Painting

Yesterday Bryn painted off and on for hours at her desk, while I painted off and on for hours at the kitchen table next to her. I was in heaven. And so was Bryn, until she decided "Bryn just only paint Mom's paper!" and then the party was over.

I painted a little 9"x11" watercolor of the Newport Beach Temple. I normally don't take pictures of the process, but it's kind of fun to see the progress.

I hope Bryn and I have many more painting days ahead!

Stayin' Alive

Today we were reading Bryn's Book of Mormon and she said "Hey! Wait a minute! Laman and Lemuel look like Stayin' Alive!"

And she's totally right!

Click HERE to see what she's talking about :)

Service Challenge

Tomorrow we are starting a 25-Day Service Challenge with my young women group and the leaders, and I'm so excited about it! (It was my secretary's idea. I have the best YW board!) I think it will be a really neat experience for all of us! I made these little books for everyone that we'll use the next 25 days. Here's the list of "service" we have to do. Ten of them are specific services all of us will be doing and then the other fifteen we will decide on our own. They can be done in any order. For each day there is a quote or scripture on service and a place to right the date and the number of service we did that day. The service challenge will last until May 11th, and then we have a camp-out with the young women on May 13th, where we will share our experiences of service. I hope it goes well!

I'm Seeing a Pattern...

Bryn's favorite thing to do this week is bring all her stuffed animals into the kitchen and make them "comfortable and cozy". And what better place for stuffed animals to play than the kitchen floor, right? I don't have to sweep anymore because Bryn rubs the animals around and they catch any crumbs and wipe up the messes. It's a win-win situation. :)

New Tricks

This weekend Bryn learned two new tricks:

(1) How to open doors. (A.k.a. how to leave her room at 6:30 a.m. Not good.)

(2) How to push the hidden button on "Patty Cottontail" that sings a high-pitched easter song.

I'm not happy about either of these tricks. I think we'll be shipping "Patty Cottontail" to a foreign country.

This is Brynlee

Hanging baby dolls. An everyday occurrence. Kind of weird.

So excited about her pipe-cleaner glasses.

And more hanging babies.

The baby thing is getting a little weird. Bryn loves it, but it looks like some sort of torture. Am I right?

New Beginnings

I just got pictures from our New Beginnings program for our young women group. It was such a fun night! We had a Survivor theme. (My friend Jen was the mastermind behind the theme). When the young women and parents arrived we split them up into teams (8 teams for each of the 8 values), and they each got a strip of fabric in their value color to tie around their arm. We talked about how the Young Women program and Personal Progress program will help the young women "survive" their teenage years and prepare them for the great things ahead. One of my counselors made these cute programs and took the time to burn all the edges. We introduced cute Taylor who will be turning twelve this year and joining us. We gave her a "survival kit" with things she'll need in the YW program. Each of our young women talked about a Personal Progress value by reading the value scripture and talking about how that particular value was important in their lives. (We have a small group of young women, so everyone got to participate). That was definitely the highlight of the night! After each girl talked about her value, she added her value box to the totem pole. And then we talked about how the totem pole represented the strong core of faith that will come from living by these values.

In between the girls' testimonies of each value, we had "challenge" questions that everyone completed with their team. Examples of challenge questions are "Who can approve a value project?", "How many hours should each value project take to complete?", "What is the new website for tracking Personal Progress online?". I think it was a fun way to go over some of these details with the girls and their parents. Refreshments were chocolate cupcakes with crushed oreos and gummy worms on top. Very Survivor-ish, right? This was such an awesome night to celebrate our girls and the Young Women program. I love serving with the young women!

Naptime Project

I had an extra pillow form and some left over scraps of blue fabric from Bryn's bedding, so I made another pillow for her bed. The plan is to just keep making pillows until her entire bed is covered. Ha. I'm getting there. At first I tried mimicking a pleated pillow I saw at Anthropologie, but I didn't like my version, so I picked out the seams and started over. I ended up adapting a gathered pillow tutorial from Make-it-and-Love-it. I didn't have enough fabric of one color to do gathering over the entire front and I didn't have enough to do a solid color in the back, so I pieced together what I had and made it work! I love projects that use up scraps and are quick and easy! Woot woot! And Bryn loves to "get comfortable" with her new pillow.