Rainbow Art Party

My little girl is very artistic, and will spend hours every day drawing and creating. This year she decided she wanted to have an Art theme for her birthday party. As we started coming up with various ideas for the party, we decided that we would pair the Art theme with rainbows as well, as we thought it would make for a very bright and cheerful party.

The cake is gravity defying, with rainbow cake in the paint can as well as the cake itself. The sponge is filled with vanilla icing, then covered with milk chocolate ganache and fondant.

Natasha decorated the white fondant by drawing all over it with edible markers, before I added all the 'spilled paint'.

For about 2 weeks before the party we were busy making all the bright, rainbow coloured decorations to hang around the room:

• Paper rosettes spelling out NATASHA
• Paint spattered table cloths

• A balloon wreath
• A melted crayon canvass 

• Polka dot bunting (made by sewing card circles together to make a long string)
• Rainbow balloons hung from the ceiling

• And a piñata (ribbon pull type)

The party food was also rainbow coloured (wherever possible).

• Rainbow jelly (jello) push pops

• Rainbow fruit and veg
• Rainbow coloured candy paint pots

We even had rainbow coloured plates and straws.

All sitting in a row at the back of the table, you can see the party 'bags' for the guests to take home. Each pot contains a little pipe cleaner craft project (to make little monsters) and some candy.

You can certainly tell that there is a party going on in there!

Once the party got going, we had plenty of fun activities and games to keep the kids busy. We started off with some 'cookie canvas' decorating. Each child got a large royal icing covered chocolate sugar cookie to decorate, using edible markers, rainbow coloured royal icing and various sprinkles. They made some really beautiful works of art!

Next up, we played a series of team games.

First, each team had to work together to see who could build the tallest marshmallow tower, using toothpicks (dyed rainbow colours, of course) and marshmallows,

In the second game, each team was given a white paper plate and a lot of little coloured stickers. The aim of the game was to completely cover the top of the plate in stickers, so that there was no white left shoeing at all. The winner being the first team to completely cover the plate (we then judged who came 2nd and 3rd by coverage).

The third team game was a drawing game. We had prepared a stack of cards for each team, with the names of objects on them, like Lion, Car, Octopus, Surfboard, etc. Each member of the team had to draw a card and look at it, but not let anyone else know what their object is. They then had to start drawing that object. After 15 seconds the clock stopped, and they had to pass their drawing to their team mate on their left (receiving one from the right at the same time). The clock started again and they had to continue drawing the picture now in front of them (but of course they don't know what it is supposed to be - hopefully the previous player left enough clues in what the drew), again with a 15 second time limit. This continued until the drawing once again found itself in front of it's original player. A point is awarded for every drawing that resembles what is was meant to be. As you can see, there were some very humorous results!

The "Marshmallow Girls" won the team games and each received a medal.

Then it was time to sing HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

 Followed by pulling the piñata ribbons - the birthday girl managed to choose the winning ribbon!

We concluded the party with 2 more activities. Sand Art, made using salt coloured with chalk (I crushed the chalk, then blended it into the slat in my MagiMix).

 And canvas painting - each child was given a small canvas, with there name on it, to paint.

It was a very successful party, the kids had a lot of fun, and were kept busy every moment.

Thank you to Claudette, who sacrificed her whole day to help with both setting up and running the party as well as cleaning up afterwards. You are the best!

Visiting Teaching Thought for the Month April 2015 {Handout}

It is good for us to remember that no one of us is without sin, and that we should not hypocritically esteem ourselves above any others, for we know not what is in their heart. As Christ said: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..." (John 8:7).

The only man who has, or ever will be without sin was Christ, and no more humble man is there, without any guile or hypocrisy. To become more Christlike is not to prove to the world how good we are, but it is a look into our own hearts. Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin said: “To beguile is to deceive or lead astray. … A person without guile is a person of innocence, honest intent, and pure motives, whose life reflects the simple practice of conforming his [or her] daily actions to principles of integrity.”

Becoming more Christlike is striving to honestly BE the best we can be, patterning ourselves after Christ's example. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said: "None of us is quite as Christlike as we know we should be. But we earnestly desire to overcome our faults and the tendency to sin. With our heart and soul we yearn to become better with the help of the Atonement of Jesus Christ."

Click here to download the English 4-up pdf

Click here to download the Spanish 4-up pdf 

Thank you to Wanda Lopez for the translation :)

If you would like to make fridge magnet pegs to display your Thought for the Month, click here for the printable and tutorial.

Click links below for previous month's Thought for the Month

• January 2015
• February 2015
• March 2015

Yu-Gi-Oh Cake - Harpie's Pet Dragon

My son is a Yu-Gi-Oh card collector and player, so this year he wanted a Yu-Gi-Oh cake. Featured on the cake is Harpie's Pet Dragon...

