Things boys & girls should know before their first date

I saw this online the other day and thought it was good enough to share. I am going to keep it for future reference. 

There are two lists, what boys should know and what girls should know. I found it on Ooph blog.

Here is the Boys list that I got here:

The following are ten things you should tell your son before his first date.

1. Clean your car. Inside and out. No girl wants to go on a date with Slurpee cups and jock straps.

2. Walk to the front door and shake her parents hands. Look them in they eye and thank them for allowing their daughter to go out with you. Both before and after the date.

3. If she isn’t kind to you on the first date, she never will be.

4. No means no. ALWAYS. If she says no, you stop. IMMEDIATELY.

5. A kiss is something you earn. And? Ask first. It’s a nice touch and it’s respectful.

6. Find out what she likes and plan your date around it. A movie, sports, mini golf? What kind of food does she like? Is she an animal lover? Go to the zoo. You get the idea.

7. Hold the door open. All of them. At home. In public. And ESPECIALLY the car door.

8. Have a girl home five minutes before her curfew. It means everything to her parents to know you respect their rules.

9. A date is for the two of you. Not you, her and four of your closest teammates.

10. Take a shower and use deodorant. And by shower I don’t mean dousing yourself in Axe Body Spray.

Now here is the list for the girls I got here:

The following are eleven things you should tell your daughter before her first date.

1. Always have an out plan. Use your parents if you need to. Have a certain thing you text mom or dad and we will call and get you home.

2. You are NEVER helpless. SAY NO and then fight HARD if you have to.

3. Be yourself, not what you think he wants you to be.

4. Have a couple of topics to talk about in case the conversation stalls. First dates can be awkward for both of you. Topics can be something going on at school, something you are interested in or something you know he is. 

5. If there is a little voice inside your head telling you something? LISTEN.

6. Don’t post your date on Facebook before it happens. And? Don’t talk about it on Facebook after. Good or bad. Too much pressure and too personal.

7. If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t. Go home.

8. Stay in public or around other people.

9. A boy should knock on your front door and introduce himself to your parents. He should walk you to your door at the end of your date and say goodnight to them too.

10. If he isn’t a gentleman on your first date, he never will be.

11. Don’t overdress or wear too much makeup. Just wear what you feel comfortable in. He asked you out because he likes you the way you are.

I thought these lists are really good for young adults to know. You don't see a lot of this going on these days. That is why it is important for us to teach our children this. They will stand out among the crowd. 

Our Thanksgiving Turkey

I had seen on Facebook someone that put bacon on their turkey and it looked really yummy! We had left over bacon from breakfast so we decided to try it. I weaved the bacon strips on top of the turkey like this:

We added Mrs. Dash original seasoning to the top and put it in one of those Reynolds oven bags. 

 After cooking for 3 or 4 hours it was done! I think it turned out really yummy!!

Sometimes the turkey can come out kind of dry. But I think the bacon made it more juicy and tender. You could taste a hint of the bacon. Bacon makes any food taste good when you wrap it around it. Overall we are really happy with how it turned out!

Fire Starter

So I first saw this on Pinterest and thought, "What an excellent idea!! This is stuff I end up throwing away anyway." So I decided to do it. I already had a bunch of toilet paper rolls for a project I wanted to do from Pinterest but just didn't get to. All you do is take toilet paper rolls and the lint I had from our dryer and stuff it into the toilet paper rolls and there you go! You have fire starter for your fireplace, for camping, for your emergency preparedness stuff or whatever else you would use it for.

I have them in a plastic grocery bag for now. I need to go to the store and get gallon size ziplock bags to put them in. I figure the ziplock will keep out water. I want the gallon size so I can keep a few in one bag. This was a super easy project for me to do! Anyone can do this! Yes, even you! ;) 

Ward Fabulous Friday

Our ward had a 'Fabulous Friday' on October 12th 2012. It's like Super Saturday but on Friday night instead. They had all sorts of crafts that you could make. There was a bunch I wanted to make, but my favorite was the one I did. It was $18 and I think the relief society secretary said she bought all of the project I was doing at The Wood Connection. It was really simply to do. I painted the board black. When it dried I took sand paper and sanded down the edges to make it look "rustic" or "old". To put the forever word and temple on we used a really strong adhesive. Not sure what is was called but I am sure you could ask someone at The wood Connection or craft store what to use. I took the ribbon and poked it through the holes and tied it to the metal hang and WHA-LA! I was done!! But before I could hang it on the wall I needed to let the adhesive work it's magic for 12 hours.

I thought it turned out great!

Wicked!

