Secret Sister Day #4; Notebook

Just another small altered notebook for this day. Inside I stamped: A little birdie told me...you are great!

Hope she had fun getting this stuff every day! I had fun making it and thinking of her. :)

Secret Sister Day #3; Some Value-able Items

In our Young Women's program at our church, they have values that the girls focus on. Each value has a designated color to represent that color and to help in remembering the meaning and purpose of the values. The values with their colors, scriptures, and meanings are as follows:

* Faith (white)(Alma 32:21) : I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, who loves me, and I will have faith in His eternal plan, which centers in Jesus Christ, my Savior.
* Divine Nature (blue) (2 Peter 1:4–7) : I have inherited divine qualities which I will strive to develop.
* Individual Worth (red) (D&C 18:10) : I am of infinite worth with my own divine mission, which I will strive to fulfill.
* Knowledge (green) (D&C 88:118) : I will continually seek opportunities for learning and growth.
* Choice and Accountability (orange) (Joshua 24:15) : I will remain free by choosing good over evil and will accept responsibility for my choices.
* Good Works (yellow) (3 Nephi 12:16) : I will nurture others and build the kingdom through righteous service.
* Integrity (purple) (Job 27:5) : I will have the moral courage to make my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong.[5]
* Virtue (gold) (Proverbs 31:10) : I will prepare to enter the temple and remain pure and worthy. [9]

Since the girl that was assigned to me had just turned 12 (the age where they go into the YW program), I figured it would be nice to give her a few things about the values. So, I printed out a little booklet (actually, since I was out of ink, I asked a friend to do this), made this little scripture bookmark that you can tuck into the spine of your scriptures and use the ribbons as bookmarks and added ribbon in the value colors to the scripture marking pencil too.

Secret Sister Day #2

I really don't know what order she got these little gifts in, but I am calling it this way. (I sent them all together in a bag for them to give to her one day at a time.)

These were also supposed to be simple, inexpensive little gifts, and for me, they had to be pretty quick. I was making them the night before and had a baby that wanted me...so:


They had given us a little print-out about the girl that we were "secret sisters" with and it told us a few thins about her, like her fav candy bar: Butterfingers. :) Thought the glow sticks would be fun too, so I threw those in too. Put the popsicle card in there and said, I hoped she was having a "sweet" time at camp! :)

FTTT: Possibly my most favorite project EVER!

I have to say that I absolutely LOVE LOVE the way this turned out! I want to make one for me as well as some others as well, but I don't want to spend the time on it right now/again/yet...make sense? Someday...

This is really a "From this to that" (although it isn't Friday this time). Remember those? I wish I had time to do more of them, but not right now...someday again...

There's a bit of a story behind this project:
About a year and a half ago? I was at a PTO mtg for my kids' school. A friend of mine, E, was there as well. They had been cleaning out the PTO closet and had some things they were giving away/throwing away. There was a little "recipe" box from a Sallie Mae fundraiser deal. They asked if anyone wanted it. Nobody raised their hand (Who still uses those?) Anyway-so I said I would take it and alter it. My friend, jokingly said, "Yeah-why don't you make me something with it?" Well, I actually thought that was a great idea. Problem was...it took me a year and a half to actually do it! :) BUT she recently had a birthday and I thought it was the perfect time to finally do it. I think deadlines help me be productive.;) (It took me a couple days of ignoring the dishes, etc and spending every spare minute I could steal away to get it done. Thanks to a great husband who understood and helped more (with a relatively new baby) and let me do it.)
So, from this:

(decided to go with different colors than the ones in the above pic though)
To:



I had envisioned this long ago. A box full of quotes, that you could take a quote out and display it, and change it with another when you wanted to see something new. Something that was decor, but also uplifting. My friend likes birds, so as I was pulling out stamps to decorate it with, I pulled out all of my bird stamps. I was amazed at how many I actually have. I thought of her when I saw this paper, although I myself love it too! I wondered if I was making the cards themselves with the quotes too simple, but with so many...As I look back over them, I like them and don't think they were too simple. I don't want to take away from the words being read...just make them look better. Anyway, it all came together beautifully I think. I love it!
Example of the box with a quote card on top displayed:


I ended up having WAY too many quotes to fit in the box and ended up sending her an email with a bunch more if she wanted them. I also left a few cards in the back blank, so that she could add some of her favorite quotes onto them as well.


The Quote Cards:





The blank cards:

I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it for her. :)

7-UPlifting Thoughts for your Week

In our church, the teenage girls go to a Young Women's Church Camp every summer. Well this year, in our church ward (congregation), they asked the women in our ward if they would like to be a "secret sister" to one of these young women and put together four little gifts as writing down our testimony for them. They would receive one of the gifts each day and would then receive our testimonies to read at the end of the week, prior to their testimony mtg (I believe). I thought it was a fun thing, so I volunteered to be a secret sister.

For the first day, I sent this 7-UP can and the thoughts shown. I was originally going to print out some thoughts, but didn't have any ink in my printer, so I went through my stamps and found some fun ones that would work. The girl I got had just turned twelve the previous week, so camp and Young Women were all brand new to her. I hope she had a fun week!

So fun!

I have to say that I love altering notebooks! They always turn out so cute and fun and really are so easy and fairly quick to do. I made this one for one of my piano students for the end of this past semester. I think she liked it. :)

Do you want to hear something sad?

I really have stamped some here and there, but have had no time or sometimes no energy to stamp, even THINK about stamping, let along upload the pics and get them on here. Hard last few weeks with my baby and that equals less energy and desire to blog. Sorry. There are seasons of life that we all go through and this one for me right now...well, stamping is not the priority most of the time. Someday I will do more again...I will get some pics up here soon though of some past projects from this past month. One that I esp love and want to share! :)