Christmas Decorations

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I like to get the Christmas decorations out, so that's exactly what I did today.  I've been excited about today for a long time - since last December.  Last year on the day after Christmas I bought decorations for a whole new color theme - a white tree with only green ornament.  And now that it is all put together I can officially say that I love it!

Anyway, I also made a new wreath this year.  It is based off of all the picture frame wreaths with ornaments that you see all over Pinterest.  Instead of using a square frame I wanted to use a round one, so it was more wreath-like.  Sadly, the white oval frame that I found and loved wasn't on sale like every other frame at Michael's that day and I wasn't about to pay $20 for it.  Instead I found a round piece of MDF that is made for making wreaths - it cost less than $4.

All the materials that were needed for this super easy project were the circle, some ribbon, some extra ornaments, white paint, a paint brush, and hot glue.

Step 1: Paint the MDF white.  I wish I would have had a smaller paint brush to get the inside and outside edges but I made due with what I already had.

Step 2: Place the ornaments on some of the ribbon and make a bow out of some of the other ribbon.  I made the bow directly on the wreath so I wouldn't have to worry about gluing it on.

Step 3: Glue the ornament's ribbon to the top, middle of the wreath and glue down the bow's ends.  Originally I was just going to try to tie everything onto the wreath so I could re-use the ornaments and plain white wreath other years but I couldn't figure out how to get that to work with the type of hanging device I had.  Oh well, I guess this just means I don't have to make another wreath when I do this color theme again.

Done.  I think the wreath would look a lot better on my red door if we didn't have a door knocker but whatever.

For your viewing pleasure, here are images of my other decorations:

These are my favorite ornaments on my tree.

The first is a bottomless glass ornament with some tiny pine cones in the middle and some ever-green-like painting on the outside.  Even though the brown doesn't fit 100% with my green only theme, I love this ornament and if the store had more I would have purchased more.

The second is just some glittery green branch like stuff with some glittery green pine cones.  I just set these on some of my white branches to add some tree-like green to the white tree.

The third is a green poinsettia.  It has a clip on the back so I just clipped a few of these to the tree.  I like how they are big and add another dimension to the tree.

This is the whole of my tree.

I took the green candle and white rocks out of my normal centerpiece and replaced it all with some extra green ornaments.

Activity Days: Budgeting Activity

We had our budgeting activity yesterday, the one I made the felt piggy banks for. I thought it went pretty well.  We started with a quick math lesson on percentages then went through the line items on the budget to talk about them and make sure the girls understood what each meant.  Some of these line items were

Pay
Savings
Rent
Car Payment
Groceries
Cell phone

That wasn't everything, just a sampling.  For the activity we were assuming that each girl had just graduated from college (or trade school or whatever applies to the career she chose) and was about to start her first post-education job.

Once we went through the budget items I had each girl choose a job - I had 24 different jobs they could choose from.  I've got a sampling here of what each job card looks like: an image of the job on one side and the associated monthly pay and student loans on the other side.  I looked up the pay based on the zip code I live in then adjusted for things like taxes, health insurance, and 401k contributions so the pay that shows would be the take home pay.  I completely made up the student loan amount.  I had them fill in their budget with this information.

Then I had each girl choose a car.  The options were public transportation, the junker they had in college, a used sedan, a used convertible, a used SUV, a new sedan, a new SUV, and a new electric car.  Once they chose their car they  filled in their budget with the information on the back of the car card: monthly payment, gas, maintenance.  The car payment amount came from some research on the internet while gas and maintenance were made up by me based on what I pay for those.  I had to tell one of the girls that maintenance costs weren't optional - she tried to get away with paying no maintenance on her car.

Next, each girl chose a place to live.  They could rent a studio apartment, a one bedroom apartment, a two bedroom apartment, a condo, a townhouse, or a house.  The line items they filled out after choosing these were rent, utilities, and HOA fee (which only applied to the condo, townhouse, and house).  For this information I looked up available rental properties in our area (they even recognized the house and townhouse from being in our neighborhood).

Then we filled in the rest of the line items.  They had three choices for their cell phone: $80 for a data plan, $40 for a regular plan, and $20 for just a land-line (I don't think they knew what a land-line was).  For their cable they also had three choices, well four if you count not having any at all: $100 for premium, $60 for upgraded, and $30 for basic.

The final line item was "Everything Else".  When all the other line items were filled out I had them calculate the number for the Everything Else item: -$20, -$176, -$1,010, and -$1,020.  They were way off! (Just as I suspected - but I didn't suspect I'd have to tell them that negative numbers were bad.)  This was when I got to talk about having to make sacrifices and different choices in order to be able to live within a budget.

They ended up making some changes to their plan.  The architect and doctor decided to be room mates, saving the architect about $950 a month.  The architect wasn't willing to give up her data plan but did switch from premium to basic cable.  The flight attendant gave up her used convertible to take public transportation, downgraded her cell phone and cable plans, and gave up her $1,600/month house for a $500/month studio apartment taking her from -$1,020 to about $680.  Well done, flight attendant.

At the end of the lesson/activity I asked them what they thought of it.  One girl said it was fun, one said it was Ok then asked if she could throw her budget away (lol, kids), and the other two didn't answer because they were too busy trying to figure out their new Everything Else after making changes.

Personally, I liked it . . . a lot.  I love numbers and money and math and figuring things out.  In fact, I based the activity off a project I did in my 7th grade math class.  The difference was that in 7th grade we had to look through the classified section of the newspaper to find our job, apartment, and car.