I have found my new favorite place to do crafts. It's call The Wood Connection. They have ALL kinds of projects you can do there. For my first project I chose the word 'Wicked' with a small witch hat to decorate. It was the first of October so I thought it would be appropriated. :) I bought the letters and paper for under $20. The letter are a LOT bigger then you think. I sanded the letters so they would be a little bit more smooth. I laid the letters on the paper I wanted for each letter and traced around them with pencil. I cut out all the traced letters from the paper and set them aside. I then painted the letters all black. Next I  put mod podge on the front of the letters and carefully laid the paper on top. I then smooth out the paper. Make sure there are no bubbles or wrinkles. Wait until it is completely dry. Then you add more mod podge on top of the paper. It kind of seals it. And you are done IF you want to stop there. I blotted a little bit of black paint around the edges. You can add ribbon jewels glitter or what ever you like! Now for the witch hat I just painted it black and added a purple ribbon. Again you can do more with it if that is what you like.

Here is the finished product:

There's a hole through my foot!!

So I know this doesn't have anything to do with crafts but it is still a story of what happened to me that I want people to learn from. DON'T LEAVE KNIVES ON THE GROUND!! This would go under the 'Such' part of this blog. ;)

**WARNING** If you are at all squeamish I would NOT read or look at the pictures in the following post. 

Now that I posted the warning we can move on to the story about how I got a hole through my foot..... 

On Saturday, March 24th we got a trampoline and were setting it up. I got a serrated steak knife so that we could open the boxes. Everything was going really well. We started to put the springs on. We got through the first box of springs and were on to the next. When James was done using the steak knife to cut open the box he handed it to me and I just threw it off to the side. James tells me, "Honey you should probably move that, It's not a good idea to leave it on the ground." I tell him, "I will in second." Then that still small voice inside tells me that I really should move that knife. I'm thinking to myself "OK I will, I will I just want to help James with the springs really fast and then I'll move it". A few minutes later almost all of the springs are on. There were just a few that needed springs so I tell Ana that I will race her around the tramp hanging the springs on the rest of the loops. Well as we are running around the tramp I must have stepped on the end of the handle of the serrated steak knife and made it pop up and then when I brought my other foot forward to run it stabbed in the top of my foot. I didn't even realize it was in my foot until I took a few steps and looked down wondering what was hanging off of my foot. And this is what I see:

This is a drawing that I did to show you how it looked on the top of my foot. It's not exactly accurate, but you get the idea.

At this point I don't know what I am thinking. All I say is, "Honey....." James looks down and says, "Holy $h!t! What did you just do?!?!" I tell him that he needs to get a towel. The girls are freaking out. So while he's in the house getting a towel I pull out the knife (even though I don't remember doing it) and All this blood comes rushing out. So I lift up my foot from my shoe and there is just a pool of blood in my shoe. I remember looking down and saying, "Oh my gosh that is a lot of blood!" as soon as I say that Ana is hysterical!!! She goes running into the house Kimberly not too far behind her. I feel really dizzy and sick to my stomach so I just fall on the ground. I'm sure it's because of how much blood I lost in such a little time. James comes running out with a towel and puts it on my foot and then calls my Mom so that she can come sit with the kids while we figure out what to do. So My Mom and Sister-in-law Kara come over as quickly as they can. Because of how much blood I lost and the look of the cuts James decides to call 911. So we have 4 cop cars, 1 fire truck and 1 ambulance come over. They look at it and take my blood pressure, my temp and ask me questions. I really don't remember a whole lot. They wrap my foot up and tell me that I have a choice to either ride in the ambulance or go on my own to the ER. I didn't think it was necessary to go in the ambulance. Instead of getting wheeled out on a stretcher two paramedics carried me to the car. It was really embarrassing for me because there where a bunch of people outside wondering what was going on. I'm sure I looked beet red even though I was pretty pale after losing a lot of blood.

So we get to a room in the ER and they remove the bandages and this is what it looked like: 

Pretty gross!! It was really starting to hurt at this point. He has me wiggle my toes and I do. He pushes on the top of my big toe and tells me to push his finger up with my toe and I do. He checks to make sure I didn't brake any bones and I didn't. I was pretty lucky! It was a miracle that I didn't hit any tendons or arteries. So the Doctor tells me that he will have to do stitches. But before he does that they have to numb me and then clean my cuts. The numbing part hurt the worst because they have to stick the needle right into the cuts to numb them. To clean my cuts they spray water in one cut and water starts coming out the other cut. So we got it on video:

 

Don't worry I can't feel a thing because I am numb. After playing with the water it was time to get serious :) and have the doctor put stitches in. I ended up getting 6 stitches in the cut on top of my foot and 4 in the cut on the side of my foot. So 10 stitches total. 

What I learned from this whole thing: 

#1- Listen to my Husband

#2- Listen to the still small voice

#3- Keep sharp objects OFF of the ground!!

Homemade car town for my children

Ana has been bugging us lately to play on either the Xbox, Wii or the computer. She asks us at least once a day. I just get SO tired of her always wanting to play on video games. I don't mind if she plays here and there but if she could play video games all the time she totally would. I was thinking that we need to get back to the basics like playing with barbies, playing dress-up, playing with baby dolls, stuff that didn't have to do with video games and encouraged creative play. Then I was thinking about what I did with my siblings when I was little because we didn't have video games. My parents didn't have a lot of money and I remember when I was a little girl my older sisters made a car town for my brother, sister and I. We loved it! We played on it for hours and hours! So I got the idea to do that for my kids. I thought that this would be a new and fun way for them to play together without any video games. So I went to Walmart and found some thicker cloth called "Duck Cloth" that would be great for this. It was about $6.00 a yard. I got 1 yard of it. This is how I made it:

First I drew in pencil with the help of a yard stick the roads for the car town. Then I traced the pencil lines with a black permanent marker:

You can make your roads more interesting if you want. I just wanted to make it a little more simple.

