TechieChic

Me and my mom curling our hair while camping. What high maintenance girls we must be!

Today is Mother’s Day and across the world Primary children will be getting up in sacrament meeting to sing a song to their mother’s in honor of the day. In our family we have a joke about my mom’s least favorite Mother’s Day Primary Song – Mother, I Love You.  If you’ve never heard this song performed by a chorus of primary children you may not understand why she has such a loathing for this song – the lyrics are really sweet and who wouldn’t love ANY song sung by their children to them on Mother’s Day?!  But something about the timing of the song, and the opening few measures, the sound is reminiscent of a whining child who is slowly plodding through and fighting doing their morning chores.  While that may be an appropriate depiction of motherhood, it’s hardly the one most desired for remembrance on Mother’s Day.

Fortunately in our ward this year they’ve chosen a different song to honor mothers.  This will be my first Mother’s Day when I will actually have a child old enough to sing with the Primary children for Mother’s Day, and I’m stoked!  When I first heard the song choice, while I was relieved it wasn’t the aforementioned song, I was a bit confused.  The song that our music director had chosen is Love is Spoken Here, and while it’s a beautiful song, it had never struck me as a particularly Mother’s Day-y song.  However as I listened to our primary kids sing it, tears welled up in my eyes as it made me think of my own mother.  For those of you who don’t know this song the words to the first verse are below -

I see my mother kneeling with our family each day

I hear the words she whispers as she bows her head to pray

Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears

And I am thankful, love is spoken here.

I wish I had a digital picture I could post, but I have a very vivid picture in my own mind of my mother kneeling by her bed daily in prayer.  It’s probably one of the most recurring and constant memories of my growing up years to see her there.  Almost daily I would walk into her room to ask her where my homework was, or what we were having for dinner or to come kill a spider in my room – and there she was in silent prayer at the side of her bed.  I know that my mom has a very close prayerful relationship with our Heavenly Father.

As I heard the words “Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears” I thought that even though I no longer live with my mom and don’t have that visual reminder, I know that she is still there by her bedside and praying for me.  I thought of some of the things I am facing right now that are a little bit daunting.  When I thought about it, I knew that my mom is praying for me to be able to get through the trials I have before me, and I truly did suddenly have all my fears quieted.  Whatever I may have to face, I know that my mom is there, pleading on my behalf with the Lord.  What a wonderful feeling of peace that gives me.

The last line doesn’t quite seem like it goes with the rest of the song.  The song is tells a story of prayer, but then at the end the author says they are thankful that love is spoken in their home.  The word love isn’t even mentioned in the song before that.  However, I think that’s a powerful message right there.  Even without saying the words “I love you” to her child, the mother in this song has communicated love more effectively than any words could.  My mother spoke her love for us with actions as much as with words.  How could I doubt that my mother loved me when she spent her time talking to the Lord to know how best to raise me and love me and do all that was best for me?  I think the message of the song is that the best kind of love comes through teaming up with the Lord to provide the best care possible for your children.

I feel so very blessed to have the wonderful mother that I do.  Her example of prayer and faith has been a beacon to me throughout my life, and will continue to be so into the future.  I love you so much Mommy, and I hope that I can be as good of an example of faith and love to my children as you have been to me.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We’ve all been there.  You’ve gone onto Pinterest to pull up a recipe, or get an idea for FHE… and 2 hours later you realize you’re still there, pinning a million ideas that you’ll never get around to doing.  Dinner’s still not made, you’re no closer to actually having an FHE lesson prepared and you wonder why you got on in the first place.

Pinterest is an awesome resource.  I’ve seen so many awesome tricks and tips for making my life easier and better, but I also know how easy it is to get sucked in for hours at a time without getting anything done.  I’ve come  up with a couple of techniques that I’ve started to use to help me make my Pinterest time productive rather than wasteful.

I think the best thing I’ve done is change my Pinterest bookmark from going to the Pinterest home page, to going directly to my personal boards page (i.e. http://pinterest.com/techiechic/ instead of http://pinterest.com).  That way when I’m logging on to find a recipe or idea that I’ve already posted I can go right to it rather than seeing a whole bunch of other brilliant ideas on my home page.  Also, if I am just logging in to find a good idea or browse for a little while, this encourages me to look at the things I’ve already pinned and actually DO one of those things instead of pinning 50 more things.  Why spend an hour pinning things when you could spend it actually starting to make that skirt, do that exercise, or clean your house?  It’s a good reminder to me that there are plenty of things I could be doing instead of trying to find more :)

The other thing I’ve done is set up a separate Pinterest board for recipes that I’ve already tried and one for recipes that I haven’t gotten around to yet.  This makes it easier for me to find the recipes that we already know and love instead of having to sift through the hundreds of recipes that are waiting for me to try.  It also makes it easier for me when someone asks for a recipe to be able to tell them – it’s on my Pinterest board of recipes I’ve tried – so they don’t have to sift through a million recipes either.  Plus, it lets my friends know that this recipe does have my personal stamp of approval and not just an enticing picture.  I always try to write my own reviews of those recipes as well, especially if I have tips for making it better.  I would recommend doing this for other projects as well, but I definitely use it most for recipes!

