Girl's Camp 2009

Girl's Camp was months ago, but I've had several of you ask me what exactly I was up to in this post. Our Girl's Camp theme was: I Strive to Be G.R.E.E.N. (Grateful, Respectful, Energetic, Example and Nice). Each day at camp we focused on one of the acronyms of G.R.E.E.N.

I wanted to get the girls excited for Camp, so I decided to pass out little treats with cute sayings on them the last month before camp. One of the focuses, was to be "Green" or environmentally friendly, so I found a font online that had different pictures and symbols which represented recycling, tree huggers, etc. I also used this font throughout the process.

Barnum's Animal Crackers with the saying: "Don't worry about living like an animal for a week, we do it all the time". Then there is a recycling symbol below that and the Girl's Camp theme at the bottom.

This treat was Chocolate Covered Cinnamon Bears that said: "YW Field Guide to Bear Identification" in a Bear font that I found online for free :D This also included a recycling symbol and the Camp Theme at the bottom.

Pop Rocks: "Camp Rocks"

Fruit & Nut Granola Bar: "There a little Fruit and Nut in all of us"

Another idea I did, but didn't take a picture of:
Little Baggy with 2 Golden Grahams, 1 small marshmallow and 1 chocolate chip: "Want S'more?"



Each ward was in charge of providing notebooks for the music, instead of making each leader their own, since our turnover is really high, I decided to make 1 for each position (YW President, 1st Counselor, 2nd Counselor, Secretary, Camp Director, Camp Assist. Director).

For one of our pre-camp activities the girls decorated their binders and they will get to keep them when they turn 18. They all turned out so cute and I think the girls really enjoyed making them.

Now, onto the main event. As soon as I heard about the theme, I went crazy and started thinking about all of the fun things I could create. Last year we purchased canvas totes from Robert's and decorated them with puff paints and fabric stars. I wanted to do something more practical, so this is what I came up with:

We took these swatches...

and after trying 3 different kinds of canvas, we found the one that would work perfectly...

we started cutting, and measuring...

all the while, trying to keep track of whose was whose...
my mother-in-law was a saint to help me out, and the sewing began...
the project was finally starting to take shape...
The final project....a drawstring backpack and matching journal.

Two cute pockets in the front of the backpack, one for the journal and one for a water bottle.

The journal below I made with the help of my sweet friend (2nd Counselor at the time) Dorothy. She was a saint through all of my madness. We also used her mother's embroidery machine to embroider each of the girl's names on the inside of their journal.
Our older girls, came and helped us pick out a button that would fit each girl's personality and make them original. I was so impressed with their skills and how mindful they were of each girl.

I found some of this fabric at the fabric store and knew I had to create something and incorporate it into our theme somehow...

so I made these little buttons for their backpacks.

Then I took all of the scraps...

and made a cute fabric banner for our cabin! It includes a piece from each girl's fabric that they chose for the backpack and journals, although they didn't know what they were choosing the fabric for.

While the girls were away at flag ceremony, we put the backpacks with all sorts of goodies on the table.

Our Girl's Camp flag below: It includes two separate pieces from each of the different fabric. The girls put their names on the squares at the top and their year of camp on the rectangles at the bottom. My favorite part...we used glow-in-the-dark puff paint!!!!

And finally, one of the crafts we made at camp was a block with the Mutual Theme on it.
Front:

Back:

I realize now, this is an extremely LONG post with lots of pictures, but I've been wanting to share for a long time! About two weeks after Girl's Camp ended, I was released. And a short month or two later my husband and I were called as the Nursery Leaders. Now we spend our Sundays playing with 18 month to 3 year olds and have enjoyed their little spirits and their ever abundant energy.

Yard Sale Fund Raiser

WARNING: Extremely long post ahead, but I'd still love you to read it! ;)


I've been meaning to post for several days now. Work has been extremely busy. I received a promotion at the beginning of May. While my position hasn't changed, the workload has significantly increased. I could probably work 12 hour days and still feel behind. I feel so blessed to have such a great job that keeps me busy and gives me opportunities to excel, especially with the economy.

I get home from work every night and find myself wrapped up in Girl's Camp preparations, 5K training, or other projects that I've been working on which have included sewn tote bags for birthday gifts, baby shower and bridal shower invitations, the secret Girl's Camp project, and other projects I can't name until after a certain baby shower next weekend. All of these projects keep me up until the wee hours of the morning. I've gone to bed past 2 every night this week and have still managed to get myself out of bed and to work by 8:30 every morning. I'm exhausted!!!

