Christmas Tree Topiaries made out of Tomato Cages!

I know I have posted a ton of Young Women ideas, but I also wanted this blog to be my creative happenings as well.  So here is an idea that I made up all myself! Thought I'd share!

As I lay awake one night, trying to think of what I can put in my empty pots that flank my garage door for Christmas (without the expense), an idea jolted me like lightning! Transform my old tomato cages into Christmas topiaries.  I just taped the ends together, wrapped some garland around it and Voila! A Topiary! I am so happy with the way it turned out. You would never guess it was a tomato cage and since I had most of the materials, it was way inexpensive!

 To make this project, all you need per tree is:

•  13.5 feet of garland. ( basically 1 1/2 packages of 9 ft. garland which I bought at Walmart for $2 each).
• 15 ft. tinsel ($3.50 walmart)
• 100 ct. mini lights
• 1 star topper (optional, price varies-I found mine at Walgreens for $7.50, which is the cheapest I found)
• 3 hose stakes (found in the sprinkler section at Home Depot for $.39 each--see picture below) 

*approx. 30 minutes of time to put together.

 These are the hose stakes I found at Home depot.  They are $.39 each and just hook right over the cage so that the wind won't blow them over.  Perfect!

Personal Progress goals to finish in a Day

I am over Personal Progress in my ward and the challenge we have had with the girls is that they feel overwhelmed.  I went through the book and created a list of all the personal progress experiences that you could do in one day.  I gave it to the girls and I am so happy to report that is has helped!!!!  For an activity one night, we helped the girl log in to Personal Progress Online.  We help them set up their account and told them how to work it.  As I checked their log, one of my beehives had about 8 more done.  When I talked to her about it, she said she did the ones on the list.  Wahooo!!!!  That is success to me!  If you'd like to print off the list, Click Here.

Lesson #9: Honoring Parents

Sometimes SIMPLE IS BEST!!!!  I love making handouts and doing fun things for the girls, but it can also be a lot of work.  This time I found some cute notecards on clearance at target and I found this idea on Sugardoodle.  I gave the girls each a "thank you" card with this saying on it by Pres. Monson.  I told them to go home and write a note to their parents and tell them how much they love them.  It was perfect, and to top it all off, I had a plate of brownies to share too!  If you'd like the printable of the saying to paper clip with the card, you can print it out here.

Lesson #7: Homemaking

I am SUPER excited for this lesson!  I purchased a set of 4 wooden spoons from walmart for $.88.  In our yw closet, we had a metal stamping set we had used for another activity.  The wood on these spoons were so soft just a few hits with the hammer left a really great indent.  So, I stamped on my saying and then to make the words stand out, I  just traced over the letters with marker.
After that was done, I tied the spoons with ribbon and attached this recipe card with it. I am so happy with the way the recipe card turned out. I couldn't be more pleased!
  

* NOTE: I made a mistake! I first did the red (Not washable) marker and it LOOKS really cute, but when it gets wet the marker bleeds. So I went over it with a black fine point sharpie, which will not bleed. So please don't make my same mistake, just use a permanent marker if you do this and not the colored marker. If you don't have the stamping set, I bet just writing it with permanent marker would also work.


Click Here to use the free printable for the recipe card front
To give credit, to where credit is due, I found the template for thre recipe cards here.

Click Here to open the quote for the back of the recipe card.

Lesson 5: Finding Joy in our Divine Potential

For this lesson, the manual says to invite a guest speaker so that is exactly what I did.  Afterwards, I spoke to the girls for a few minutes.  This handout turned out PERFECTLY!  It tied in with the lesson so well.  The saying on the side of the shoe says, "LOVE THE SHOES YOU"RE IN!"  I wanted to get the message across that we are daughters of our Heavenly Father.  WE shouldn't try to be anyone else, but we should learn to love ourselves.  I filled the inside of the paper shoes with heart candies and embellished the shoes.  The girls literally wend gaga over these!  I had a few mom's stop me in the halls and comment on them as well. 

 I found the template for these shoes here.
 *note, these are so cute, but quite time consuming.  I found a few easier patterns, but they aren't as detailed. 

Click here to print out the saying, "Love the Shoes You're In!"

Value Color " Cheat Sheet"

I can never remember which color is which!  So I made the little go to "cheat sheet" to help me!  I just printed it off (carstock is best) and put in on the clear outside pocket of my young women binder.  As you can see by the tear in the corner, I have already referred to this quite a bit!  Just a helpful little tool if you want to use one!  Click here to download this document.

Idea for Integrity #3- value experience

I am the beehive personal progress leader in my ward and on the first Tuesday of every month I am in charge of an activity that focuses on a value experience.  I always want to do something elaborate and fun, but sometimes we need to get a little serious.  This acitvity acutally ended up being really fun, even though we spent a lot of time in the scriptures.  I made a matching worksheet and then my own word search (google custom word search) for the night.  We went through each scripture on the worksheet and talked about the people who showed integrity, then found the matching descriptions on the right.  I gave them a great start to working on this experience after our discussion.  At the end for fun, I bought a first and second prize (candy) and wrapped them.  Then we played breakfast scramble, which is a minute to win it game.  I cut out the fronts of four cereal boxes and cut them into equal amounts of puzzle pieces, we then put the girls into groups, and saw who could complete the puzzle in under a minute.  We did a few rounds, kept track of scores, then gave away the prizes.  It was a great night. 