Next we wrote down on a piece of paper what we wanted our car town to have. Like:

Hospital, Police/Fire station, School, Library, Car wash, Grocery store, Post office, Church, Gas station, etc.

We also came up with different stores that our kids would like. For example, Ana likes Dinosaurs so we did Ana's Dino (because I couldn't fit dinosaur) museum. Kimmy is always dancing so we did Kimmy's Dance studio. Hunter loves cars so we did Hunter's car wash. Claire is the baby of the family so we did Claire's baby boutique. James is into sports so we did Daddy's sports den. I like to read (when I get the chance) so we did Liz's library and also because of the L's. 

Then we had the kids pick the spots where they wanted me to draw their house. They had fun with that! So what I did next was I started drawing all of the buildings in pencil. So if I did something wrong I could kind of erase it. I would suggest drawing EVERYTHING in pencil first. I even had the kids tell me what they wanted their house to look like and then I drew it according to what they wanted. They loved that! Here is what it looks like with everything in pencil. Look really close because its hard to see. you can click on the picture and it will go bigger.

The last thing I did was trace everything I did in pencil with different color permanent markers. I had the kids tell me what colors they wanted their house to be. They thought that was pretty cool! The kids could NOT wait until I was done with the whole thing! They hovered around me almost the entire time I was working on it. They were super excited when I was finally done with it!! I was pretty happy with it and thought it turned out great! It took me a good 3 hours to do. Not too bad. The kids have had SO much fun playing on it. I find myself getting down on the floor with them and playing. :) Now when ever we go to the store we have to go see what cars they have to so we can add more cars to our car town.

Here's what it looked like all done:

Here is a closer look at the car town I did:

  

I am not a very good artist, but this was the best I could do. ;) What's most important is that my kiddos love it! And it's more personal to our family then buying a generic one at the store. :)

How to make a paper box

I love to make these boxes. It is really simple to do and you can use them for different things. They are great for small gift boxes. What you need is paper (I use card stock), scissors and tape. This is how you make them:

Step 1: You need to have a paper that is exactly square. It doesn't matter what size. What ever size you have depends on what size the box will be. So if you have a big size paper you'll have a bigger box. If you have a smaller size paper you'll have a smaller box.

Now that you have your square paper you need to fold one corner to the opposite corner to make it look like a triangle:

Then unfold it and do it to the other corners. When you open it, it should have a folded X like this:

Step 2: Now take each corner and fold it to the middle. It should look like this:

Step 3: With the corners folded to the middle take one side and fold to the middle. 

Then take the opposite side and fold that to the middle. It should look like this:

Do the same thing to the other side. You'll see that anything you do to one side/corner you do to the opposite side/corner.

Step 4: Unfold it all. When you unfold it, it should look like this: (but without the drawn lines, of course!)

You will see in the middle four folded squares as shown in the above picture. (I drew along folds so you could see them better in the picture) That will be the bottom/top of your box.

Step 5: Also in the above picture you see four dotted lines that I drew along the folds. You will cut a long those. DO NOT cut into the four boxes in the middle, remember that is the bottom/top of your box. Once you cut along those it should look like this:

Step 6: Take the two corners that you didn't cut and fold those to the middle. It should look like this:

Step 7: Next take the right/left triangles where you started to cut and fold them down to make a little square. It should look like this:

Step 8: This is the hard part. Now you are going to take the squares and fold them up and over so they are touching each other. It should look like this:

Step 9: Fold the pointy part of the paper up and over the part you just did. Tape it down. It Should look like this:

Step 10: Do steps 7-9 to the opposite side and you get a box! It should look like this when your all done:

The above picture is the top of my box. Now to make the bottom of the box you do the same steps. BUT the bottom box paper HAS to be a little bit smaller for it to fit together. I always cut off a 1/2 an inch from the top and a 1/2 an inch from one of the sides of the paper to make the paper smaller so it fits into the top of the box. So if you put the smaller paper on top of the bigger paper the big paper should be have about a 1/4 an inch more all the way around.

Here is what it looks like with the top and the bottom completed:

This is the top and bottom fitting inside each other. You won't see the bottom,because it fits right inside.

Here is a video of me making one:

Welcome!

Welcome all! I have decided to make another blog that shows the crafts that I do and other (not) personal things that I do. I was not comfortable with anyone seeing pictures of my personal life, but still want others to see the crafts that I do. :) So I will be posting older stuff on here that I had on my personal blog that I would be fine with whoever seeing it. Hope you enjoy all the fun stuff I post!

Thanks! 

Liz