The boys were at their squirrley best during church this morning. No matter how prepared I am with books, drawings, and golden ideas like my add-a-silly-body book above, my patient encouragements inevitably give way to threats, like  “No ice cream after lunch if you lick my knee one more time!”

If you’re in Primary and could use some birthday coupons for the kids, here’s a printable. I tuck these into the birthday cards we hand out.

Designing for Primary is a lot of fun. Much less pressure than designing for Relief Society, that’s for sure.

Click on pic to download PDF

I had the opportunity to teach Sharing Time in Primary last Sunday, and as I was preparing my lesson the night before, I had an 11th hour idea (because that is when the best ones come) to make bookmarks for all the kids. This posting is a bit after the fact, since this was the scripture for the month of June, but in case you’d like one — or four — for yourself, download…

…here!

In Primary last Sunday, we handed out church leader flashcards to the children as an Easter gift, and also to get them thinking about the upcoming General Conference.

These were really easy to make, mainly because you can download high-res, print-quality photos of all the church leaders here. So awesome. The backside of the photos are printed with the leaders’ names. I then drilled (like literally, drove a hand powerdrill through 40+ sets of cards) a hole in the corner, and bound each set with ribbon when I ran out of book rings. Which apparently, are nearly impossible to find in my part of the United States.

Now, this would be the part where I say click here to download, but unfortunately, the church has strict usage rights on its copyrighted material so I can’t share my doc. But its very simple to put together. You just have to download the pictures (15 total), resize to about business-card size (I laid mine out in Illustrator), print, cut out, then bind with ribbon or book rings.

I am so looking forward to conference! Is it bad to have “favorites”? I can’t help having Elder Bednar as mine!

The first Primary (the children’s organization of my church) download of many more maybe? With my new calling as Primary secretary, I imagine I’ll be regularly designing little things here and there.

These are assignment cards for the children I made a few weeks ago. Card assignments include opening prayer, Article of Faith recitation, scripture reading, and talk. These are given to assignees a week ahead of time so they can prepare for the following Sunday.

If you’re serving in a Primary presidency and could use these cards, download the PDF by clicking on the image below.

We had a very lovely evening socializing and enjoying pumpkin-based dishes at our annual pumpkin party for all the ladies from church.

Despite some major glitches along the way (an entire string of lights shattering, missing tablecloths, missing committee members, and so on), everything came together perfectly at the end. We had to work within a ridiculously tight budget, so decorations were handmade or bought on the cheap, and I took full advantage of the outdoor patio/courtyard area our relief society room opens up to. To elevate the “budget” decor, I relied heavily on lighting, hence all the tea lights, luminaries, and string bulb lights.

This undertaking would not have been possible without an awesome planning committee (those that didn’t go AWOL on me) and amazing, amazing friends that came early and stayed late to help, just because. And husbands, I did not forget about you. Your prowess in hanging lights and managing extension cords is worthy of a gift certificate to any electronic store of your choice.

Resources and design notes:
Pumpkins – Martha Stewart tutorial here.

Luminaries – Vellum paper rolled and held together with double-sided tape. Paper trees cut out of black paper, taped onto battery-operated tea lights, then inserted into vellum luminary to create a spooky tree silhouette.

Battery-operated Tea lights – Best price at Costco; 24 lights for $12. Otherwise, order from Oriental Trading.

String bulb lights – Borrowed from dear friends Kaleene and Shawn. But can be found at Target, $8.99 for 25 feet. I know this because we had to buy them a new string to replace the one we broke!

Fall leaves – $1 for pack of 50, dollar section at Target.

Our next big Relief Society activity is only a week away and my mind has been pretty preoccupied with all the party details, so I wanted to design an invitation that had no post-printing work involved: no folding, ribbon tying, stuffing into envelopes, etc. The result is a full-color, double-sided, 5″ square invitation.

And big props to my darling friend Angela who happily obliged to get dressed up and nails painted red (and hands dirtied with pumpkin guts!) for our little photo shoot.

A roundup of things that stood out to me this week:

Pretty plates – I know exactly where I’d hang these in my kitchen.

Typographic calendar – Love the design, love the concept.

School and office supplies – This store makes me wish I can rummage through my grandma’s old house and take home with me items I took for granted growing up.

Vintage circus posters – Isn’t the typography rad?

This dress – I’m a sucker for clothing with animals printed on it. P.S.: The price tag is ridiculous.

And last, but not least, my ultimate favorite thing this week:

Testimony about the Book of Mormon (QuickTime video) – This year marks the 10th year I’ve been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This talk by Jeffrey R. Holland touched me to the core and was especially poignant because the Book of Mormon is very dear to me, and was instrumental in my decision to join the church. Hearing his testimony made me recall all the feelings I had when investigating the church, and rekindled that same fire I felt reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

{Pic of Kai above trying to hop into some beached kayaks at Harbor Cove}

My latest design for an upcoming Enrichment activity; a Saturday morning committed to making quilts, quilts, and blankets. Hence the loads of fabric I bought yesterday.

I teamed up with my friends Lynette and Angela to put together an Asian-themed table. We were originally going to implement some sort of Paris look. Think black and white. Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face with her glorious balloons. But at 6pm last night, we threw that idea out in favor of an Asian theme (uhhh, two of us are Asian after all…) We gathered inspiration from this Martha Stewart Kids party and literally spent the whole day putting it together.

So I think I got off easy by making just the cake. Angela procured candies, paper, and made the beautiful origami flowers while Lynette spent the entire day going from store, to store, to store, shopping for all the little details. By the time I came with the cake, the two were nearly finished with the table. Again, this was all pulled off today. And both ladies have two little children. My friends are amazing.

One last thing. I was very happy at how this frosting turned out. And also this whipped cream frosting. Both from Cafe Johnsonia.