The Girlhood Gazette

I just wanted to share a cute way to seal your letters that my sister did recently. Even if you are putting them in an envelope and mailing them, this is a cute way to fancy it up a bit.

If your letter paper is 8.5 x 11 inches, fold it in half lengthwise and then in thirds. Then cut a piece of colored paper or cardstock to 5.5 x 7 inches. Place your letter on the cardstock and fold the cardstock over it in uneven thirds, so that the top flap comes to the middle (as in the photo). Then you can just place a sticker to seal it, or do as we did and punch out a circle, write the recipient’s name on it, and attach it with adhesive such as double stick tape. My sister added a little bit of whimsy to the sticker by putting little dots all around the circle.

Of course your paper can be any size – just adjust the measurements as needed.

Just wanted to let ya’ll know that I updated my napkin folding instructions on Maidens of Virtue. There are three new folds, and all the instructions have been updated to video tutorials instead of pictures. Here’s a sampling of one of my favorites – and check out the others for some fun ways to dress up your dinner table tonight!

The past couple weeks we have started a new ongoing project – faithbooking. A faithbook is basically a scrapbook centered on your faith. We have expanded it to include family history, and things about us so that we can pass these books on to our children and grandchildren – and great grandchildren!

We’ve been using a faithbooking kit called “This is My Story” as our base and working off of it. The kit comes with a book and pre-made, fill-in-the-blank pages, but we are just using the workbook and creating our own pages. We’re only 2 weeks into it. Each Friday we plan a set of pages in our “draft book” – just a marble notebook where we can jot down our ideas before creating the actual page. Then the rest of the week we turn those draft pages into the real thing.

It’s a lot of fun; this week was very… um… interesting as we had to do a few seemingly random things. Things like:

• If you were a type of fruit, what would you be and why?

• If you were a room in a house, which would you be and why?

• If you were a musical instrument, what would you be and why?

It was rather weird to have to come up with answers to these – it took me forever to think of what fruit I’d be and eventually I gave up and did a flower instead. What kind of fruit would you be? Or room or flower or instrument? Why? (I was thinking, why do we need to write this down? But just think how funny it will be for my great grandchildren to read it…)

But then of course there’s the meaningful things too, like favorite childhood memories, people who have influenced my life, writing a letter about myself to the next generation, and things about me like the meaning of my name, etc. Those are the kinds of things we are doing now, though I’m sure down the road we will be making pages about what we believe and why.

Scrapbooking is a lot of fun, though I am a hopeless perfectionist. My mom and sister have finished three pages in the space of time it takes me to make one.

I would encourage you to create your own faithbook in some form. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a scrapbook, though I think the scrapbook idea is the most fun (you can put pictures and everything in it and make it look nice); it could be a journal, or my mom had the idea for the scrapbook-phobic people to just do the draft book – even if you don’t make the actual pages, at least write it down! Future generations will thank you. Oh – and do it in your own handwriting. You may have beautiful neat writing or horrible sloppy writing – but either way it will be much more meaningful to have everything in your own hand instead of some nice – but impersonal – computer font.

I just wanted to share with you girls an idea of how to create a special surprise for your mom and dad. My sister and I did this for our parents, and they really liked it!
In order for it to be a surprise, you will need to have your parents gone for the evening. Maybe you can drop a subtle hint that your dad should take your mom out for dinner or something. The night when we did our surprise, Dad took Mom out, so we had the evening to prepare.
The idea is to make their bedroom look like a room at a hotel or a bed-and-breakfast. We did the bed-and-breakfast. First, we cleared out any clutter that was hanging around and moved it into the spare bedroom. Then we put a pitcher of (silk) flowers on their dresser. In the bathroom, we folded two sets of towels the way they do at hotels: Take the largest towel (the bath towel) and fold it in thirds; then fold it in thirds again, with the edge inside (see illustration). Set it on the bathroom counter (if it isn’t firm enough to stand by itself, you can fold it in half again). Now take a hand towel (not the washcloth), and fold it in thirds, as you did in the first step of the bath towel. With the edge down, lay it over the top of the bath towel, lengthwise. Now take the end that is on the outside, and partially open it up. Fold the bottom up, and tuck the sides around the back, forming a pocket. Now take the washcloth, “accordion” fold it, then pinch it in the middle and fold in half. Stick it in the pocket so that it fans out of the top. Voila! (Now, did that make ANY sense??).
After that, if you have any miniature shampoo and conditioner bottles, maybe from those little bags they give you at the airport if you’re flying overnight, put those on the counter in front of the towels too, or in the shower. Another nice touch would be to put a still-in-the-wrapper bar of soap on the counter and/or in the shower.
For the actual bedroom, you can create some ambiance by lighting a few candles and putting on some quiet, classical music. If you happen to have live flowers handy, especially roses, you can sprinkle some of the petals on their bed. Be sure to dim the lights!
My sister and I wanted to put a chocolate on each of our parents’ pillows, because they do that in high-end hotels. Alas, we didn’t have any in the house! Not being easily daunted, however, we melted some chocolate chips, poured it into 2 heart-shaped molds, and put them in the refrigerator to harden. When they were done, we wrapped them in foil and put them on the pillows.
For the final touch, I made up a brochure to look like a bed-and-breakfast brochure. We just moved to our new house, and were considering names for the house. One of them was Fairview, so I made the name of the B & B the “Fairview Bed & Breakfast”. The brochure is folded in thirds. Below is a sample of the brochure I made. When making your own, make up creative names for the different rooms and “amenities”. For instance, at our house, the kitchen table, where we generally eat breakfast, has a deck outside the window and there are always chipmunks running around out there; our cats go crazy watching them! So I called this “The Chipmunk Ridge Breakfast Parlor” and I assure you, my parents got a kick out of it! The “Conservatory” is really a small greenhouse, “The Beach at Glacier’s Mirror” is our pond. Do you get the idea? Make it sound like a resort, while at the same time giving it a humorous twist. Click on the images to enlarge.

^ This is the front and the inside flap of the brochure.^

^This is the inside of the brochure.^

Alright, the last thing we did was to make a small card which we set by their telephone that reads, “Please Dial {insert your phone#} for Room Service.”

Well, I hope you have fun creating a special evening for your Mom and Dad!

Here’s a great idea for a cute and fun project. Take a name (you could also do a word if you wanted to), and then fit a Scripture verse to each letter of the name. For example, “Kathryn”:

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. (Prov. 4:23)
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. (Ps. 42:1)
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. (Prov. 3:5)
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8)
Righteous lips are the delight of kings; and they love him that speaketh right. (Prov. 16:13)
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Ps. 23:4)
Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake. (Ps. 115:1)

These would make very nice gifts; create a Scripture acrostic in the receiver’s name, print it out on feminine paper in a pretty font (unless you are giving it to your dad or brother!) and then place it in a frame.

Enjoy making up your own acrostics!