This last one may seem kind, but remember – your friends won’t know if you’re following them or not!  When I do surf my newsfeed on Pinterest I’ve found that there are a lot of things that my friends pin that I really don’t care about.  I’m already married so I don’t care what wedding dresses/cakes/flowers my single friends are saving, I’m not big on makeup so the latest nail painting tutorials don’t appeal to me, I’m not a photographer so I’m not looking for the best ways to pose my subjects.  When I see pins on my home page that are in a category that doesn’t appeal to me I simply click on the pin and unfollow that particular board – not the person, just that board.  It has made my browsing SO much more effective because I see fewer results that aren’t applicable to my life.  It saves me a lot of time not having to scroll through those ideas, and I really don’t think anyone is offended that I’m not following their makeup board anymore :)

That’s all I have for now.  What about you?  Does anyone else have great tips for using Pinterest wisely?

If you don’t want to read through my whole explanation of how this FHE lesson came to be, or my personal suggestions for making this a little more special feel free to click here to skip to where you can download the lesson outline and PowerPoint.  I won’t be offended.  Ok, well I might be offended, but really, I won’t know so don’t let my being offended stop you!

A few weeks back Eric mentioned to me that he had something he wanted to do for Family Home Evening. This surprised me a little since usually I plan our FHE lessons but I was excited that he had something he wanted to do.  That particular night though was the Monday before Easter and I had spent a lot of time putting together this lesson, so I asked if we could do it another night.  The following few weeks were busy with a trip to California, Daniel’s birthday and I think a week where we either missed FHE or Sam had something very specific that he wanted us to do.  So last night I  told Eric that we’d plan on doing his FHE tonight.  I realized though that I didn’t know what it was that Eric wanted to do for his FHE so I asked him.  He replied that he wanted to dedicate our house.

This was an excellent idea.  Even though we’ve lived in this house over 2 years already (man, time flies!) dedicating our home wasn’t something we’d ever gotten around to.  We’d lived in so many places in the 4 years we’d been married before purchasing our house and hadn’t really lived anywhere long enough to think of doing this.  I’d thought of it a few times but always forgot to mention it to Eric.

As we got ready to do it this evening I thought it would be good if I could put together a little lesson about what it means to dedicate a house so that our children could understand what was going on.  I ended up with an outline and a power point presentation which you can download at the bottom of this post.

If you want to do this FHE and dedicate your own home (even if you’ve already lived there awhile) I would suggest at least having the priesthood holder who will be dedicating the home read what the Church Handbook says:

Church members may dedicate their homes as sacred edifices where the Holy Spirit can reside and where family members can worship, find safety from the world, grow spiritually, and prepare for eternal family relationships. Homes need not be free of debt to be dedicated. Unlike Church buildings, homes are not consecrated to the Lord.

A Melchizedek Priesthood holder may dedicate a home by the power of the priesthood. If there is not a Melchizedek Priesthood holder in the home, a family might invite a close relative, a home teacher, or another Melchizedek Priesthood holder to dedicate the home. Or a family might gather and offer a prayer that includes the elements mentioned in the preceding paragraph and other words as the Spirit directs.

If you’re looking for more reading material I also really liked this article about this family’s experience dedicating their home.

We didn’t end up getting around to doing this tonight (our neighbors got their trampoline set up for the first time since the end of winter and the boys played outside until it was too late for a real FHE so we did a prayer-song-Mormon Messages on YouTube- song-prayer-leftover birthday cake FHE instead), but here are some of the guidelines that I think will help make it a more successful experience.  One thing I really tried to do today was to really get our house cleaned up before we dedicated that.  Now, understand that as I write this there are still clothes on the floor from yesterday, and a couple dirty dishes in the sink, and balls ALL over our front room.  But, our closet is cleaned up, the guest room is all made up nicely and the boys’ room is pretty well picked up, and there aren’t any toys out in the family room :)  I was starting to get there.  I don’t think that your house (or ours) needs to be immaculate before you dedicate it, but I was thinking of what we do with temples and chapels before we dedicate them and I just think that, to the extent possible, cleaning your house with a little more attention than usual just puts the home in a nice spirit beforehand.  I’m also thinking that I might try to dress up next week when we do this for reals.  Maybe not quite to church clothes, but I could probably put on at least a casual skirt and have the boys in polo shirts.  Just something to mark that we’re doing something a little bit more special, a little bit out of the ordinary for our FHE.

Anyways, without further ado, here is the lesson plan and the PowerPoint.  All of the images in my PowerPoint are either personal pictures, from LDS.org’s image library or from the Microsoft clip art gallery, so there shouldn’t be any issues with copyright.  If you have a minute though I would recommend going through and swapping out a few of the images.  Right now the temple in the pictures is the Draper Temple because it’s our closest temple, but if you go to Temples.lds.org you can find your closest temple and insert that picture as well.  I also have a picture from Eric’s and my wedding day on the page talking about temple ordinances, which might be better replaced with a picture from your own wedding day (if available).  Finally, on two different slides there is a picture of our house and obviously it’s nice if the house in the picture is actually your own :)  You are completely welcome to use my PowerPoint as is and just treat the pictures as stock photography, but also feel free to modify it to better fit your own family too.