I have so much to post, so I'll start with our Yard Sale Fundraiser. It was scheduled for May 2nd, but we were rained out so we had to postpone until the following weekend (May 9th). I was grateful for the extra week. It allowed us more time to prepare for the Yard Sale and come up with a sweet little (actually BIG) contraption that we could hang all of the clothes on which allowed us more room in the yard for other items. It was a great idea that was possible because of my cute hubby's engineering and craftsmanship. :)

The signage below I worked hours on. I came up with a genius idea that if I used the cricut machine they would look amazing!!!! Little did I know how long it would actually take to create 18 (that's right I said 1-8) of the bad boys below! Thankfully, we had a friend recommend spray adhesive that saved our life, otherwise I think my hands would have fallen off in the gluing process. My wonderful hubby stepped up to the plate to help me again and so did my sweet SIL Jenny!! We busted out the glueing in only 2.5 hours. Jenny then came up with the wonderful idea of laminating the posters so we could use them in the future. GENIUS!!! I did get them laminated and from what I heard they were the best yard sale signs in Utah County! :)

Saturday morning started around 5am. We woke up and went to get breakfast for the girl's and start organizing. The yard sale was located at a neighbor's home so we had to head over early to get all of the clothing, furniture, etc. set up that was stored in our trailer and under a tarp in the neighbor's backyard. (I have never seen a tarp as big as this one in my entire life. We had another neighbor offer to let us borrow it when the weather turned bad the week before. The tarp literally saved our Yard Sale. Without it, I'm afraid we would have lost most of the items that were donated).

It took us over an hour to transfer all of the items from the back to the front yard. By 7:15 I was in a panic. The signs were not on their cardboard boxes, the yard was not organized, the clothes were not hung and we still didn't even have the big items from the trailer out yet. We continued to work and miraculously we were pretty close to perfect by the time 8am rolled around.

The beginning, mostly organized...

I was pretty scared that we weren't selling much. The clothes were flying off the racks at a doller per item, but none of the big ticket items were going anywhere. I just knew there was no way we'd get even close to making as much as we had the previous year. But we continued...

The sweet clothing rack made by hubby and friend.

By noon, we decided to go inside and count the money to determine how much we had made so far....


I was shocked when at noon we had made almost $1,000.00. Which already surpassed what we had made the prior year and we still had at least $100 in the cash box and still a steady crowd. At that point we started doing $1.00 per grocery bag. Anything you can fit into a bag is $1.00. Genius idea really, we sell our stuff for cheap and it leaves the yard so we have less to haul to DI. During this next stretch we went in shifts to buy slurpies for all of our hard work.

My cute girls

At 1:30 we started putting free signs on stuff and it kept disappearing. People were still stopping by and purching $1.00 bag packed with anything and everything. The yard started to look a little empty.


The monitor was one of the last things to go, but it did go for FREE! We started to clean-up and we made it home by 4:00pm and had earned over $1,300.00.

I feel so blessed to be in this calling. Things always work out, I don't know why I doubt it so much, but we were blessed. The girls were troopers and stayed most of the day. They even stayed around after I told them all they could go home. There were so many small and large acts of kindness from the neighborhood, community and our ward. I'm so happy it all worked out!



If you're planning to do a Yard Sale in the future, here are a few tips.

* Signage is everything!!! If you have great signs, you will get more traffic.
* $1.00 per bag 1-2 hours before you're finished really brings in the revenue.
* If people are still showing up-don't put your stuff away!
* Craigslist and local classifieds are your best friend! You can generally post online for free and you'll see more traffic.
* Friends tell their friends about your Yard Sale if you're willing to negotiate and bring your cost down.


Have a happy weekend!

HUGE sewing project

This is my second year as the Girl's Camp Director in my ward. As soon as camp was over last year, I started thinking about ideas for Girl's Camp this year. All my friends will tell you that I'm pretty much obsessed when it comes to camp. Just the other day I did a service project for Relief Society Enrichment and the whole time I was there I kept asking myself how we could do that same service project up at Girl's Camp.

This year our Stake Girl's Camp Theme is: "I Strive to be G.R.E.E.N. (Grateful, Respectful, Energetic, Example, Nice). We'll be incorporating ways to be environmentally friendly along with all of the other qualities that G.R.E.E.N. stands for. I was so excited when I first heard about the theme, my wheels immediately started turning...


Unfortunately, I can't give you the details about the project until AFTER Girl's Camp because the girl's don't even know what I'm doing (My girls look at my blog to see if they can find out what's going on). They have seen these green strips of fabric, in fact they got to pick out which one they wanted, but again they don't know what it's for. This is what I spent hours and hours on the first weekend I got my sewing machine. My wonderful MIL helped me sew and even came down this last weekend to help me finish the first half of the project. It's always so rewarding to see everything fall into place. :) I'll keep you posted on the project and I promise I'll post the whole thing in just a few short months!