Week 4: Making blankets

In the book, "52 Weeks of Fun Family Service," it says to make a quilt and donate it to someone such as a foster family, retirement center, LDS Humanitarian Services, etc.


This is quite the task for someone who doesn't own a sewing machine!! (I had one but it died.) It's embarrassing to say that I don't like to sew. My grandfather was really tall and thin which made finding clothes in his size difficult. So he made his own clothes. He even made square dancing skirts for my grandma. He was a very talented man. My mom was really poor when I was growing up so she made most of my clothes when I was little. I was taught how to sew. I even took sewing as a required class at BYU when studying fashion merchandising. I just really do not like to sew. I'm really bad at it too. I think it's the lack of patience that I have for the whole process. The thought of making a quilt really just scared me. I even thought about calling my sister-in-law (professional quilter) to see if I could buy one from her. This task really worried me. Then I remembered!!! They have "No Sew" fleece blankets. Yay!


We went to JoAnn's to find 2 blanket kits. We picked two that were the same. After a nice Family Home Evening talking about this project, we started on the blankets. Sienna even helped - a bit. Suki, our cat thought the blankets were just for her!

We had decided that we were going to a local retirement home and would donate our blankets. Next week's project is to sing to seniors and I thought we could combine the two projects. We would sing or read a story and then give them a blanket.

We would do this Thursday night. Well, Thursday morning while getting ready for the day, I thought I should give the blankets to a lady in our ward and her daughter. I visit with her every month. Both are so sweet and I thought this would brighten their day.

Thursday evening after dinner we went to their house. The girls gave them the gift bags with the blankets inside. They loved them! The daughter was just saying how her mom was looking for a throw for the sofa that morning. Then we told them that we wanted to read them 2 good night stories. We picked out our 2 favorite stories, "The Story About Ping," and "Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse."

They LOVED the stories! I read one and Haven even volunteered to read the second one.

What fun!

Sienna said, "I liked giving them the blankets. It made me feel so nice."

Haven said, "I liked reading them the stories. It made me feel good."

(I'm hoping to get them to expand on how it makes them feel by the end of the year.)


My favorite part was being able to see the love in their eyes when we gave them the blankets. I also loved the laughter and tears as we read the stories. How it makes my heart fill with joy to know that we brought smiles, memories and love to a couple people.

Jesus Christ said, "A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another;
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." John 13:34

Week 3: Cleaning the Church

^"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing;
and establish a house, ... a house of order, a house of God..." D&C 88:119

Every 3 months at church we are asked to volunteer to help clean the church. We decided to use this as our third week of service. (I didn't get any photos though.)

Saturday morning the family arrived at the church at 7:30. We started by cleaning the glass doors. We made sure all the chalkboards were erased. We dusted in the chapel and made sure all the hymn books were in their holders. And we cleaned the mirrors in the bathrooms.

It is wonderful to see the girls taking pride in the way our church looks.

It is such good feeling to be in the church alone. I can really feel the Spirit. I feel that cleaning the church gives us a better respect for the building...knowing it is the House of the Lord.

Sienna said, "It made me feel happy to clean the church. My favorite part was cleaning the chapel."

Haven said, "I liked cleaning different parts rather than just cleaning the windows. It makes me feel good to keep the church clean."

Week 2: Recycling

This week according to our book 52 Weeks of Fun Family Service is RECYCLING WEEK. Recycle cans & bottles and donate the money to charity. I made a list of charities that I thought the girls would be interested in and let them pick.

Sunday after church we went around to some of the homes in our neighborhood. We had a flier explaining what we were doing (in case they weren't home). We introduced ourselves and asked if they had any bottles or cans for recycling. We would take them to the recycling center to see how much we could get. The money we raised we would donate to the Escondido Humane Society. This is where we got our kitty, Bowie. We went to 16 homes. 12 of them were home. The others we left the flier. We asked if they wanted to help, if they would leave their items in a bag at their front door. Monday night after dinner we'd come by and pick them up. Everyone was really happy to help.

Monday night we went around in the dark and collected all the bags. Out of the 16 homes, 13 participated! We had quite a few bags.


Saturday morning we sorted the plastic, glass, and aluminum into bags and drove to the recycling center. We got $11.88!


Saturday afternoon we drove out to the Escondido Humane Society to give them the money. I thought it would be better for the girls to see us giving the money rather than just writing a check and sending it in the mail. The ladies there were very nice and impressed with what the girls had done. We even spent a few minutes looking at the kitties and dogs for adoption.


After this experience, we talked about what the shelter could buy with the money we donated: food, bones, kitty litter, blankets, toys, cat scratchers, medicine...

Sienna said, "I felt really good helping the kitties and doggies. It was fun."

Haven said, "It's really nice to help. It makes me happy."

Bowie, adopted by us on January 2, 2010

Week 1: Thank You Cards

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.
Have you used one to say "thank you?"
~William A. Ward

For week one, we focused on Thank You cards. This is the perfect time of year to write them.

It seems so simple of an idea...writing thank you cards. However I truly believe that teaching our children to be grateful is one of the most important things we can teach them.

First we had a little lesson. We talked about how nice it is to hear a "thank you" when we do something nice for someone. We also talked about how we can feel sad when we do something nice don't get any acknowledgments. After that we read the story of the 10 Lepers in the Bible. Only one of the lepers goes back to thank Jesus after being healed.


We made a list of the people we could send cards to. We hadn't sent any cards out for the Christmas presents we received yet. So thought we'd do that and send out a couple other thank you cards. Our list included grandparents and auntie. Then we added the girls' teachers. We talked about others we could thank, such as the mailman, our Bishop, and church teachers. In the end we had time to send out 7 cards with pictures.


The girls had a great time. Wish we could see the smiles on the faces of those who receive the cards. Since we can't, we talked about how they will be smiling and thinking of us when they read the card.

We ended with a piece of cake and then off to bed.

(This was the first idea in Merrilee Boyack's book, 52 Weeks of Service. She is an LDS author and lecturer.)

2011 is our year of Service

Hmmm. A blog. I've done this once before and got too busy to keep up with it.

However, this is different. This is a project. A fun project.

I decided that I need to do more service. I also thought it would be great to teach my girls about service. So I bought a book 52 Weeks of Service, by Merrilee Boyack to help me out. That gave me the great idea to have a service project every week of the year. They don't have to be big as I don't want to get overwhelmed. But they need to be true acts of service that we can do as a family.

Hopefully we will grow closer together as a family and our love for others will grow.

Here's to 2011, our year of service!