Prairie Scraps

 I’ve wanted to make bags for the end of season, or even the beginning of music lessons in my studio.  Most of my students, carry their books everywhere, and they get destroyed from the car, water, food, etc.  so this gift is a little selfish on my side.  However, I do think that these turned out adorable.   I found these canvas backpacks on Amazon.  I even took into consideration the size of their binders, so that the binders would fit into the bag!    Chalk Couture came out with these two blueprint style transfer stencils that have musical instruments on it.  I should have checked them, because they didn’t have a guitar, and I actually have more guitar students this year than piano students. I just didn’t put the keys and piano on the guitar student’s bags.  For the music across all the bags, I used an old Christmas transfer called O’ Holy Night.  I just left off the words, so it wasn’t obvious that it was Christmas music.  I...

 We decided to use a health theme for this week's MOPS topic.  I've been wanting to make First Aid Kits in MOPS for awhile, but never found the right topic or could figure out how to keep it under budget.  We did it! I read a lot of posts about how to make First Aid kits on Pinterest.  I even considered using Ziplock bags to keep the costs down, but I wanted to do something more permanent.  I found pencil cases in the Clearance Aisle for $.75 each and decided to commit to it.  I got 12, which cost me about $10. I asked a couple of the ladies in my MOPS group to help me out (we were doing a fundraiser the same week) by asking some of our local businesses to donate First Aid Kit supplies.  I was so pleasantly surprised by their generosity!  Here's what we got: Asker's Harvest Foods (a local grocery store) - 12 rolls gauze bandages, 12 full-size Anti-bacterial Ointments, 40 Gauze pads, and 12 - 4" Elastic Bandages Primeland (Farm Co-op)...

I am busy getting ready for our MOPS meeting tomorrow.  I coordinate, but I love to do the creative activities for our group.  Our theme tomorrow is of course Loving our Husbands, so we have planned to write our husbands love notes.  Well, I just can't leave it at plain scrapbook paper for the notes!  I was looking on Pinterest and found a lovely post and video on how to make Origami Hearts HERE.   It's a great idea and well put together blog post, but the video moves so fast and the girl left out some of the steps in her editing, so I watched that video several times, before I figured it out.  Then I called in my son, who went on exchange to Japan to help me figure it out too.  He had to watch it several times too. Since it took me so many times to watch the video, I thought I'd do my own step-by-step picture tutorial so you can do it before Valentine's Day!  Once you get the hang of it, you will enjoy giving little notes around the house f...

I'm sorry I haven't posted lately.  We have been in a crisis trying to find housing for a large family and having no success.  Well, I have gotten some crafting done, because things had to get done, so I thought I would share. Sadly, our MOPS group has ended for the year, but it's a happy ending.  We had a ladies dinner together at a local restaurant and treated our MOPPETS volunteers for dinner.  I wanted to give each of my leaders and volunteers a special thank in addition, so I did some crafting.  One of our last craft projects was making coasters from tiles, so we made extra sets for the ladies that helped us in MOPPETS.  I'll have to share that with you soon, but here's the card I made with some new stamps I got.  We had two teens that helped with MOPPETS, so I bought a large bag of Reeses pieces and attached this tag to it.  For my leaders that helped this year, I gave a huge bar of Hershey's and let them know that if I could mea...

This week, we had a speaker come and talk about Potty Training with our MOPS Group.  I wanted to tie in a craft to go with it, so decided to include a Potty Training Chart.  I went on a search on the trusty internet, and found lots of ideas and a free printable for a Potty Training Chart.  I found quite a few, and one I really liked, but it was blurry when I saved it on my computer.   Here is where I got the Potty Charts from.   I printed these off at the church we meet at on card stock for free, so this cost me nothing.  I had a pack of self laminating sheets on hand that I figured I would just have MOPS reimburse me for, that was until I priced them out at Walmart and discovered that they were $14 for just 10 of them!  Needless to say, I donated most of the cost of these and would recommend using a laminating machine and the sheets end up costing about $.28 each. Here's what you will need for this project: Ribbon ($.99/roll - we got ...

I am sorry for the gap in my posting, I have had a ton of things on my plate over the holiday season.  I hope that you and yours have a very blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year! Although I've been absent from posting lately, I have been pondering and planning for the coming year!  I am really excited to be sharing new projects that I have done with my MOPS group, new books I'm reading, organizing in the new year, and I've been selected to be on the Hearts at Home Launch Team for Jill Savage's new book!  Stay tuned for more soon!

With a theme of the beach for our new MOPS year, I wanted to kick off our year with a beach themed Get-To-Know-You Ice Breaker Activity.  It's a nice non-threatening way to get to know each other in a group setting. I've done this activity before with teenagers in 4-H, so this can be fun for any age or group. This activity is simple to easy to put together. Place simple questions about themselves, on labels and put them in each section of a beach ball.  The idea is for everyone to stand in a circle.  Toss the ball around the room to someone new and where they catch the ball, that's the question that person answers.  I usually clarify that they answer the question in the section under their right pointer finger.   Different topics and questions that I included are: Favorite Animal Best School Subject Favorite Game Talent  Favorite food Best movie Favorite Song Last Book I read If I had a spare 30 minutes I would______ Ideal Vacation ...

Today is the day - we kick off the beginning of a new MOPS group in Grangeville, ID!  I am so excited, and of course nervous and busy!  One of the things that you don't realize about starting up a group is how much work goes into that first meeting! I love the craft projects, so it just wouldn't be the same without a craft project to kick the year off.  This first time, I wanted to do a somewhat practical, but easy and fun.  Oh, yeah, and did I mention that we have a $0 budget to work with? I decided to make bookmarks out of paint chip samples.  Sadly, I was willing to go get a whole stack of blue paint chips from the hardware store, for free, just to make a craft! I think it turned out really cute.  I will describe here what I did - I didn't think that I needed to take pictures of all the steps, since this one is pretty easy. Trim the Paint Chip Sample to the length that you like.  In this case, I cut off two sections with the  7-inch Tr...

I have been busy planning and starting a new MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers) group here in my new area.  I really didn't want to be the one to start one, but sometimes God works in mysterious ways!  So, a lot of things need to be put in order to get our first meeting started.  I've been coming up with a schedule for the year, along with coordinating crafts, so I'll be sharing those soon! We are on a very low budget since we are just starting.  In fact, I don't even know how many will be coming, as we are kicking off our first meeting at the end of this month.  Our theme is "Plunge: Love as if your life depends on it."  I took the water theme and was going to keep things simple by using canning jars (which would also be very cute and doable), but one of the ladies in our church does table decorations for our local senior center, and already had beach type table decorations made up that we could borrow for the year.  In the center is a brandy sniffe...