Anyway, if this activity sounds like something you'd want to do and you'd like to see my cards, budget, and notes, just let me know and I'll email my spreadsheet to you.

Activity Days: Felt Piggy Bank

Our activity for Activity Days is tomorrow and we are going to have a lesson and activity on Tithing and Budgeting.  A while ago on Pinterest (duh) I found this pin - four super cute felt piggy banks.  I was hoping the link went to a tutorial but it didn't, it went to a store where you could buy the product.

Anyway, I thought these would be a really cute handout for the Tithing and Budgeting lesson so I decided to make some myself, which was super easy.

Step One: Cut out an even number pigs from felt (see below the pattern that I used).  Honestly, this was the hardest step.

Step Two: Sew a button hole near the top of half of the pigs.  Because these were going to be used for money, instead of using a button to determine the size of my button hole I used a quarter.

Step Three: Top stitch together one pig without a hole and one pig with a hole.

Done.

Rabbits In A Tunnel

My Mom bought some play tunnels for my nieces and nephew but the oldest grew out of them and the youngest decided that if the oldest weren't going to use it they weren't either.  So Mom gave one to CJ and I for the rabbits.  They were afraid of it at first but now they love it.  Above is a picture of Locke just hanging out in the tunnel.

Activity Days: Decorating Pumpkins

I'm an Activity Days leader.  When I was called to that calling I had no idea what it even meant; I'm too old to have ever been in Activity Days in Primary.  To be honest, I'm still not sure about the point of the whole thing but I do it.  Some times we do churchy stuff, some times we just do fun stuff.

For the activity before Halloween we just did fun stuff because we couldn't think of anything churchy that had anything to do with Halloween.  We decided to decorate pumpkins but just decorations, not carving.  We did not want to have to be responsible for 8 year olds with knives.

I bought the googly-eyes, pipe cleaners, and puffy things at Walmart   They all came together in pretty little, matchy packages, which I didn't expect.  I thought I'd have to buy all that stuff separately.

My co-leader brought the jewel things and the genius idea to use hot glue instead of Elmer's - Elmer's did not work, at all.

Anyway, below are some of our creations.

Sewing Room Shelves

Here are what the selves look like with some sewing stuff on them.

1. Supporting materials such as a quilt batting and interfacing.  These were too tall to put on the regular shelves so I put them on the top shelf of the shelf that didn't have a top.

2. Large bolt fabrics.  There was too much of these fabrics to put on the smaller bots so they also ended up on the only shelf they would fit on.

3. This is a project in process - right on top and easy to get to.

4. This is an organizer for smaller, notion type things.  It doesn't have much in it right now but in mine I have thread, pins, elastic, safety pins, etc.

5. Patterns.  My mom has a lot of patterns.  The large, clear box (provided by Mom) has non-adult girls patterns, the larger purple box (provided by me) has adult women patterns and the other, smaller purple box has adult men/unisex patterns.

6. Flannel. JoAnn had a sale on flannel earlier this year and this is what Mom got.  There is some really cute stuff here.

7. Felt scraps.  The container (provided by Mom) is about the size of a piece of felt so all her single pieces of felt plus all her scrap felt is in there.

8. Felt by the yard.

9. Heirloom scraps.  Mom is going to make an heirloom quilt using memorable fabrics so, if I recognized a fabric from my childhood or as something special, it went in this box (provided by Mom).

10. Other fabrics such as lace and tulle.

11. Patterned fabrics.

12. Patterns.  The box on the left is costumes while the box on the right is craft patterns.

13. The fabrics on the bottom shelves are solid colored or mostly one color.

14. Other scraps.

Recipe: Salsa

CJ and I (well, mostly CJ) really like chips and salsa.  However, neither of us likes chunky salsa.  We used to buy Pace at Costco and blend it up so it wouldn't be chunky.  After doing that several times, and after not having a job for a while, and after having my cousin's homemade salsa, and after finding this salsa recipe on Pinterest (do I mention Pinterest in every post now?), I decided to try my hand at making my own.

I don't remember my cousin's recipe.  She told me but I might have forgotten a thing or two.  What I do remember is canned tomatoes, cilantro, and canned green chilies.  The Pinterest recipe I found calls for:

• 1- 14 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1- 10 oz can orginal Rotel
• 1/2 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1/2-1 jalapeno, seeded or not (depends on how spicy you like it)
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• small to medium size handful of cilantro, washed
• juice of 1 lime

So I kind of followed the Pinterest recipe since it was still pretty close to my cousin's recipe.  The first time I made my own salsa I used 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 can Rotel, some onion, some cilantro, and some lime juice.  It was just ok.

Now, after some experience, for a mild salsa I use:

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can rotel

some onion

a good chunk of cilantro

some garlic powder (maybe 1 Tbsp or so)

some vinegar (no more than 1 Tbsp - wow, what a difference some vinegar makes!)

some salt (a tsp or two)

some lime juice (1 - 2 Tbsp)

and for CJ's hot salsa we add:

some extra onion

some extra garlic powder

a few pickled jalapenos

some crushed red peppers

some sriracha sauce

Steps:

1. Put the mild ingredients in a blender and blend until well blended.

2. Set half aside.

3. Add hot ingredients to blender and blend until well blended.

4. Let sit over night so the flavors meld together.

CJ and I use old Pace bottles for our salsa and we label them because I definitely don't want to accidentally get his hot salsa.  We did have one batch that was a little too garlicky and oniony for me but for the most part we've gotten some really good salsa.