Decorating with Living Plants

A friend came to my house for the first time several years ago, looked around, and said, "Your home is so. . . simple." I really am not much into "things," so my furnishings and accessories do tend to be pretty simple. But one of my decorating "go tos" is live plants. Both of my parents had amazingly green thumbs, so I grew up with beautiful plants--indoors and out. They are lovely to look at, bring nature inside, provide natural air filtering, and inexpensively fill spots in my house that were a bit too "simple." And many of my plants were gifts from friends, so they are daily reminders of people that I love. I know that trying to keep plants alive can seem intimidating, but if you feel that way, talk to friends, family and gardeners who might be able to give you suggestions for easy varieties to start with. My main piece of advice: don't over water.

A few suggestions for decorating with plants:

Choose plants with beautiful shapes. They become living sculptures:

Look for containers that add interesting color or texture:

Unlike many decorations, plants tend to like humidity, so consider adding them to your bathrooms:

Combine plants with photos and other items to create groupings:

 Use plants as screens. This plant is hiding (sort of) a small speaker:

Add them to work spaces to create a natural, restful environment:

It may still be winter outside, but you can always have a bit of summer inside with beautiful plants.

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Articles of Faith Cards

Hello, January! I'm excited for 2018; I have a good feeling about this year.

As one of the children's leaders in our church, I spent a good part of December bustling to get ready for a new year in Primary. Much of this busyness was spent on froof-froof: putting up a new bulletin board, getting bookmarks and zipper pulls ready to use as birthday gifts, and printing out cute "you're assigned to give a talk" bracelets. Then there's the logistics of staffing the Sunday School classes and equipping the teachers with manuals, sub lists, and class rolls.

Wowsers, there's a lot to get done! Amidst all this hubbub, we also wanted to gift the children Articles of Faith flashcards on a ring. As part of the Faith in God program, all the kiddos are encouraged to have these basic gospel truths memorized before they turn twelve. So I was tasked with investigating our options.

There are lots of cute, free cards available already on the internet. However, I wanted a relatively small size that would print in black and white onto colored paper, and I wasn't having great success with the ones I tried. Furthermore, the cute, swirly fonts were both adorable and hard to read. I mean, we've got four-year-olds trying to sound some of these out, right? Ergo, I made my own simple cards, and I thought I would share them in case anyone else is looking for something similar.

I have two downloads available: one if you just want to print a few sets and another with 12 articles per page (in case you want to make them for your primary class.) Yes, you could also make these for an entire primary, which despite being fairly economical is also extremely time intensive. You've been warned...

Click here for one set

Click here for twelve!

Happy memorizing (after the cutting, laminating, and hole punching, that is!)

Stamped Gingerbread Holiday Cookies

Christmas is only a week away, so maybe all your holiday baking is done and delivered. (Or maybe it has dropped down, or completely off, your "to do" list.) But if you are looking for a fun alternative to traditional cut out cookies, here is a delicious possiblitity. They would be a great family baking project between Christmas and New Years--and all the baking supplies will be on sale!

There are a lot of gingerbread cookie recipes out there. The one I used is a favorite from "Our Best Bites." 

This recipe works well for cut out cookies, but this time my goal was to use a decorative rolling pin. Next to it is a ceramic cookie stamp that can be used to create similar cookies:

I made the cookie dough and put it into the fridge for a couple of hours to chill. Getting the dough the right temperature is really the only tricky part. If it is too cold, it is difficult to roll out; if it is too warm, the stamped images are less sharp. I kept any dough that I wasn't working with in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap.

Roll out the dough just a little bit thicker than the recipe suggests with a standard rolling pin. Then roll over the dough with your special pin to make the designs:

Create a similar look using a cookie press like the one below just by stamping individual designs into the dough:

Using a paring knife, score through the dough to create separate cookies. Place on baking sheet:

After the cookies are baked, you can decorate them with white piping to accentuate the design or let the subtle texture speak for itself:

Merry Christmas!

Fruit Pizza

Delys had a birthday recently, and the children and I wanted to celebrate with something other than cake. So we decided to make fruit pizza. Easy, colorful, delicious, and--if you forget about the cookie crust and the frosting and just focus on the fruit--healthy :) A perfect addition to any celebration or holiday!

We were on a tight schedule, so we used a mix and purchased icing:

If you have time to make it from scratch, this is a yummy sugar cookie recipe from Our Best Bites. 

Pat the cookie dough onto pizza pan (I lined ours with foil because it has holes) and bake according to package or recipe directions. Let cool.

Choose your fruit, wash it and let it dry, and cut it into bite size pieces:

Frost your cookie. (Somehow I failed to get a picture of that step.) Again, you can use a mix, premade frosting, or make it from scratch.These can pizzas can be works of art, so use your imagination when arranging the fruit. The children wanted a modern art look, and they did a beautiful job:

Slice and enjoy!

Picture a Christmas Singing Time

Hellooooooooooo Christmas! I love the month of December. I love Christmas songs! It's a wonderful time to be Primary Chorister of the children at church.

Alas... I do not get to enjoy this wonderful time in that wonderful calling, as I was released a few weeks ago. Bummer. However, as our kiddos are singing at the upcoming Christmas party, I did get to half-way teach them Picture a Christmas before my reassignment.

I came across an idea to use the Primary Cutouts as my visual aids for the song (I used pictures from Set 8 and Set 3.) I didn't take a picture of my final result, which is probably just as well, since my printer is on the fritz and won't let me change the ink, despite printing ghastly lines across all my pictures. I had a giant, gold, cardboard picture frame on hand (from my "Fat Lady," Harry Potter Themed Halloween costume last year). I put the frame on the whiteboard and slowly added the visuals as we learned each line of the song (I made a basic "stable" out of brown construction paper). After we learned a verse or when reviewing the song on subsequent weeks, I liked the idea from Sugardoodle to let a child come up and be the ones to put the pictures in the frame as we sang the song.

It was a simple and effective way to learn the song. If you'd like to save yourself the trouble of cropping out the pictures you need from the online sets, here is the version I pieced together and sized to fit my frame. It worked out just right for our Primary.