I haven’t blogged in a long stretch. I’ve been beating myself up about it.

Despite the fact of my massive crossed-off To-Do list at the end of every insanely busy day and at the end of a particularly hurricane force few weeks, I pound my head over the remaining list items that would likely require Superman turning the earth back a few times in a row for me to actually end up accomplishing. 

We do this. 

We women who struggle beneath the burden of our own over-expectations. 

We write off our accomplishments as so much nonsense, and instead pick at the scabs of our flaws and insecurities until they become scars.

Yesterday I had this all brought home in a beautiful and poignant way that I hope I’ll remember.

I have a lovely neighbor who is sweetness personified. She is the kind of person who notices people and acknowledges their best selves. The kind of person I aspire to be when I’m in my less cynical and introverted moods. Her name is Lanea, and she dropped by with cookies yesterday. 

In the course of conversation, she said: “you are just so amazing. You are brilliant, and literary, and you always stay up on the coolest new music, so you’re just so cool. And if that weren’t enough, you sew and craft and I want my kids to be just like yours…” At which point I, blushing, interrupted her with, “WOW! You make me actually sound like I’m really something!” and she replied, “how is it that you don’t know you are?”

We moved on with our conversation, but my mind kept dwelling and ruminating on that phrase. 

HOW IS IT THAT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU ARE? 

How is it?

How do we let ourselves forget?

How do we get drowned in minutiae, dragged down by insecurity, misdirected by a false definition of humility until we don’t see ourselves clearly? 

Because in complete and total honesty, I had nowhere near the perception of myself that sweet Lanea painted.  I feel awkward and square-peg-in-the-round-hole and never, ever enough or else WAY too much.

We are told many, many times not to define ourselves by the perceptions of others, but to have our own inner sense of self – and I do think this has merit.  I can’t begin to tell you the ways I’ve been described that are VERY far off from Lanea’s (too often including the B word) – but sometimes the mirror of a loving friend can help remind us that we are more than a sum of our accomplishments vs our failings - the running tally we keep in our heads.  We are each so much more than that.

HOW IS IT THAT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU ARE?  It is critical that we know. When we allow ourselves to let go of fixation on what’s wrong or annoying or frustrating about ourselves, we stand taller, stop beating ourselves up, and are proud of our divine nature. We understand more clearly what our talents are and what we can offer the world.  And our daughters will be proud of us and themselves.

I wonder if Lanea had any clue how deeply she touched my heart, or what a turning point it has been in my thinking.  That is the power of a good woman, saying good words in the right time. 

I'm starting right now. To work harder to think better of myself.  To treat myself with the same level of compassion I'd give another human being. And then especially to pay it forward with words of validation and reminder to those women I admire all around me. Who inspire me and encourage me and yet I rarely step out of my little box to speak those heartfelt words for fear of sounding silly. Having just been on the receiving end - it is so far from silly. It means the world.

May we all speak up with power and confidence to lift one another.

Because you are amazing. You are powerful. You are talented. You have the ability to make a difference. And if you say, “I'm not sure you're talking about me, that makes me sound like I’m really something,” I say, “HOW IS IT THAT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU ARE?”

 We're celebrating Pioneers again here in Utah, and in honor of one of my favorite pioneer stories, I'm sharing a game I made for my kids a few years ago.  For those of you unfamiliar with the story, when Pioneer settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they planted crops hoping for a harvest in time for that first winter.  Just before harvest, an infestation of crickets descended on the crops, devouring everything.  These were not average crickets - they were huge, menacing, rotten things and their role in this historical plague earned them the nickname "Mormon crickets," forever after.  Despite all their efforts, the settlers could not save the harvest and were about to despair when flocks of seagulls came out of nowhere - eating the crickets and saving the crops.  It was called the Miracle of the Gulls and is the reason the seagull is the Utah State bird even though the state is landlocked.  Neat, eh?

For Pioneer Day, I made a "fish pond"style game with the magnet in the seagull's beak enabling it to "eat" the metal parts on the crickets, made out of clothes pins. My kids love it - and it's a favorite whenever I bring it to Primary, so I'm sure you want one of your very own.

Crickets: 
The crickets are super fun to make, even if you don't make the rest of the game.  The kids had a blast making these!  Paint the clothes pins black.  You could probably spray paint for speed, but my kids LOVE to paint, and I enjoyed the character it gave my bugs to have imperfections in the coverage.

For eyes, glue metal BBs in place.  This took me awhile to figure out what to use because I wanted buggy looking eyes, but I also wanted to provide a metal that would be attracted to magnets so that the seagull would have a surface to grab onto.  BBs worked perfectly and look a little bit creepy, while being highly magnetic.  Hot glue worked fine, but after losing a few BBs, I reinforced with E6000 and haven't lost a BB since (3 years of hard play...)

For legs, cut two pieces of chenille stem.  Back leg piece is 8 inches. Front leg piece is 4 inches.  Thread the chenille stem legs through the holes in the clothes pin and glue in place at center.  Wait to shape legs until antenna are inserted.

For antenna, cut a piece of black craft wire anywhere from 5-7 inches long. (Different lengths give different personalities).  Thread through the front clothespin hole with the front leg chenille stem and put a little more glue in there to keep it in place.    Hot glue works fine here.

With a pair of needle-nose pliers, round ends of wire into little circles.

Shape antenna into curls, cross them, keep them straight - whatever you think looks buggy.

Shape legs by bending at the knee and again to form a foot.











Seagull:

The concept of the seagull is a simple softie - by which I mean it's made out of felt and not turned inside out.  I don't know if that's the exact definition of softie, but that's what I think of when I hear that term.  So simply cut out the body and wing tip pieces.  Tack wing tips to top side of body.  Then with wrong sides together, topstitch all the way around, leaving an opening for stuffing. (note: the neck is the hardest part to stuff, so I suggest leaving the opening somewhere around the neck instead of trying to get stuffing through that narrow channel.)  Also leave open between dots on pattern at the top of the head, indicated on pattern, to insert the beak.

For the beak, I used bright yellow lycra - simply because I had some on hand.  I recommend any fabric thin enough to allow the magnet to do its thing.  Cotton or poly would be fine.  Fleece or Felt might be too thick.  Cut the beak piece and fold along line, right sides together.  Sew along edges, leaving top open, using the tiniest seam allowance possible.  Turn right sides out.  Insert a high-powered magnet.  I used a magnetic rock my son got in a set of magnetic rocks.  It works ok, but I'd like a stronger one if I can find one.  If you need stuffing to fill out the beak, add it, but make sure that the magnet stays at the tip of the beak with no stuffing blocking the magnet.
Insert the beak into the opening at the top of the Seagull head and topstitch across opening, between dots indicated on pattern.  Depending on how uptight you are about this whole process, you can either topstitch through all layers, closing off the beak opening, or you can hand-stitch around the circle of where the beak joins the head to keep the beak more dimensional.

I glued on googlie eyes for silliness, because kids giggle over googlie eyes.  If I had my druthers I'd embroider some eyes with personality and pizazz, but hey - googlie eyes rock too.

To Make & Play the Game:

The Seagull must be attached to a stick in order that it may "fly" - then it's just like a fishing pole.  Any broomstick or dowel will work. I happen to have a leg from a three legged table that is perfect for stuff like this. In fact, you'll notice that my seagull is only pinned and not permanently attached - that's because I have multiple versions of "fishing" games, and all of them use this same table leg with an excellent piece of string strongly knotted to the screw at the top.  The seagull gets attached for Pioneer Day, using a safety pin, then goes into storage :)  You could make a more permanent toy by sewing the string to the seagull body and knotting it to your stick.

To play, I like to start with telling the story of the Seagulls & the Crickets, using a dollar store green plastic table cloth to represent the crops.  This keeps the field of play defined.  On the bottoms of the crickets are stickers.  When I use these for Singing Time, the stickers have song numbers on them and the cricket "eaten" shows what song to sing.  For fun, the stickers can tell the child a prize they've won, or an activity they have to do (i.e. 10 jumping jacks).  HINT: The magnet grabs 3 things on the cricket - the eyes, the metal wire in the chenille stem legs, and best of all, the spring that constructs the clothespin.  Those are the best targets.  The wire antenna were rather disappointing as far as magnetic attraction goes.  They look great though, so that's something!  And sometimes they'll hook the felt, and I say that counts too. :)

Happy Pioneer Day, and Have Fun!!

One of our go-to crafts around here is shrink art.  Ever since my sister gave us the mind-blowing information that #6 recyclable plastic is shrink capable, whenever my kids want a craft, and I'm feeling non-mess, more independent crafting shrink art is what I can pull out.  Wait, you say, did I hear that right?  #6 plastic is shrink art? YES, it is!  I save packages from deli sandwiches,  some produce, lots of take-out - wash it out and VOILA! Shrink art extravaganza! Free crafting is the best crafting!!  

A few cons I've discovered - #6 doesn't shrink as uniformly as the store-bought stuff, and even if you rough it up with sand paper, colored pencils don't work as well on it (colored pencils don't work AT ALL if you don't sandpaper it).  So we use a set of permanent ink markers and all is well.  My kids like to trace their favorite characters or make freehand art.  Punch a hole before baking, and make necklaces, charm bracelets, sun catchers, whatever!  They love the detail they can get in such tiny charms.  You can tell the detail varies with the age of the artist - as always!

RINGS

The last time they got out the plastic, I wanted to try something I'd seen on Pinterest - making rings.  Only I couldn't find where I'd pinned it, so we made it up as we went along.  (note to self: clean out and organize Pinterest boards!)

The first thing we discovered, #6 plastic DOESN'T WORK WELL FOR RINGS.  It was OK, it shaped fine and looked fine, but the inconsistent shrink rate meant that every ring was a whole different story.  Sometimes it worked great, sometimes a warped mess.  Also it's a bit thicker, which was not ideal. So while we still love #6 for other art, we had to try something else if we wanted rings.

Solution?  Pull out the professional stuff.  I had a package of Shrinky Dinks Frosted Ruff n'Ready, and we were set to make rings.  A little experimentation with size and we were off.

For my older kids (9-13 years old), we found the right pre-shrunk size to be 5 1/2" x 3/4".  For my younger girls (5 & 7 years old),  5" long was perfect.  The 5" length is great because the sheets of shrink art are 8" x 10", so cutting a sheet right down the middle gets a high yield of rings per sheet.

We chose to make CTR rings with our shrinky dinks - though after they were done, there were many other varieties of original art rings as well!  The first and VERY IMPORTANT thing we discovered was that the rough side, the side you draw on, is the inside of the ring.  This means that any writing needs to be done MIRROR IMAGE. I printed out a backwards CTR, and the kids chose their colors and got tracing.

The kids went to town on their designs.  I love how their personalities are reflected in their unique rings.  For my youngest, who lost interest, I finished her sunshine ring.  Just remember to draw on the ROUGH SIDE of the shrink art, and you can use colored pencils on this stuff, but if you use ink use PERMANENT INK.  One of my daughters just grabbed a felt tipped pen and after wearing the ring for a while, her finger was black with ink and the ring was smudged.

Shrink the rings according to the package directions (mine says 325 degrees for a conventional oven for about 3 min or until it lays flat).  This is the fun part for kids, so turn on the oven light and let them watch the antics of the shrinking plastic!  Remember to place on brown craft paper for baking - I use grocery bags cut in half.  NOTE - these do sometimes stick to themselves while baking.  Carefully, and I wore light knit gloves for protection, pull the pieces apart and return promptly to oven.

Remove from oven and quickly (again I wore gloves), wrap around a round object of the right size.  

You've got about 10 seconds to get this done, so have your mold ready.  We looked around the house

and ended up with markers and fingernail polish lids as offering the best diameters for rings.  If you mess up, it cools too quickly, or something else goes wrong, just put the ring back in the oven for a couple more minutes and try again.  We did learn though that this has its limits.  Notice the difference in color in the floral ring above - it was baked repeatedly because we couldn't get the size just right.  Repeated baking affected the color, but it also made it brittle.  The ring broke a couple days later and we had to try again with a new ring.

Finished Rings:

Had to throw in the Green Lantern ring too - for good measure!   My kids made magic rings, name rings, rings until I ran out of patience!  The only ring they couldn't get to look just right for them was the One Ring ;)

As always, I love to hear comments, especially if you try it yourself.  Send me pictures and I'll post them!  Have fun!!

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What kid (or adult for that matter) doesn't love the story of David & Goliath?  Triumph of the little guy over the menacing giant? Good conquering evil?  Bravery, faith, loyalty? Heady stuff!  So what would be more fun than re-enacting the epic battle?  I started out researching the kinds of slings that a shepherd would have used.  I didn't want a wrist-rocket style of slingshot, but something a little more authentic, while still being manageable by kids who haven't been actually trained in sling warfare.

The first thing I found out in the function of the sling, is that it must have a loop at the end of one of the strings, while the other does not have a loop.  When using the sling, the operator slips the loop over the middle finger of his or her dominant hand, holding onto the other string.  The sling is swung over the head, then aimed at the target and the loose string is released.  The loop stays put; releasing the other string opens the pouch, and the projectile goes flying. (hopefully in the general direction of the target - most often, not!)

The body of the sling is simply made of felt.  I wanted to use leather for authenticity, but the felt looked really great in the end.  My older kids wanted to make their own and chose wild colors from my supplies, so theirs looked less biblical and more crazy, but whatever!  

