Food!

Dude.  I make good food.  My resolution this year was to cook more.  This one was an item from the bucket list, and my! my! my! it is so good.

My friend ate it a couple days later at my house while we watched Downton Abbey.  She said it was perfect.

My niece and I had it and she asked, "Where did you buy this food?"  I said, "I made it."  She said, "NO WAY!  I thought it was from a restaurant!"  HAHA.  Awesome.  I love that.  Best compliment.  Also, Julia Child was right, "The best way to execute french cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken!"  I love that.

Anyway, the recipe is right here if you wanna try it.  

Happy Cooking!

janalee

Christmas Presents!

Yo.

So this post is about the Christmas presents we made for the Young Women in my ward.  I'm over Personal Progress.  Awesome.  Individual Worth Value Experience #7 says:

Heavenly Father has given you special gifts. Read 1 Corinthians 12:4–12; 13; Moroni 7:12–13; 10:8–18; and Doctrine and Covenants 46:11–26. Ask a family member, a Young Women leader, and a friend to write down positive qualities the Lord has given you. List your gifts in your journal, and write how you can continue to develop these gifts and use them to serve your family and others.

So, for Christmas, we got the parents, a friend, and all of the Young Women leaders to write letters to the Young Women in the ward.  It took a LOT of time.  Seriously.  I sent emails and letters to the parents in August.  (If you plan on doing this for your Young Women, don't tell them it is for Christmas.  Just tell them you need it for an upcoming activity or you won't get them until the day before you give them to the girls.)  When the letters starting coming in, it was awesome.  I can tell you - I cried reading each letter.  To see how much the girls were loved and admired for a lot of different reasons was really cool.  And it made me love them even more.  I could not have been more excited for them to get their gifts.  It was a mountain load of work to make sure all 22 girls had letters.  I felt like a nag sometimes, but then came to the conclusion that it is okay to remind people about something that they really will want to be a part of.

My kitchen looked like this for quite a while:

And though it might not look organized, it was as good as it could get.  I typed and printed each scripture they needed to read onto pretty paper and embellished them.  Here is a really simple example:

So I did my best to make sure the pages were in an order that was pretty and not all the same colors together.  Took a long time, but they were really pretty.  I found this website and she had the values done really cute.  For this present, we only used the Individual Worth one:

So then we wrote a letter to the girls and matted it on to the pretty paper:

And made a cover, which turned out really simple, but nice:

Those are a couple of the colors we did.

The binding part was really good.  Just be sure to be vigilant about the lines being straight and all that jazz.  We had all the Young Women leaders get together on a Saturday in November to bind them and make sure everything was set for them.  Then our awesome President got ribbon, Reese's Trees, and candy canes, so the finished product looked like this:

Then came the Sunday before Christmas when we had such a great lesson by the YW President.  After her lesson, I read the girls the letter written in the front of each book and explained while each of them were books, they were each unique to the girls who were receiving them.  I quoted from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas:  "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe Christmas, perhaps, mean a little bit more."  We talked about the birth and life a of Savior, who gave the greatest gift.  Then we talked of this book, and how this was worth a lot, even though it was just letters. 

We handed out the letters and watched the girls open them.  I can tell you that is and will forever be a favorite Christmas memory.  Their faces!  Oh my gosh.  Some of them beamed with smiles.  Others cried.  Some said, "This took a lot of work!"  And others came and hugged us.  I remember one that said, "I love it.  I just think it is my favorite gift."  I had parents text and call and email about the books.  It is one of the best things I did in 2013.  Hands down.

If you want to do something your Young Women can keep forever, this is it.  Even after all that work, it was so worth it.  I would do it over and over again for them.  Very cost effective as well.  And something that, to the Young Women, will be worth more than money can buy.  

And coolest of all, it gets them to enjoy Personal Progress.  I hope this makes sense.  If you have any questions about the books, please let me know. 

janalee