I’ve spent the last couple days working on a project to contribute to The Book of Mormon Forum put on by Jocelyn of “We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ”. I am excited to share it with you, but will wait until October when the forum gets started! Click on the button below to take you to the forum site if you would like to be involved as well.
The YW Manual 3 Lesson 36 lesson is about Marriage Standards. 
This is the suggested quote from the lesson to be made into a poster. You can download it here. You will get the best printing result if you download the file to your computer, then open again in Adobe Acrobat.
I found another fun visual aid from the “Why” book to go along with this lesson. You can do this to help support the “being equally yoked in marriage” section. Talk about a three-legged race, how partners in the race need to be in step, neither one moving too fast or too slow in order to get to the finish line. Eternal marriage requires both partners moving together in the same direction to get to our desired destination in the Celestial Kingdom. You can read more details about it here on the Why website.
You could then bring a bandanna, strip of cloth or rope to have a couple girls demonstrate (carefully!), and also incorporate whatever item you choose into a handout.
My baby turned two today! It has been a very busy day, being the first day of school for her older sisters as well. We started with an early celebratory breakfast, then a walk around the neighborhood which included a stop at the store to pick up ingredients to make a lemon cake for the birthday girl.
The lemon cake was baked in a bundt pan, and did not want to come out in once piece. We tried to salvage it’s looks with lots of fish cake toppers. I can’t say the cake looked any better, but the birthday girl had more fun decorating, undecorating and redecorating her slice of cake than she did eating it. So it was a win.
The cake itself was delicious, a definite winner that I will make again. It was totally worth the trip to the store for a lemon. I believe this is from the “Cake Mix Doctor” cookbook.
Lemon Bundt Cake
1 pkg plain yellow cake mix
1 3-oz pkg lemon gelatin
2/3 c oil
2/3 c hot water
4 eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mist and dust and dust a 12-cup Bundt pan. Bake 40 minutes. Cool for 10, then remove from pan, set right side up and glaze.
Glaze:
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
2 TBSP fresh lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest
Tomorrow I am teaching the YW Manual 3 Lesson 35 lesson. It is about dating decisions – how the standards they choose to keep now will affect the happiness of the rest of their lives. It’s a great lesson – I particularly like the talk in the supplemental material by Jeanette G. Smith, Unsteady Dating. I think we will have some really interesting discussion about why we wait to date until age 16, about the importance of group vs. steady dating, and also about the law of chastity. I will probably bring a laptop to watch this video, and I found a good object lesson in one of our family’s favorite books, “Why – Powerful Answers and Practical Reasons for Living LDS Standards”.
It talks about doing things in the right order; that sexual relations before marriage can lead to bitterness and grief. The book suggests trying the following experiment: “Pour a tall glass of orange juice, and drink half of it. Tasty isn’t it? Now, brush your teeth and rinse with mouthwash. Nice and fresh! Now, drink the other half of the orange juice. How does it taste? Isn’t it interesting that if we do this in the wrong order, something sweet can be bitter? Physical intimacy is no different.
Physical intimacy is similar to orange juice and mouthwash. If physical intimacy comes after the marriage covenant, it is beautiful and sacred. If physical intimacy comes before marriage, it leads to a whole list of ugly results.”
I don’t think I’ll actually have anyone brush their teeth in the middle of class, but most of us have tried drinking a little OJ after brushing our teeth. It is not yummy. I think this object lesson is a fun way to show the importance of living our lives in the order the Lord has set out for us.
We bought the “How” and “Why” books as Christmas presents for our girls, and they have been a great investment and resource. The girls love flipping through the “factoid”-type layouts and I have used several ideas as object lessons in classes and firesides with the youth. I’ve made an Amazon page with links to both these books, and other things that I love will be added as I come across them.
I have really been loving my mini daily planners. Well, I have actually been using them as weekly planners. Every Sunday I print out a fresh planner, copy over any postponed meals or unchecked items on my to-do list, and rethink the coming week. I’ve especially appreciated having my goals staring me in the face, to remind me of the things that often require an ongoing commitment to, but sometimes get pushed aside.