...and the Harpie, who controls the dragon.

The Harpie and the Dragon are both created by cutting their shape out of rolled out gum paste and  then painting it with Sugarflair colour paste.

I created the cosmic background by spraying the cake black with my airbrush, leaving white crosses for the large stars and white and grey areas to create the nebulae (the cake was covered with white fondant). Then I sprayed over with yellow, red and blue, mostly filling the white areas (except for the centres of the large stars, which I left white). A bit more spraying with black helped to soften and blend the colours in. Finally, I 'splatter painted' Americolor white onto the surface to create all the tiny stars. I absolutely LOVE how this turned out. So much better than I dreamed I could do, especially considering I was just making it up as I went! I tried to convince my son to let me leave it just like that, but he really wanted those Yu-Gi-Oh characters!

Some wire in the head and neck of the dragon allowed me to give the dragon a bit more dimension.

This cake was so hard to photograph! With all that black and the curvature of the cake, it is so hard to capture what the cake really looked like.

My favourite part of the cosmos ended up on the front of the cake - almost completely covered by the dragon, but this side doesn't look bad either.

Happy Birthday!!

Slaying the dragon.

The bottom cake was a 8" dark chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream, the top cake was a 6" vanilla pound cake with vanilla buttercream, both were covered with milk/plain chocolate ganache.

Doctrine & Covenants Apples to Apples Game {Free Printable}

My Seminary students love playing games, and are very competitive! Whenever they get together, out comes the Risk, Playing Cards, Apples to Apples, etc. Games have become quite a significant part of our Seminary lessons too, it keeps my students engaged and interested in the lessons. Never do they read and understand scriptures better than when doing so earns them points or some kind of advantage. Now, I understand that not everyone thinks that games belong in Seminary lessons, but it works for the particular students I have right now. I try very hard to make sure they are not just games for the sake of games, but rather use them to enhance the lessons or build on Scripture Mastery knowledge. I am finding that the students (and I) are getting tired now though, as the Seminary year has progressed, so I have introduced a new game that isn’t specifically linked to Scripture Mastery, nor any one lesson, but on the Doctrine and Covenants as a whole. I use it as a short game either at the beginning or end of a lesson, to either wake the students up, or give them a break and a bit of fun.

My game is based on Apples to Apples by Out of the Box and Mattel, and is played by the same rules. Each player holds 5 Red cards, one player - the Judge - picks a Green card from the pack and places it in the centre of the table, face up. Each of the other players choose a Red card from their hand that they feel best suits the word on the Green card, then place them face down on the table. The Judge collects all those Red cards up, shuffles them then lays them face up on the table. They then decide which of the Red cards they think suits the Green card best. While they are making their decision, the other players try to convince the Judge to pick their card - here is where strategy comes in, you don’t want the Judge to know which card is yours! Once the Judge has picked a card, the player who put that card down ‘wins’ the green card. The played Red cards are discarded. Those who played a Red card draw a new one from the pack. Play continues with the player to the left of the Judge becoming the new Judge. The winner of the game is the player who has the most green cards at the end of the game (we never play to a certain number as it takes too long, but rather play to a time limit).

While playing, my students may only use their D&C / church knowledge to ‘help’ the Judge choose a card. Once the Judge has chosen a card, they must justify why they chose that card - again, using their D&C / church knowledge. Any Scripture Masteries are to be quoted. If a student gets a card they don’t understand, they may use their scriptures to look it up (or a dictionary if it is not a gospel specific word).

My class is small, so we can all play the game together. If your class is large, perhaps you could make multiple decks and your students can play in smaller groups. I am sure there are other ways that the game can be played - please comment below if you have any good ideas!

These are the cards I have made, click HERE or on the image above to download the pdf.

For a set with American spellings, click HERE.

It is a 24 page file - 8 pages of Green cards, 14 pages of Red cards and 2 pages for the backs of the cards (352 cards in total). Print out the first 22 pages onto white card, then put them back into your printer and print the backs using the last two pages (make sure you put them into your printer the right way around!) Each A4 page has 16 cards on it, and I have made them edge-to-edge, so you can just evenly divide the page in to 16 (4x4) and cut it up (I use a metal ruler and an exacto knife, that way I can cut many pages at once).
If you use a different page size, just scale the image down to fit your page, then trim any excess off before splitting the page into 16. I haven't included any cut lines because I found that my cards all came out slightly different sizes when I did that (printers don'y print exactly straight) and I got a better result without cut lines. If you would prefer to have cut lines, just let me know and I will provide a copy of the file with them.

I hope you enjoy playing - let me know what you, and your students, think! And if you feel that I have left any cards out, comment below and I can add them to the pack.