Relief Society Super Saturday

First of all, I am well aware that this post is long over due.

At least I'm getting it done people! 

For those of you who aren't familiar with what I'm even talking about here, I'll quickly explain.
Once a year the women's group in our church gets together for a 'Super Saturday' where we basically eat some good food and make some crafts.

Who wouldn't want some of that?!

I am the one in charge of planning this, and I was really excited with what I had come up with.
I had two crafts available for the women to make, and I brought them to church a couple of weeks before our big day so the women could see what we were offering and decide if they wanted to come.

The two crafts I had available for the women was the DIY Temple String Art and the DIY Reversible 2x4 Craft. These linked posts are tutorials to show you how to make each craft.

This post is to show you how we set up everything for our Super Saturday.

Volcanoes and Dancing Raisins

My 3 year old is obsessed with volcanoes.

A few months ago we had done baking soda and vinegar volcanoes and I was looking through those pictures at the huge smile on his face and I knew we needed to do it again!
This time we took it up a notch and we ended up playing with this for almost an hour.

When we first started out we were planning on just making some volcanic eruptions.

My {Realistic} New Years Goals

This past Monday night my husband took over the weekly Family Home Evening lesson and I loved what he presented. It helped inspire my goals and get me motivated to work on myself.

He talked to our boys (mainly our eldest while our 3 year old colored...) about the importance of the new year, setting goals, and trying to continually work on ourselves. 

He had our son list categories of his life (i.e. academics, spiritual, musical, etc.) and asked him to set one or two goals in each category. 

He talked about how important it is to work on multiple areas of life to help us be more well rounded.

He told our son to also make sub-goals (smaller goals to help build up to complete the bigger goals). I loved this because I feel like it doesn't set him up to be overwhelmed. It gives him almost check points to work up to so he can actually complete things.

So with all of this in mind I set my goals as well and wanted to share them here in hopes that it might help someone else.

Hallway Closet Organization

Guys, I am so excited we finally got this checked off our to-do list!

I am loving how this turned out.

This is our hallway closet.

It's supposed to just be a coat closet, but the way the layout of our house is, it doesn't really work for just that purpose.

On our main floor this is really the only storage space we have, which meant we needed it for a lot of different items.  

Let's get a better look at the 'Before' picture to see what we were working with...

Shoe Rack Tutorial

In the winter months, since we're stuck indoors so much,  I start to notice projects around the house that I haven't gotten to yet.

This would be one of them.

When we first moved in to this house over 2 years ago I was bound and determined to make some sort of shoerack/shelving in our master bedroom closet. 

It bothers me when stuff is spread out when I can have it stack up, if that makes sense.

Well, throw in yard projects, painting projects, being pregnant, and having a baby, and our closet kind of got pushed to the back of my mind for a while.

A few weeks ago we made a trip to The Home Depot to buy some stuff to organize our hallway closet and while we were there my husband grabbed some shoe racks that were like $30 each (!!)

He told me it's been 2 years of me talking about building something, and he just wanted to get the shoes off the ground. 

Reluctantly I let him buy the racks and the next day I put one together.

I hated how it looked and it was too small and way too boxy.

This kicked my butt into gear and I took it apart, boxed it back up, and made shoe racks myself.

For a ton cheaper.

Reindeer Wreath Toss

For the Relief Society Christmas party I planned a few weeks ago we had dinner and minute-to-win-it type games.

I found a couple of ideas on Pinterest and then came up with a few of my own.

I had seen a reindeer game for sale where someone wears balloon antlers on their head and the other players tossed rings to catch on the antlers, but I didn't want to spend our budget money on that, so I made my own version of the game.

This could also be great to make for your little ones at home!

Baby Food Jar Candles

I've mentioned here in the blog a few times that I am the one in charge of planning the Relief Society activities for my ward (church). 

Last week was our annual Christmas party and the Relief Society President (lady in charge of the group) wanted a small gift to hand out to each of the ladies at the end of the evening.

After like a week of tossing ideas around in mind head I remembered that I had been hoarding these baby food jars from like 2 years ago, and I decided that I was going to turn them into candles.

I wanted a special Christmas type message to go along with the candles, and at first I was going to go with something along the lines of when Jesus says 'I am the light of the world', or 'let your light so shine' but I couldn't decided yet for sure and I knew I wanted the candles, so I just started there.

I actually really enjoyed making these, I've always wanted to make my own candles, and I love how these turned out.
About a 2 weeks before our Christmas party the church we belong to came out with their #LightTheWorld campaign (It's 25 ways in 25 days to serve others and bring Christ to our minds this Christmas season. To learn more about the full campaign click here).
The Christmas party was a success and at the end of the night I took a few minutes to talk about the candles.
I told the quote from Harry Potter where Dumbledore says "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
The candle is all ready to go, but it can't light itself.
We need to take action, we need to actually light it for it to bring us light.
The same goes for the Christmas season.
We need to include Christ in our celebration and bring the light into our lives.
I hope it made sense when I was talking, ha ha sometimes my words come to me better AFTER I'm done talking.
Anyways, I've included a full tutorial for you so you can see how these candles came together.