Sewing is Sew Sew Fun!

A few months ago I received an email announcing that Karalee was offering sewing classes this summer and I signed my daughters up right away. I knew that Rebecca would be interested because her “TALENT” at the Stake Talent show the last 2 years has involved sewing.

Rebecca made and nighttime ensemble for her American Girl doll Sariah. The ensemble includes PJ’s, a blanket, an mattress, and a pillow. Also pictured is Emily’s doll, Emily.

Rebecca models the dress that she made for the talent show in 2009. She received many compliments and wistful comments that they wished more girls learned how to sew today.

Emily was excited to take a sewing class also. Being the jealous Mom that I am I decided to ask if I could participate in the class also. I explained that I already knew how to sew but would like to get some help on zippers and hems. I was excited to be invited to join my girls in taking their sewing class. I’m sew glad that I did too.

Rebecca, Emily and I showed up for class the first day loaded down with 3 sewing machines, patterns, fabric, and iron and lots of enthusiasm. I got some great tips on how to put a zipper in and even got to practice on some scrap fabric Karalee told us that most of the work of the sewing project is in the cutting out, but that most of the problems can be eliminated if you make sure you cut your pattern out accurately. I am humbled to say that learned a lot about the importance of not trying to take “shortcuts” in my cutting that often have resulted in problems later on. After two hours of listening to Karalee explain to us how to rip fabric to make sure it is straight, how important it is to cut the pattern accurately, and the necessity of ironing as you go along ( although, we didn’t iron our pattern pieces) both girls had their skirts cut out.

Our second day of class we got down to the business of sewing. The girls got to practice going straight, doing zig zags, finishing edges, and finally they got to sew the side seams in their skirts. I was glad that there was just the three of us in the class because we got a lot of individual attention, and I knew enough to be able to help out my girls part of the time.

As we were sewing we also discussed our family tree and determined that we were both related to Wilford Woodruff through his wife Sarah Brown. I also was able to begin to explain why I wanted to be part of the sewing class. I explained it as being part of our HOPE CHEST JOURNEY. The Hope Chest Journey was conceptualized from history by Donna Goff and is about preparing daughters to become wives and mother’s. I love how Donna says this,

“All the while she was preparing her hope chest, the women in her life were preparing her, chatting as they worked, passing along a large body of knowledge and skill, incidentally, from one generation to the next, and building bonds of community support, kinship, and sisterhood. These young girls learned about relationships, parenting, family life, recipes, home nursing, and so much more, through listening to and participating in conversations with the women in their lives. Many of the women in this community were informally helping the young girl to prepare to become the queen of her future home.”

I hadn’t even told me girls about the Hope Chest Journey, they got their introduction to it as they listened to me explain it to Karalee.

We have however, already begun our journey, we just didn’t have a name for it. In 2004 I invited my Grandmother to teach my kids to sew. We began with making cute little stuffed animals out of felt and plastic canvas designs. At this time Emily was 5, Rebecca was 6.5, and Isaac was 3.5. They loved having Great Grandma Glasgow come over every Tuesday morning for sewing lessons. Believe it or not, but they all sat quietly at the table and sewed for almost 2 hours each week.

The kids all chose to give Bonnie and Tyler an animal for their wedding present.

The following summer we looked forward to sewing with Grandma again. This year we progressed onto embroidery, and Rebecca (as the eldest(7.5) started on an embroidered pillowcase. Grandma was making one, and Rebecca was making a a matching one. Unfortunately, this perfect example of a hope chest item remains unfinished, because Grandma passed away that November. We have fond memories of our times sewing with Grandma, and my only regret is that I didn’t document the stories that she told us those 2 summers as we sewed together.

And now back to our sewing class. It took us several extra hours on Thursday to finish up the girls skirts, but Karalee hung in their with us and we finally got them done. The girls outdid themselves. I was worried that after 2 hours they would have had enough of sewing each day, but they hung in their and were still happy and energetic and the end of a four hour session. I should have remembered how good they did all those years ago with Grandma and I wouldn’t have worried. Karalee said she was impressed with how happy and fun to work with the girls were. They also enjoyed working with her and telling her all about their American Girl dolls ( who came to class as well).

As I was quietly working on my own projects I was thinking about all the different lessons that could be learned from sewing, like how the little things do matter, how to be patient, to do it right, or do it again, so that in the end you have a product that you are happy with and enjoy wearing, the importance of modesty and beauty, the joy of wearing something that you chose and made yourself. The girls asked me if sewing was cheaper than buying clothes and and we had a discussion about cost and “fair trade” items, but I didn’t even factor in all the other little lessons, traditions, and love that sewing stitches right into the clothing that we wear.

This is just another step on our Hope Chest Journey, and hopefully only the first of many sewing classes that we take from Karalee, because I know I learned a lot, and I hope that my girls did also, and it wasn’t all about stitching.

Liberty Day Parade

We attended the Liberty Day Parade this morning, and I was really disappointed. I remember attending the parade in years past and it being a fantastic event with Marching Bands, horses, scout groups political groups, and business groups, fire engines, clowns, and much more.

The best part of today's parade was cultural groups, the Scottish Bagpipers, the Koreans, and the Hare Krishna's. I think that the groups that take the time to learn about their religious, cultural, and family history realize what a great place america is to life. To many of the rest of us are complacent.

There were a few other groups that had a good turn out, and these were the groups that are taking the time to learn about the history of this great country, the constitution, and the founding fathers. They are the one's that realize how far our country is moving away from the constitution that has made us great. I don't know the name of all those groups but some of them were representing the 9-12 project, Boise Tea Party, and Idaho Tea Party, and and Freedom from Tyranny group. These groups had some nice floats, people dressed up as founding fathers, a representation of George Washington's Prayer at Valley Forge, and another float had Benjamin Franklin and Davy Crocket.

We as a People need to show our support for the this country, we need to come out to the TEA Party's, we need to participate in the parades that celebrate this great country and the founding father's and all that they have done for us, and recognize the veterans that have served our countrys, and the soldiers that are currently training and protecting our country.

In an effort to do my part I am going to give away a copy of the book, The 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen. This is the book that Glenn Beck has been recommending that everybody read to learn more about how our country was set up. I haven't finished reading the book, but wow, what a great book. Read this book, share it with your friends, and enjoy discussing the principles with them, and then go out and help save our country. You can buy the book from the NCCS - order 10 or more copies and you can get it for $5 each and then you can share them with your friends. To read more about this check out my blog post The 5000 Year Leap.

To win a free copy of The 5000 YEAR LEAP post a comment telling me what you did to Celebrate the 4th of July and link to your blog if you have one. Then check out my sister's post about the Declaration of Independance and see the need video that she posted.

Summer Is Here!

Spring just flew by - right from Easter Eggs to Summer Break. Ok, so summer break for a homeschooling family isn't much different than a school day, except just a lot crazier. They kids (and the Mom) are ready for a change of pace, so we put down pencils and pick up different tools. I'm thinking paintbrushes, rakes, shovels, sewing needles, etc.

Right now the girls are busy getting ready to go to Jubilation - a huge girl scout campout. They are very excited - I wish I was going with them, it sounds like a lot of fun. The following weekend the boys are headed out for the annual Father's and Son's campout. Last night Isaac informed me that I needed to go on a camping trip with him so we could "spend more time together" and fish. I'm not the fishing type, although I do really enjoy fishing.

I'm ready for so more one - on - one time with my kids as we relax and play and learn at a slower pace this summer.

Easter Story in Eggs

I found this great idea to go along with the Resurrection Eggs (or Easter Story in Eggs) that I bought a few years ago. We have done this for several years and my kids really enjoy opening the eggs and seeing what trinket is inside. The only problem is they don't use the King James Version, so I printed out my own scriptures.

This year we are going to go a step further, and create a lapbook in the same style. Check out Jamin's cute lapbook where I found the great printables and got my inspiration.