Downloads

• PDF Lesson Outline – Dedicating our Home
• PowerPoint – Dedicating our Home

If you download either resource and use it I’d appreciate a comment letting me know what you think!  I never know if people really use my lessons or not but I’m hoping that they’re put to good use by more than just my own family (although it’s worth the effort even just for them :) )  Enjoy!

So today is Throwback Thursday.  I don’t usually post something for this, but I was thinking of a story that I don’t think I’ve recorded before, and I figured it was worth doing.   If you want more of a reason for this post, sorry, you’re not getting one.

In May of 2006 I was on the tech crew for a group at BYU called the Young Ambassadors.  This was my 3rd year in the group and we traveled all around the country and the world with a Broadway review show.  In previous years I had toured with the group in Brazil, Argentina, Hong Kong and South Korea.  I’d also gone on 6 shorter stateside tours to every state west of the Rockies.  This year our longer tour was to the southern states.  Someone in the leadership of our group had taken the time to contact the parents of each of the people in our group to ask them to write a letter to their student to be given to us on a day when we might need a little extra encouragement.

When my parents received this assignment they thought it was a little bit funny.  After spending full months abroad where I had hardly any contact with them at all, a tour which remained entirely on US soil, where I’d have my cell phone to call or text them whenever I wanted didn’t really seem all that daunting.  So they decided instead of writing me a serious letter telling me how much they loved me and were proud of me, they were a little bit snarky with it.  I can’t remember everything that they wrote on the note that they included in my envelope, but I remember that the entire message from my dad was “Suck it up princess, walk it off!”  They also included a printout of my dad’s favorite “News from Lake Woebegone”.  I remember showing this to some of the performers in the group and they were horrified!  What kind of parents would write such a thing?  Didn’t they know that this was for a day when I was having a hard time and could use some love from my parents?

I on the other hand thought it was brilliant!  I don’t think I’d been having a particularly hard day when they gave me that letter, but I definitely wasn’t afterwards.  It was something that I knew had come specifically from my family.  We can be a little bit snarky sometimes, but I know that my parents love me.  So receiving that letter was just a proof that it came from my parents and not someone else’s.  It made me happier than if they’d sent a lengthy letter telling me how much they loved me and how proud they were of me.  In fact what that letter said to me was, “hey, we love you and are proud of you and think you’re great.  But you already know that, and you know we’re here for you for whatever you need.  In the meantime, enjoy the inner workings of Garrison Keilor’s mind and some silliness from home.”  I don’t think there’s anything better they could have sent me :)

So for Christmas this last year I put together 12 FHE lessons for my little sister’s family.  I put together a lesson plan for each month with visual aids, recommended opening/closing hymns, an activity and a recommended treat (I couldn’t exactly put together 12 months of treats and hope they’d still be good at the end of the year).  The idea was that she could pull out the lesson 5 minutes before FHE and be all ready to go (especially if she does like us and just goes with Oreos for her FHE treat).  I had meant to post all of those lessons after I gave her the present, but it hasn’t happened yet.  However, as I was getting ready to do the Easter lesson for tonight I thought it might be good to share what I put together with anyone who might be interested.

So, my favorite resource in putting together these FHE lessons was A Year of FHE – she puts together the most well thought out lessons that are just easy to do, spiritual and geared to kids.  For my Easter lesson I decided to use her lesson plan called Jesus is Resurrected.  I made some modifications to her lesson plan for my use.  She uses the Gospel Art Kit a lot, which is great, but my kids tend to like the flannel board style lessons better.  So, using her lesson plan I put together some visual aids that were more kid-friendly.  She also has her lessons organized on a month-by-month basis and has her recommended closing song be a song that the family is practicing for the whole month, and I wanted to pick something that associated with the lesson instead.  I also found an idea for a treat that I wanted to add into my own lesson.  Finally, because I’m a dork about things like formatting, I always want my lesson plans to fit on one piece of paper, or one piece double-sided at least, so I copied her lesson into Word and rearranged things so that I was happy with it.

Anyways, I’m not going to post my version of the lesson plan here because I feel like I did too much copying for it to be fair use.  I might contact the sister that runs the Year of FHE website and see if she would mind me re-posting it here, but in the mean time if you’d like the Brittny-approved copy leave me a comment with your email address or shoot me an email asking for it – my email address is my first name {at} byu {dot} net and promise me you’ll click over to her site and say a big thank you for the lesson plan.  Otherwise, her lesson plan is awesome and if you want my treat idea it’s these Resurrection rolls that were floating around Pinterest like crazy a few months ago.

The visuals I put together are what you see at the beginning of this post.  I got the colored in images of Christ and the tomb etc. from Chocolate on my Cranium and the other images were from Microsoft publisher.  Nothing too fancy, but it would save you the hassle of trying to gather all the items from around your house/yard.  I’ve uploaded a regular pdf copy here or a reversed copy here (so you can print it on an iron on transfer for a flannel board).