Wifey Wednesdays . . .

I do believe this is my first time actually posting on Wifey Wednesday! LOL! I know, I know the road to destruction is paved with good intentions. I don't consider myself a complete failure in the blog department, I have been blogging more than when I didn't have a goal. So I didn't fully reach my goal yet, should I just quit? Of course not. Goals are good because they give you a direction. They give you something to measure. It's kinda like being a housewife. I have a lot of goals for my wifely jobs. I have this unreachable goal that my house is always clean all of the time, NO MATTER what is going on! I have a goal to be the help just meeted out for all my husbands needs. I have the goal to be the best, godliest Mom in the world. I look at people like Susana Wesley and think I want that and MORE! Sometimes I have goals and they are too big . . . but that's ok. Like the little boy who told the man after he asked him why he was shooting at the moon with his bb gun that he was never going to get it, "Well, I'm going to get a lot closer than you!" Goals are good. What are your goals? If you don't have any, go get some! If you have some and you've reached them set some more! If you haven't reached your goal, keep trying! There is still lots of time! Don't ever quit, don't ever give up!

How to Spot a Lady

I am posting about our Lady Bug Tea Party. I thought some of you might be interested. It can be tailored for any age. I did mine with girls ages 2 to 12. Most of my inspiration came from pinterest: My Lady Bug Tea Pinterest Board (click on me). Of course I didn't do everything on my board. And some things never made it to my board, they were from my head. I have uploaded the documents to http://www.scribd.com (click on me) that you are welcome to download. 

When the girls first arrived I gave them a card, Lady Bug Cards (click on me). I left one of the cards blank, so you could add your own text. The first card they received was "Proverbs 31:10 A Lady is Priceless." I printed these cards on red paper. At each station the girls collected a card. I took my daughters cards when she got home and every few days in her lunch, or on her bed, I write a note about the card on the back, thus extending the lesson they learned. I encourage her in the areas she is doing well and exhort her in other areas. That has really seemed to be encouraging to her! 

At one of the stations I had a lady who was painting nails. Here (click on me) are the instructions on page one. They were really easy and looked ever bit as good as the picture! She did an excellent job! The little girls kept going around admiring their nails and exclaiming how they were so pretty! 

At another station we had them paint a rock. Because of the time constraint I already had the rocks painted red and they added black details. Originally I thought they could blow on the spots with paint, but that didn't work as well as I thought so they painted with q-tips and it worked just fine! 

I don't have a picture of it on here, but we also did "Pin the Spot on a Lady Bug". I took pom poms, because by this time, I was tired of cutting out stuff, and tape, I made a large lady bug out of red poster board. Painted a black head, added HUGE googley eyes and a line. Then blind folded the little girls added the pom pom spots. It turned out really cute! This was also great for the toddlers. We didn't blind fold them, just let them pin on the spots!

Because a lady in Proverbs 31 is known for her sewing we did a sewing project. These ideas were not in my notes, because friday night before the party I started looking around and realized I didn't have enough for the girls to do. I went to the supply closet and prayed asking God for wisdom and free stuff! I found red and black felt. I pre-cut out red bodies, black heads, and black spots. They glued on the black spots, sewed the heads on and sewed two bodies together, adding stuffing to make a small lady bug pillow. I had a lady teach them the blanket stitch (click on me). I was surprised. This was probably their favorite part and they really seemed to get it! Several little girls went home asking their mothers to teach them to be a lady, to sew, and to cook! 

Because I am a photographer I took pictures and gave each little girl one 4x6. I then offered more 4x6's of their choice for $1 each. Unfortunately I couldn't offer every picture for free. These pictures are ones of my little girl. I let the girls take pictures with their friends as well as by themselves showcasing their outfits. 

This is my beautiful daughter, Abby. I wish I could show you every picture. Each little girl was so beautiful! 

OH YES! The outfits! I was really excited about this part! I don't know if it was I, but I think it was another mom who first mentioned doing outfits! But it morphed into a HUGE project. Yes I did end up making 6 more tutus and wings two days before the tea party, yes I was tired, but NO, I would NOT change it for anything in the world!!!!! Several little girls made red tutus, added black felt spots, and got red dollar store wings and added black spots to those! Some little girls, wore red dresses with polka dots and/or added polka dots! Every little girl came dressed so cute! Several little girls added head bands with black fuzzy wired things great for crafts - I've forgotten the name of them. We twisted them around and made them look like atenas. The little girls had a TON of fun dressing up! The dressing up part, really helped build the excitement and anticipation. I think it also helped drive home the point I was trying to make about how to spot a lady. I doubt several of these girls will forget this very soon, I know my daughter still talks about it. I made sure she has her tutu to play with in her dress up box so it can be a reminder to her to be a lady! 

This was one of the station's results. On the document (click on me) on page 1 there are lady bug thumb prints. I pre-cut everything due to time. They glued on wings, googley eyes and used a black ink pad on the red wings for the spots. 

Here is the menu, Lady Bug Menu (click on me) found on page 1 of this document (click on me). The orderves (I know it's spelled wrong, but I can't figure out the right spelling :o) turned out how the picture on my document showed them. They were very easy. I didn't have a recipe for them, I simply followed a picture. What I did was round crackers, cream cheese, red cherry tomatoes cut in wedges, an olive for the head, and fresh dill sprinkled on top. One lady went around telling the children not to eat the grass! All the children seemed to like them. And all the adults, including many of the children asked for more!    

The lady Bug pretzels didn't turn out as planned. Partly because I didn't have enough time. Partly because I didn't have enough red food coloring and I only had popcorn oil instead of regular vegetable oil to mix the white chocolate color in. Popcorn oil has an extreme bit of yellow food coloring to make the popcorn more buttery looking. As a result instead of red white chocolate, I had salmon colored white chocolate! If I had had time to dip the bottoms in brown chocolate. Then taking some brown chocolate and heating it in a plastic baggy with a little bit of oil and cutting off a small tip of the baggy I would have been able to add spots making them look a lot better. But as it was, they turned a nice salmon color and we don't stress over things that don't matter and we can't change! 

The cupcakes are missing their atena but I really didn't have time to make atenas and I thought they were fine the way they were. In the document (click on me) they show them much nicer but honestly, it got the point across and I'm not a professional cake decorator. I'm sure someone else could have done a much better job but I was content with how these turned out. The head of these are a whopper. Black or chocolate icing for the line and dots and there you go! a lady bug cupcake! 

You'll see the tables in the background. The center pieces were red poppy flowers from the dollar store - they were cheaper than gerber daisies, and although I thought I'd prefer the gerber daisies, they were just fine. Red plates, red plastic CHEAP cups, black and white polka dot napkins found at any party store, silver colored silverware from the dollar store, green table clothes for a pop of color. On each plate I added a lady bug hair bow I had made found in this document (click on me) on page 2 and 3. They were VERY easy to make, I only superglued 6 of my fingers together, (thankfully not at the same time) and hot glued the rest! 

I had grand plan to print these table tents off, or possibly use them for the lady bug cards, but that didn't happen. They are too cute to not share, so here you go: Lady Bug Table Tent Cards (click on me) and Lady Bug Water Bottle Wrappers (click on me). Instead of the water bottles, we had "Lady BUG Juice/Punch" It was a concoction I threw together, everyone was very nice and said it tasted good, but personally I thought it was bordering very close to the mediciney flavor. Just find a nice red punch and you'll be fine. 

OH! I was very excited about our black and white striped straws! I know, crazy but that was probably my favorite detail! A lady in the church ordered them for me. You can just google it and you'll get all kinds of ones you can buy! 

We tied black, red, white, and a lady bug balloon to each center piece. Not necessary but I liked the fun atmosphere it brought to the tea party. 

After we ate I took took the a stack of the 8 cards they had and went and sat in a circle with the girls. We looked at each card, read the scripture for it and I gave a little explanation for each card. I don't have that devotion for you because it was out of head. Well, not entirely I used the scripture and the cards were my points. I put it down on their level. I encouraged them to start learning to be a lady NOW. Start as children so when they are teenagers and soon, adults they will be what God wants them to be and they'll be able to teach their daughters. I explained that the time to learn to be a lady was not when they were supposed to have become a lady but yet that the time to learn to be a lady was as a child! I tried to make it very practical. I didn't do a lot of spiritualizing. Sometimes God wants us to realize He cares about every day life and how we live it! 

During this time, my husband conducted a Soldier Scavenger Hunt for the boys. I don't know all he did, you'll have to ask him! But I do know he did manly things with the boys, like jumping in bounce houses, going from clue to clue for the scavenger hunt, shooting a cross bow, painting their faces like an army man, and talking about how to be a man!