After losing one of my mini planners (they are kind of small after all), I prettied-up one of the composition books that are cheap right now because of back-to-school, and added a pocket to slip my planner into. It is just a piece of scrapbook paper adhered with decorative tape. When the planner is not in my pocket I try to keep it in my notebook, which is also a great spot to write down details for the the things already in the mini planner.
If you have come looking for SeeMeVT, you are in the right place! I have been wanting to move my handful of little blogs into one place. That place is now here, at Inkablinka.com. There will still be monthly visiting teaching ideas, along with other things I’m creating for Young Women, my family and friends. Please be patient as I learn how to manage my own domain. I’m hopeful it will be a great new place to share ideas and get to know you better. Welcome!
To make this month’s teaching aid, you will need a box of theater-size candy (or a piece of cardboard), a large brass brad, a pony bead and a print out of the radio on white cardstock.
Cut out the radio and the word wheel just inside the dotted lines. With a craft knife, remove the black section on the radio tuning dial. Punch a hole in the center of the radio dial and the word wheel.
Slide the pony bead onto the brass brad. This will make your tuning dial look more realistic – but the bead is just for show. It is not attached to the dial at all, so when you spin the word wheel, you must grip the end of the brad to make it work!
Place word wheel behind radio dial and insert the brass brad through both items.
Bend ends of brad tight against the bottom of the word wheel, and secure to the wheel with a piece of tape.
Adhere back corners of radio to another piece of cardstock or cardboard, or to a box of theatre-size candy (Junior Mints work great). Demonstrate how to be in tune with the Spirit, by “tuning” the radio dial: spin the word wheel with the brad, and read the ways in which we can qualify for the Lord’s Spirit.
You can suggest to your sisters to share the mints with their families during a Family Home Evening, as they discuss they ways we are “mint” to be guided by the Spirit!
Hope you have a great month!
You can download the September 2011 visiting teaching aid below:
in English
in German (Thanks, Blanche!)
in French (Thanks, Christine!)
in Dutch (Thanks, Birgitta!)
in Spanish (Thanks, Delmy!)
in Portuguese (Thanks, Ana Carolina!)
I have been wanting to carry a little planner with me (besides my phone) to quickly check my calendar, check off my to-do list, remind myself to meal plan, and more. I don’t like carrying a big notebook around with me, so made myself another mini planner that I can use for as many days as I want, then toss out and start again. It starts as one 8.5 x 11″ sheet of copy paper, and folds into an 8-page booklet. (Click here for folding instructions.)
The cover of my planner is a place to jot down a meaningful quote, scripture or thought to inspire me throughout the day.
Pages 2 and 3 have a place to make and check off my to do lists, and to remind me of things like upcoming birthdays, lessons to prepare, etc.
The next pages are for meal planning and shopping.
Page 6 has a space for jotting down personal goals, and page 7 is a weekly calendar.
The back cover has the whole month printed on it. I’m excited to start using my planner tomorrow, and I’m hoping it will help me to be me more thoughtful about the use of my time! Click on the following links to download:
The visiting teaching message for August is entitled, “A Society of Holy Women“. Silvia H. Allred said, “The work of Relief Society is holy, and doing holy work creates holiness in us.” I love thinking of that connection between what we do and who we want to become; how our acts of service create dimension and spiritual complexity within ourselves. My visiting teaching aid is based on the following quote from the message:
I have this quote printed on several strips of paper that have been trimmed out and hole punched at both ends. I might take out these strips as I begin the lesson and work together on getting the strips in the correct order, discussing the quote as we do so.
The Visiting Teaching Message for July is “Come to the Temple and Claim Your Blessings”. I made a claim check that includes quotes and scriptures from the message. It is intended to be a jumping-off point for more discussion on how we can personally claim the blessings of the temple. Some questions that I contemplated were as following:
