FHE in a Jar

Last night for our mutual activity, we put together FHE in a Jar kits. I must admit, they turned out pretty dang cute. I got the original document of strips from JennySmith.net. But when I opened the word document, the formatting came up really bad, so I copied and pasted it into an Excel spread sheet and fixed the formatting to make it nice and uniform. Each strip contains a song, scripture(s), and a question to discuss. So easy! This would also be good for scripture study/journalling. I thought to make it a complete FHE there should be treats! So, I got on allrecipes.com and searched for "easy treats" and "easy desserts." So, you have 7 pages of FHE lesson strips, and 5 pages of easy recipe strips. I printed the lesson strips on white paper, and the treat strips on colored paper so you could tell the two apart and pick one of each. I also made some cute tags to put on the outside. In Jenny Smith's document, the first page is a tag and instructions. Just so you know.

I think they turned out pretty cute and I hope the girls use them! I know I will! Plus, under Good Works in their Personal Progress books is a goal about teaching Family Home Evening - so we got a lot into just one activity.

FHE in a Jar Lesson strips (.xls - Excel spreadsheet)
FHE in a Jar Lesson strips (.pdf - Adobe Acrobat)

Easy Treats strips for FHE in a Jar (.doc - Word document)
Easy Treats strips for FHE in a Jar (.pdf - Adobe Acrobat)

FHE in a Jar Tags (.ai - Adobe Illustrator)
FHE in a Jar Tags (.pdf - Adobe Acrobat)

The original source of FHE in a Jar on JennySmith.net.

My chocolate chip cookie recipe

Every time I make these cookies people ask me for the recipe. I made 48 cookies this afternoon, and with my kids' friends stopping by, some Boy Scouts stopping by and some missionaries there are now only 8 cookies left. So I thought I'd share the recipe with you too! Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1 c. real butter

1 t. Mexican vanilla

2 eggs

3/4 c. white sugar

1 c. brown sugar

2 1/4 c. flour

1 t. baking soda

1 t. salt (omit this if you use salted butter)

2 c. chocolate chips (milk chocolate or semi-sweet, whichever you prefer)

1 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Mix the butter until smooth. Add vanilla, eggs, sugars and mix well. Add flour, soda and salt (if required). Mix well. Add chocolate chips and nuts; mix just until mixed.

Spray cookie sheet(s) with Pam. Use scoop and drop dough by rounded spoonful on cookie sheets. Cook 8-11 minutes, depending on your oven. When they are golden brown, remove them from the oven. Let them cool for 3-5 minutes, and put on a cooling rack. Enjoy!

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

I can't claim this recipe as my own, but my family LOVES this recipe. It comes from a girl I know named Channan.

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

3-4 chicken breasts

6 c. water with 6 t. chicken bouillon (or use chicken broth)

5-6 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 medium onion, chopped in large chunks (I've used yellow, white and red onions- whatever I have on hand at the time)

Several stocks of celery, chopped

1 1/2 c. frozen peas (Don't thaw before!)

Basil

Oregano

Pepper

Salt (Kosher salt is what the recipe calls for, but I use sea salt, or use table salt.)

1 c. heavy cream

1/2 pkg. wide egg noodles

(All ingredients are approximate; you can add to or reduce as you wish.)

Directions:

Poach chicken breasts in broth for 20 minutes. Remove chicken and refrigerate. DON'T THROW OUT THE BROTH! It's your soup base! Add onions, carrots and celery. Simmer until carrots are soft.

Add your spices (to taste), and then dice or tear chicken. (I usually pick it up with a fork, put it over the pan and use kitchen shears to cut it up.)Add the chicken, heavy cream, frozen peas and noodles to the pan and stir well. (I get the Ream's Frozen noodles because they're the BEST!)

Remove pan from heat. Keep covered until noodles are soft.

We LOVE this recipe, and very rarely have leftovers. My kids used to want the Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, but I've slowly won them over. Now they request this all the time!

Homemade cars birthday party decorations

We had a Cars themed birthday party for my youngest son. I was unable to find all of the decorations we wanted so I made my own. It was pretty easy to do, and they turned out pretty well. (The pictures didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but you can get the gist from them I think!)

I wanted to have some race flags so I got 1 1/2 yards of black and white checked fabric from Wal-Mart. I cut the fabric into 16" squares, which I cut diagonally corner to corner to make triangles. I sewed hems on the two angled lines. Next I got 1/4" white rope that we had in the garage and sewed the last hem around the rope. I made a total of 16 flags.

Here are two views of the flags that I had hanging from the canopy. It was a bit breezy so I couldn't get a better shot... sorry!

I used my Cricut machine to cut out blue ribbons for everyone. I used them as the thank you notes that I put in the treat bags that all the kids took home. You could also use them as awards for any games that you play.

I cut the tops and bottoms off 2 boxes and then cut holes on 2 sides as handles.

I covered the "cars" with aluminum foil and taped around the edges to make sure that it would stay put.

I cut out 2 different sizes of circles using my Cricut machine to make headlights.

These are the headlights on the box cars.

Here are the numbers on the side of the box cars.

For the activity you have the kids step into the center of the "car" and hold it up by the handles on either side. Then they do a relay race going around a "race track." For our race track my husband used blue painters' tape and made 2 lanes so both teams would have their own lanes. It was inexpensive, quick and easy to set up and clean up, and effective.

I used the lids from the box cars to make license plates that all the kids got to decorate. Here's a picture of the birthday boy with his license plate. (He was in a funny mood and all of his pictures are cheesy smiles with his eyes closed. Silly boy!) I let them all decorate their plates with foamie stickers that had pictures and letters. Then I wrote their names on the side because most of them wanted to cover as much as they could before I could write their names in the center. One idea is when they get thank you cards you can edit these photos to make them look like driver's licenses.

Quick and easy candy jars

Here is a quick and easy craft that anyone can make. I don't have pictures of the before yet because I taught a class on glass etching while my friend was teaching this class. I am going to make some more for teacher gifts so I will take more photos then. The best part of this project is that it's super cheap.

Supplies:

• Terra cotta pot
• Terra cotta plant holder (is that what they're called?)
• A round, wood ball
• A small glass fish bowl that you get at craft stores (Hint: Match the size of bottom of the fish bowl to the bottom of the pot.)
• Glue and glue gun
• Ribbon (optional) You can change the ribbon with the seasons!

Instructions:

1. Paint the pot, plant holder and ball. Allow to dry. A second coat may be needed.
2. When the paint is totally dry, turn the pot upside down, and liberally apply hot glue over the top. Immediately put the bowl (bottom side down) on the glue. Hold in place to ensure a firm grip.
3. Next put a good amount of hot glue on the bottom of the painted ball and attach to the bottom of the plant holder in the center. Hold in place until dry.
4. Put your treat of choice in the bowl, then put the lid on top.
5. If you want to dress it up even more tie a ribbon around the pot.

You're done! Enjoy!