Give your Awana leaders a little "Excitemint"

No, I didn't give up my blogging.  I just stink at keeping up with what is going on in my crafty life.

Jim is the Awana commander for our church.  We like to give the leaders a little treat during the year.  We have a lot of great people that are willing to volunteer their time to work with kids age 3 through 6th grade telling them about the Gospel of Christ.  We thought a thank you was in order.

We had our kickoff meeting for the Awana leaders at church.  I made up a little thank you gift for each of them.  I found Aldi sells Excitemint gum at $.99 for 6 packages.  That made them affordable for me as I would need about 40 packages.  I am all for easy so I printed out labels created in MS Word on Avery 5167 address labels that said "Thank you for your commit "mint" to Awana".  I put one on each package of gum.  Hannah helped me hand them out at the meeting by saying here is a little "Excitemint" for you to start of the Awana year right.

I got the seed idea for this treat from one of my all time favorite Ladies Ministry bloggers, Julia Bettencourt.  She has a section she wrote on using different types of candy bars with catchy phrases for table favors and thank you notes.  When I saw this gum brand, I knew it would work.

<^..^> Lori

Free Valentine download from Jennifer McGuire

Don't miss Jennifer's cute tutorial to make a great calorie free Valentine here.  Jennifer is the real deal crafter keeping us informed with great ideas and great videos and now this great free download.  I am so grateful when people share their talents.

I ordered the card decks from Amazon by following her link.  It got here in 2 days.  I printed the free download and made them in super fast time.  They are going to be treats for kids in our Sunday school class and our Awana class.

Here they are…

<^..^> Lori

Just posting this under the wire

Merry CHRISTmas to you!  I rejoice that the God of the universe saw mankind could not reconcile to Him by obeying the law described in the old testament of the Bible.  So He sent the Word, His Son, to earth to pay for our sins.  Jesus chose to empty Himself of His glory and come to earth in the form of a man for our sakes.  He didn't have to do it.  God could have wiped out mankind and started over or given up on mankind.  But that wasn't His plan.  Instead He sent us a wonderful gift through His Son!

I pray that you know all about that gift and have accepted it so you may rejoice with me!  If not, please seek a Bible believing church in your area to hear the message of the Gospel of Christ.  It is life changing to all who hear and believe.

In Jesus name, Amen

<^..^> Lori

Christmas Treat

I did make some time to create a little Christmas gift for the pastors wives this week.  I had bought some dollar bin chocolates from Target with the idea of dressing them up for a Christmas gift.  I almost forgot about them but I spied them last night.  So I put them in glassine bags and prettied them up for Christmas.   I made 6 of them.  They are similar but not exactly the same.  I haven't figured out how I am going to label them yet but I decided to get a picture of them before the thought fell out of my brain.

<^..^> Lori

Some Christmas Cards that cannot easily be mailed

I did make Christmas cards this year.  Unfortunately they are too bulky to mail but I used them for people locally that I can hand deliver or put in their mailbox at church.  I cased the card from a Pin I made this year from a blog called Understanding Blue.  I created my own version of the Merry using my Silhouette and a font I thought was close to the one she used.

Here is my version:

For those cards I need to mail out, I will be sending boxes flat cards as they can be mailed with one stamp.  I did get a holiday news letter finished so I will be including it with my cards.  I so so so need to get them finished and into the mail.

<^..^> Lori

Dessert Theatre for 2013 is over

Last week was our church's big Christmas Dessert Theatre production.  I say big because it takes a lot of people a lot of time and a lot of energy to make it happen.  We do it as a labor of love for the Lord to share His timeless message of salvation to our community.

It was the first year since we started in 2008 that we repeated a performance.  It was changed up a little to accommodate cast changes and music.

My part is to set up the tables.  Here is a picture of the finished product from the last night of the performance.  I kept forgetting to bring my camera.

In addition to transforming the auditorium into a beautiful dinner theatre setting, the hallways are decked out in lovely Christmas decorations to put everyone in the mood.

  As I said at the beginning, it is a big job…and a labor of love.

I hope you get to hear the message of the Gospel this Christmas with fresh eyes and a tender heart!

<^..^> Lori

Snowman stacked jars

I saw something in a Michael's ad that I thought was really cute.  I searched the Internet for a good picture but I didn't find one.  I found versions of this idea but not the exact one I saw in the paper Michael's ad.  So I cut it out and took a picture of it.  I want to make these as a gift for someone that loves snowmen.  He makes me smile.

<^..^> Lori