Here is the like to the worksheet if you'd like it: Integrity #3 worksheet

"Stick with Personal Progress"- sticky notes

I am so excited about this idea!  We made these to give to the girls at our Young Women's in Excellence program.  I was inspired by another leader who told me as she was working on her personal progress goals, she would put sticky notes on her mirror to help her remember which goal she was working on.  I thought it would be perfect to customize some sticky notes for our young women to do the same.  I found a website, VISTA PRINT, that will customize them for you.  If you "google" vista print, you can find an offer for 50% off sticky notes.  This was kind of more on the expensive end, but totally worth it, and it turned out to be less than $1 per girl.  I went through the personal progress book and found that there is a little over 16 goals that require "two weeks or more".  These are what the girls would use the sticky notes for.

For example, If they were working on being more christlike for two weeks, they would write which value experience that would be, then in the goal section write: "be more christlike", and what the date will be in two weeks when this will be completed. I just uploaded the photo of the temple I found on
Sugardoodle here, then used Vista Print's editing program to make a custom sticky note. Each pad comes with 50 sheets, and I needed 16 sheets per girl, so I was able to get 3 sets out of each pad. That may help you when deciding how many you need. The more quanitity you buy, the bigger discount you get. Once seperated, I just cut a plain white piece of paper the same size as the sticky note and put it on the back so that it looked like a full pad of sticky notes. 



















I attached this saying to the back of the sticky note, thne tied it with tuelle to embellish it.  If you'd like the quote click Here.

Lesson 2: Jesus Christ, the Savior

I am so happy with the way these turned out. Lesson 2 in YW manual 1 is on Jesus Christ, our Savior. I got this idea from  SugarDoodle and totally made it my own. I wasn't going to do a big handout this week since I have to speak in sacrament AND teach a lesson, but when I read that this could go with Faith #5 out of personal progress, I couldn't resist. Faith #5 talks about the Savior and asks the girls to journal it. So this is their personal journal about the Savior.

 I also used some pass along cards of Jesus and glued them inside these journals. I found the journals at Michaels for only$0.30! I was SO EXCITED!  They had a picture of a apple pie on the front of them, but I just bought a piece of scrapbook paper and put over the top of the picture, then did each of the girl's initals on my computer. I also found 3D butterfly stickers to embellish them. I just had the ribbon downstairs in my endless supply! So, this was a SUPER CHEAP handout. I am pretty excited to give them this.  This idea would be great for a personal progress activity too, if you didn't want to use it with your lesson. I have a copy the scripture list I used and the template for the initals, if you want them just comment and I can upload the link. 

-Here's the Link to print out the scripture list
-Here's the Link to make your own Monogram Letters
 (Just note that the letters are editable, which means my font will be different than yours.  If you like the font I used, you will have to download it here.  It is called "Little Lord Fontelroy").  

VT Christmas Gift Idea

I did this for my visiting teaching gift this year. It turned out super cute! A target I found some to-do lists for $1.00 each,tied a bow and a pen around it and added this poem that my husband and I made. I also gave each person a Christmas reading chart that I found off sugardoodle, which went along with the poem.  It has a scripture and attribute of Christ that you can read everyday of the month until Christmas.  It was such a great Christmas gift.!

 Click here to open the Christmas Reading chart.

Click here to open the poem, "Open the Scriptures and Read of Christ".

Book Of Mormom Reading Chart

For 2012, we have decided to make reading charts for the young women to follow.  We made these bookmarks really cute!  We will be laminating them and found that the girls could use a permanent marker over the laminating to mark off what they have read.  We are so excited to give them the challenge to read this year.  It also will coincide with their virtue requirement of reading the Book of Mormon.  I took these pictures before I laminated them, so after that is complete, I will punch a hole in the top of these and then put 3/8" ribbon through them.  So cute!  I have to give credit for the chart, we found them somewhere on line, and I just can't find the reference, but I was able to recreate it in a printable document. 

If you want a copy of the chart, please check here: Book of Mormon Reading Chart

Lesson 1: Daughter of God

For my handout for the girls, I made these cute mirrors for their lockers. I just purchased 3" mirrors from the craft store and cut out a frame for each mirror, glued it on (I found E6000 work the best), added a magnet to the back and then embellished! My girls LOVED these! I have a pazzle, which is like a cricut machine to cut out the frame. I created the design on my computer, printed them out with the words, "I am a Daughter of God" and then ran it through my pazzle machine.

To go along with the mirror, I found a talk by Elaine S. Dalton and I used her quote,

"Young women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, remember who you are! You are elect. You are daughters of God. You cannot be a generation of young women who are content to fit in. You must have the courage to stand out, to “arise and shine forth, that thy light may be a standard for the nations.” The world would have you believe that you are not significant—that you are out of fashion and out of touch. The world calls to you with unrelenting, noisy voices to “live it up,” “try everything,” “experiment and be happy.” Conversely, the Holy Ghost whispers and the Lord invites you to “walk in the paths of virtue,” “lay aside the things of this world,” “and cleave unto [your] covenants.”

I concluded with this quote and then told them to look in the mirror and remember who they are.  They are beautiful and their light shines for all to see.  It was a great way to end the lesson.  I also, used the recommended quotes from the lesson as a handout with the mirror.  Click here to find it.


IF you need to template for the mirror frames, I have an image of them, or a pdf version.  Use whichever works best for you. 

PDF version: mirror Template. 
JPEG image: mirror template.

This is for Young Women Manual 1.