is only eight years old, we are teaching him the importance of going on a mission, marrying in the temple, and raising a righteous family.  In the scripture Proverbs 22:6 it says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Because I want him to keep his focus on things of the future, I made this key ring book.  The purpose of it is to remind him of the necessary steps to being worthy to go on a mission and I include the Twelve Articles of Faith for his memorization purposes.

Materials:

• Laminator (or laminating sheets)
• 2 8 1/2 x 11″ scrapbooking patterned papers (I used two that matched)
• large key ring (found in office supply sections)
• printed booklet on white cardstock (see below to download)
• 3 different kinds of matching fibers (several yards each)  *
• Paper adhesive
• Regular office hole punch
• Download PDF patterns (Clipart from LDS Clipart CD)

*Note:  Fibers are basically specialty yarns.

Directions:

1. Cut out all pieces of the book.  I left most of the articles of faith together in groups of three.
2. Adhere the book pages onto scrapbooking papers of your choice.
3. Laminate each book page
4. Hole punch the top left hand part of each “page”.
5. String on the key ring.
6. Tie the top with coordinating fibers.
7. Let your child take this to church for a nice quiet toy and great memorization piece!

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Shiloah Baker is an entrepreneur who runs the Homemaking Cottage & Co., an online business which sells books, eBooks, ideas, LDS related materials, and a special subscription service.  For more information go to: http://www.homemaking-cottage.com and http://www.enrichmentcottage.com

We are still recovering from the most fun day of the year! This year we had 15 crafts offered, varying in price, skill level and decorating style (country versus elegant) because we have such a wide diversity of incomes and interests in the ward. The crafts offered were:

• Apple berry beaded candle centerpiece (two pillar candles with a beaded pattern on a gold plate (BYO) with an apple berry pick)
• Apple berry table centerpiece
• Apple berry wreath
• A large wooden pumpkin cutout, that is sanded, stained all over, and the only the front painted orange, with a little bit of raffia and a green leaf.
• Wooden stars on sticks, in a cube base (very popular)
• A wooden plaque that had wooden tiles painted to resemble a quilt block.
• Holiday note cards, set of 5
• Painted glass candy jars (from the Dollar Store)
• A Halloween wreath with wooden cutouts to paint stuck to it
• A summer wreath with sunflowers and ladybugs
• Memory boards (upholstered board with ribbon stapled to them in a criss-cross design, and buttons glued on the intersection
• A decoupage box edged in gold pen (tear chunks of paper to decoupage, when
  dry, outline each piece of paper with gold pen)
• A eucalyptus swag

The most popular craft (37) was a season-less “gospel” craft. It was based on the March 2004 talk by Russell M. Nelson about the fruits of the gospel. On my printer, I took all the “fruits of the gospel ” (love, hope, faith, temperance, kindness, etc.) and formatted them to equal size regardless of the amounts of letters in the word, and used a blue-green font. Using an 11×17 frame (we crackle finished them in blue overlaid with white), cut green-grey art paper to fit the frame. Position post-its on the top and sides.
Then, using a 1″ leaf stamp and dark green dye ink, stamp an oval tree shape, overlapping the leaves, and not re-inking the stamp too often.

With a rose stem stamp (shaped like a parentheses), make the trunk.

Take large oval page pebbles (clear rubber dot stickers that look like water beads) and stick them on the white computer printed sheet words, centering the words in the page pebble. Cut out the page pebbles carefully (just use scissors) and stick them in the tree as fruit. Taking the leaf stamp with aqua opaque ink, print a few more leaves in aqua.

Tear a strip of blue green paper straight across to make the ground for the green and glue it on, torn side up (looks cool, like grass). Frame and go.

I used my Stampin-up kit that has parts for making a rose to do this (hence the rose stem), but you can do it how you like (free hand a trunk, use any leaf stamp). Everyone did theirs slightly differently and they all looked very neat. We offered them with or without frames, to keep the cost down.

The above idea came to me in a dream, after thinking about the tree with desirable white fruit. You could use this idea to make family trees also.

We a had breakfast and lunch buffet (bagels were free from a bakery the night before; tell them it is for your church group), played Christmas music, and had holiday decorations on the stage. We put up tables (according to how many signed up) and covered them with butcher paper, and put a sign on each table.

Each teacher brought materials packaged as kits (leaving out shared supplies) and written instructions (in case the sister couldn’t do it that day). We had assigned different teachers to teach 9-11, 11-1, and 1-3pm, so the teachers could have fun also. But people could do the craft any time, the teacher just wouldn’t be available.

And we do need to delegate more of the clean-up. It ended up just the 4 committee members at the end — everyone else boogied on home.

-Lynda G