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.

Baptism Book

Our oldest son turned 8 last month.

In our church that's a very special age.

At the age of 8 children can be baptized by immersion (in water) and become official members of the church. We are baptized the same way that Jesus was baptized as described in the Bible.

(If you would like to learn more about baptism you can click this link lds.org)

On this special day family and friends go to the church building and are able to watch the baptism along with hearing some music and talks about the gospel. 

I wanted to have something for my son to look back on from his special day, something that family and friends would be able to leave a sweet message in for him, so I came up with this sign-in book.

I put this together a few weeks beforehand so it would have time to be printed and shipped.

Ugly Sweater Trophy

This last week we had our Relief Society Christmas party.

(Relief Society is basically the women's group in our church. I am in charge of planning the monthly activities.)

Along with a dinner I decided to have games and a 'festive sweater' or 'festive outfit' contest.

(I'll do another post with the details of the games and everything).

To add to the fun I wanted to have a trophy and prize to give to the winner for putting forth the effort of dressing up of course! ;)

I just have to say, I'm pretty bummed that I didn't get a better picture of the finished product. I was so busy that day with last-minute prep for the party that I totally spaced it.

DIY Temple String Art

A few months ago I was trying to come up with a craft project for our upcoming 'Relief Society Super Saturday'.

I had Google searched ideas over and over and I ended up finding a picture of some temple string art, I don't even remember which temple it was a picture of, but it sparked my mind and thought it would make the perfect craft.

I had a an idea of what I wanted so I started sketching my own design of some temples, and I was really excited with what I came up with.

I had to make a 'trial run' to see if this would all work, and actually look like a temple, so this was the sample I created. I also needed a sample to show the women at church what we would be creating.

This is the Mount Timpanogos temple.

I loved the result, so I put together a tutorial together if you want to make your own.