Since I am doing this project with 6 kids, I spent a bit more time to prepare everything so that it will go smoothly and everyone will be able to decorate eggs to their hearts content.

Here is the link to the Easter Symbols Printables on the Christian Preschool Printables website.

I found some great easter eggs to color on the following website - I downloaded them, opened them up in photoshop and resized them all to approximately the same size before printing them out.


Activity Village
Coloring on DLTK
Milliande Printables
Lucy Learns



I then created a template to trace onto construction paper to make the mini books. I still have to resize the text to fit inside the eggs, maybe we'll add the text on Thursday.

The 5000 Year Leap

The National Center of Constitutional Studies is offering copies of The 5000 Year Leap - the book recommended by Glenn Beck for $5 each to make it possible for people to share them with friends, family, and others. The books talks about the correct principles of government. The NCCS also sales pocket constitutions for $1 and is having a sale on their 3 book collection called the American Classic Collection ($35 - what a great deal).

I placed my order today - and for sharing this with 10 friends I am getting a free video on the constitution. I hope you will join me in sharing the principles of sound government with your friends.

This video shows some of the principles found in The 5000 Year Leap.

General Conference Treasures

Shortly after last General Conference we discovered this little treasure on the internet through the wonders of mass emailing.


A few weeks ago we were watching it again and I wondered, have they made a new one yet? Of course, I knew they didn't know who the new apostle will be - but just maybe . . .


What a treasure this has been to help my kids become excited about the apostles. We are looking forward to seeing the new video when it comes out after conference and the chance to get to know another new apostle.

Speaking of apostles this week we will be learning about the apostles to prepare ourselves better for General Conference. Here are some of the resources we will be using:


The Special Witnesses pages in the 2002 Friend was a Getting to Know (the Apostles) page.
January - Elder Jeffery R. Holland
February - Boyd K. Packer
March - Elder Henry B. Eyring
April - Elder Richard G. Scott
May - Elder Dallin H. Oaks
June - Elder Russell M. Nelson
July - Elder L. Tom Perry
August - M. Russell Ballard
September - Joseph B. Wirthlin
October - Robert D. Hales
November - David A. Bednar
December - Dieter F. Utchdorf

The 2006 Friend had Guess Who pages for Each of the Apostles.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
The individual links take you to the text pages, but you can also get the pdf version by going to the main page for Friend.

Once we have learned a little bit about each of the apostles, and what their jobs and responsibilities are we need to better prepare ourselves for listening to their inspired messages.

In the March 2009 Ensign there was an article titled Preparing our Children for General Conference that gave some great ideas for turning General Conference into a spiritual experience for the whole family.

I've never really thought about what I needed to do to prepare for General Conference so this post by Bethany on Preparing for General Conference was really eye opening for me. I also liked this Pre-Conference Checklist included in General Conference Worksheet by Lisa Smith. Mostly my preparations for General Conference have fallen along the lines of how am I going to keep the kids quiet, happy, and paying attention.

Well, I have good news -

Some wonderful members have put together some packets to use to encourage children and youth to listen to conference. There are a lot of great ideas here - so remember, you can't do them all this time, but conference comes around again every six months (and by then your kids will all be six months older.)

2009 General Conference Packet by Melanie Day

General Conference Ideas/Packets/Games - on Sugerdoodle - this has a whole list of different activities

General Conference Activity Pages from The Idea Door.

General Conference on About.com

Make Conference Memorable by Mormon Mamma

How to Stay Awake and Interested during General Conference - by Bethany


If you are looking for more coloring pages this site - ldscoloringpages.net indexes the coloring pages from the Friend.

As you can see there is a plethora of ideas. I like bits of pieces of all of them, so I pick and choose what to present each time to my kids, each child is different, so each packet can be different. I hope that you can find something that will work for you and your kids.


I look forward to General Conference - and enjoy the time spent with my kids watching and learning. Last conference was the first time we had a DVR and so we took advantage of it and would stop oonference so we could discuss the talks, and take better notes as it was going along. However, I still find that I miss quite a lot while taking care of the younger ones, so I love listening to conference on my MP3 player. You can usually download the MP3's of the conference talks within hours and begin to absorb the messages. I also anxiously await my Ensigns and spend the next 6 months reading and rereading the talks, and taking notes and highlighting them. I truly treasure our inspired modern day scriptures. I hope that this will help you to also treasure the wonderful blessing of a semi-annual General Conference.

Temple Geography

I am excited to be studying Temples this year with my kids. It is part of my Mother's Educational Course that has been such an inspiration to me this year, and has tied in so nicely with all the little bursts of inspiration I was getting last fall but didn't know how to incorporate into my life.

A couple of days a week I have been reading to my kids from Chad Hawkins book The First 100 Temples (Hawkins, Chad S., The First 100 Temples. Deseret Book, 2001). It is a beautifully illustrated book with a page or two on the history of each temple and several faith promoting stories. Included in the illustrations of each temple is a hidden picture. The kids love to find the hidden picture after I finish reading to them.

 

We have also incorporated the Temple Cards that were published in the Friend in 2002. We use the cards find the locations on our large wall map as we review what we remember about that temple. The kids were very excited to find that the book mentioned the first donation to the Mesa Arizona Temple was by Helena Rosebery (one of our relatives).

Rebecca began taking notes about the temples the other day and it got me to thinking that we needed some way to document our tour through the Temples of the World, but I couldn't anything other than the temple cards, and the Temple to Dot the Earth Game (Friend November 2002). So I decided to create my own notebooking pages. I created several versions, since I have kids at various levels. I'm planning on creating a Family Temple Notebook and having a different scribe for the day, since 150 temples is a lot to get through in 52 weeks. I included longitude and latitude because we just learned about it this week, but also to aid in locating the cities on a map. I was surprised to find someone had already created a longitude and latitude list (which is way more accurate than mine was going to be) and not only that but I found 2 interactive temple tours one using Google Earth and one using Live Maps. I'm so thankful for the work that other people create and share with the world through the amazing power of the internet.

I found these Temple Trivia questions on about. Com, but I don't like sites with so many advertisements, especially for my kids, so I created my own Temple Trivia Crossword Puzzle based on The First 100 Temples. I think this will be a fun way for them to review what they have learned, and will be able to look through our notebook to find the answers. I'm looking forward to creating more puzzles after I see what they take notes on as we continue on our world tour.

Rebecca said that she would like a report page so she could do her own research on one of the temple sites that I had found. (It really is true, if you trust the process they do transistion into scholars.)

The House of the Lord – Official LDS Site on Temples

LDS Church Temples – wonderful, up to date page on all the temples, facts, wonderful maps, downloadable screensavers.

Temples to Dot the Earth – Mostly maps of the temples, some interesting statistics, and links to local temple websites.

I have only just begun to create this notebooking pages, it will take me a long time to do 150 also. I wanted to share this now, and see if anyone had any suggestions, or recommendations for particular ones that you would like to use right away. I also want to have something that talks about the importance of the temples, I guess I'll have to search the Friend for more Ideas. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Nancy

Bibliography

I found the longitude and latitude of the temples as a download in an CSV file (can be opened in a spreadsheet program) from (GPS Coordinates CSV File) http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/downloads/

Trivia taken from stories in The First 100 Temples (Hawkins, Chad S., The First 100 Temples. Deseret Book, 2001)

 

The outline pictures of the temples was from the January 1986 Friend ( Pat Graham, "Sharing Time: The Spirit of God," Friend, Jan 1986, 46) but you can download the individual files from this about.com site. The colored temple cards can also be downloaded from about.com at (and can be located easily at this location in a modified format or this location which just links you to the church's site easier. Here are the links to the other months not already listed April 2005 and September 2007.

 

© Nancy Georgeson 2009 –becomingpeculiar.blogspot.com