I experimented a LOT to get the right shape.  It's basically an oval with the tips cut off flat (final measurements 3 1/2" x 2 1/2").  

Snip in about half an inch at the halfway point, fold over and stitch to create depth.  I sewed it on my machine and it was a piece of cake.  

It's not obvious from the picture, but there are also tiny slits cut on each of the 4 corners - not right on the corner, but in from the edge a little bit.  These are the holes through which you can thread your leather string. 

After the flat body section is sewn, thread leather (or whatever string you want to use) through both slits in one end and knot it tightly.  It will pull in the felt at the ends, which is exactly what you want.  This creates a deep pouch for the marshmallow.  Repeat with the opposite side.

The longer the strings, the more difficult it is to aim, but the more power and distance you can achieve.  So, for the older kids, my strings were around 12 inches, while for my younger ones they were closer to 8 inches long.   Experiment to your liking. 

I should also note that I use the large marshmallows.  The small marshmallows were my original intention, but they are too light-weight and refuse to come out of the pouch. 

 So now that our Davids have slings, they need a Goliath to aim at.  I have seen some very amazing drawings, and some very amusing drawings, that people have done on butcher paper, to represent to kids how big Goliath really was.  I know that this itself is an issue of scholarly debate, but I did a bunch of research and went with the most general consensus for my Goliath's height of 9 3/4 feet.  (He turned out only to be about 9 feet tall, so I made sure he was off the floor a bit to get his eye-level closer.) So anyway, you don't have to go as crazy as I did, a drawn figure on butcher paper for a lesson to use the slings with works great!

I opted to crop & use this amazing image of David & Goliath from lds.org, and thanks to a fantastic friend of mine who is an architect and therefore has one of those huge printers, was able to get my life-sized, super menacing Goliath!  (It was split in half, due to the paper size, so I had to glue/tape the whole thing straight up the middle - scary trying to get it all perfectly lined up!!) (TIP: Since my initial posting, I've heard that Staples will print large architectural size pictures as well for fairly cheap)

My kids had a blast trying to hit Goliath ANYWHERE with their marshmallow slings.  Mostly they hit objects behind them (me - the photographer - being the prime marshmallow pummeled victim). I think more mallows were eaten than fired, when it came to the little ones.  

Watch out Goliath! 

After the fun, we talked about the symbolism of and lessons to be learned from the story.  It was a ton of fun and I've used it in Primary and a couple of FHEs since then.  It's a favorite, which is why I FINALLY got around to sharing!  Hope you have fun with it too!






Here are some other great David & Goliath resources for teaching the story. The video is older, but is still effective.

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I had a bit of difficulty coming up with an Adam and Eve craft for the Sunbeam class last week.  Most online suggestions revolved around making snakes, which isn't the direction I wanted to go since the lesson was more of the sixth day of creation than the account in detail.  Finally, I found these hilarious little people shaped craft sticks at Hobby Lobby.  I bought some pipe-cleaners (oops, I mean chenille stems - gotta stay up on the terms), and some felt for clothes.  If I had given it some more thought, I probably would have grabbed googlie eyes too to save myself some work, but instead I painted the faces on.  E6000 attached the chenille-stem hair.  I designed and cut out felt clothes (the cheetah print just made me giggle - though Lily was disappointed that I didn't get the hot-pink cheetah print for Eve.  It would have given her a whole new image though LOL!). Double-stick tape on the back of the clothes meant that the kids got to dress their own Adam and Eve.

After I was done with the puppet-stick dolls, I wanted a puppet theater of sorts for them, so I found a coloring page online (it was actually a My Little Pony scene, and I just photo-shopped out the ponies).  I selected and copied the bottom half of the picture, and modified it to give it some shape along the top for bushes, then stretched it just about half an inch bigger than the original.  This way, when I staple it on both sides, it is a little bigger than the underneath scene and so it bows out and creates a space in between for Adam and Eve to walk around in.  When I demonstrated this for the kids, using a deep voice for Adam, saying, "Hi Eve, how are you today?" the Sunbeams looked at me like I had completely lost my mind.  Totally cracked me up!  But they got the idea and had a great time dressing their puppets, coloring the scenery, and playing out scenarios.  I love it when I start out totally clueless, with no ideas and no plans, and then something finally comes together and turns out fun.  I adore these little people-shaped craft sticks too.  So many possibilities! I'm thinking princes and princesses - fairies - all sorts of characters will soon be performing puppet shows at our house!

(P.S. My older kids helped me out and colored the scenery in the pic.  The 3 & 4 year olds' pictures turned out a bit more, um, abstract)