A great fall or winter thoughtful little gift for your sisters or a friend.

I got my blogs mixed up and posted a cute idea for gift giving to those you visit teach sometime this fall or winter.  Anyway, you will have to go back to this link http://visitingteachingtips.blogspot.com/2010/09/great-fall-visiting-teaching-gift.html  to see what it is, but if you want to visit the entire blog, then click on the link just below the header or banner at the top of this page and it will take you do that blog.  It is actually the master blog and this blog is just the ideas and creative things for little gift giving, handouts and such.  I call this blog my "Storage Unit" for my other blog.  Anyway... enjoy both blogs, and don't forget to leave a comment.  Your comments make me feel loved! 

Best regards, and Happy Visiting Teaching.... Love, Katie G.

Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter Tea Party Invitaion

This is the finished invitation.

 

All the materials cut out and ready to assemble the invitation.

I am inserting the invitation first followed by the other separate pages of the invitation.  I have posted the pages so that you can fill in the blanks, to customize for your own use.  I am using black card stock for the front and back cover for this book/card/invitation. Cut the black card stock in half which is 5.5 inches.  Fold each of those in half for the cover.

This image to the left is what you print off, cut out and glue to the front book cover.  Now you will need to paste the cute cover picture on the front of the black book card cover.  Make sure to center it between the binding tape and the right hand edge of the black paper cover. I used white duct tape to look like binding and to cover up the staples, but I think I am going to go to the store and see if I can find some cute decorated duct tape instead of just a plain white duct tape binding. 

The next step is to print the inside pages  1 - 4.  Cut them out.  If you are going to make a lot of these invitations, I highly suggest you purchase a cutter, as it makes the cuts straight and looks so much better.  Takes far less time than cutting out things by hand.  Then collate the pages 1 - 4 and insert into the folded black card stock cover.  Staple as close to the edge of the fold on the book cover as you can.  Using a strip of duct tape, place over the staples and over fold so that it covers both the front and backside.  (see the photo)

 

Now for the bookmark................... Print the bookmark page on white card stock.  I just my card stock at Walmart in a ream, because it is firm enough for cards, but not too firm to give me problems running it through my printer.  I wanted my bookmarks to be two sided.  The black and white printed paper below I found at Shabby Princess Paper and printed it on the back side of my bookmark page.  You might want it to just use solid black but either way it goes great with the invitation. 



Bookmark

 The next step is to cut out the bookmark, so that a boarder of black is showing all the way around and then punch a hole in the top.  I then cut a piece of Red ribbon, folded it in half and threaded the folded side through the back to the front side of the punched hole, then put the two ends through the folded ribbon loop and pulled it tight.  I slipped this completed bookmark in the center pages of the book with the ribbon hanging out.  I was thinking that a black and white polka dot or checked ribbon would be really cute instead of the red, but red is what I have.   



 The paper below was designed by Shabby Princess and Sara Carling called "Dinner Party." The link to Shabby princess is:   http://www.shabbyprincess.com/   At the Shabby Princess site, you need to stay for a while because she has great scrap booking products and offers a bunch of really nice looking ones for her blog visitors to use for free.  Very, Very generous!!! Just click on "downloads" and a whole bunch of complete digital packs will be displayed and you will really be amazed at just how pretty her freebies are!!!   I am using this paper as the backside of the  book mark as well as the page before page one and after page 4... just because it looks nice and gives an extra page to make it look more like a vintage book. 



I just wanted to tell you why I include on the invitation the link found on page 4 to Project Gutenberg's site that has several Alice in Wonderland books, with different illustrators.  I found out that the Young Women really love to read, and some of them read several books a week.  I personally am not fond of the Alice in wonderland book, but it is a classic, and Project Gutenberg has spent countless hours digitizing so many wonderful classics (vintage books) for people to access and read online.  We are trying to get the Youth to do productive things online instead of playing games, and just surfing the net, so I thought this would be a very worthwhile link to post on the invitation. I wonder how many parents know about Project Gutenberg?  Here is the link to this wonderful site loaded with tons of free ebooks to read.  http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page  I love to pass on good tips, so take this one and pass it on to those you visit teach and give them a bookmark while you are at it.

I will be designing some place cards, and a Mad Hatter Hat favor in the next few days, so come back and I will have the templates and images of them as well.

Enjoy!

Katie G.

I just finished the name tags to be put on the table at the tea party and they turned out really cute as you can see in the picture.  They are so easy, so not template for these.  I have below this image the cute little tag that is hanging from the side of the favor box.  This box I found at my local $ store for 8 of them only $1.  They are pink.  They will be filled with "English Toffee" and set by each table setting.  This party is really going to be cute and fun.  Oh the teapot that is behind my cute little printouts, is one that I purchased online because I wanted a very special and very cute one to have tea parties with my little Granddaughters.  I think this one really fits the bill!

Enjoy!!!  Katie G.

 P.S.  So just when I think I am done creating things for this party, I remember the hostess wanted to have some 2 sided menus to be displayed on each table.  So below is what I came up with.  In keeping with the Alice in Wonderland theme, I named all the different foods, with names from the Story.  It turned out pretty cute. 

Heart and Soul Skit ( my rewrite)

Some months back, I offered to mail out copies to those who had wanted them of the rewrite of the "Heart and Soul" program that I rewrote to fit an Adult Visiting Teaching and Home Teaching night that was held together for all adults.  It turned out really cute. Anyway, I finally scanned it with a new and really cool tool that my husband just bought me, and put this play on my Visiting Teaching Surprise storage blog. ( It is too many pages to put on this blog ) Here is the link and feel free to copy it off for yourself to use. BUT... if you do, I would love to know, so please write a comment. 

Here is the link http://visitingteachingsurprisedocuments.blogspot.com/2010/09/visiting-teaching-skit-heart-and-soul.html

Now for the really cool tool my husband bought me.  He knows that I love genealogy and also knows of my frustration of making copies of things I find at the library or family history center.  They usually turn out dark, and then I have to rescan them to put them on my computer at home.  ANYWAY... He and I took a little fun weekend trip and stayed a couple of days in SLC, and road trax, and went to all the touristy places in SLC.  We went to Gateway and while there we went to Brookstone, looking for something that he wanted to find.  While he was looking, so was I, and I found this really neat hand scanner that is only about the size of a hair straighter, or curling iron.  What you do is scan down the pages of whatever you are needing to scan, and it saves the image in a tiny little micro memory card.  This tiny card holds well over 100 scans.  Then when I got home, I put that micro card in the memory card converter case and inserted it into the memory card slot on my computer.  The rest is history, with saving all my scans on to my computer.  WOW was I excited!!!!  No more crappy copies!!!!!  Anyway, I love to pass on good tips, so I thought I would let you know about this one.  ( It was what scanned the copies of the above Heart and Soul skit)

It is a Portable Document and Photo scanner ( scan receipts, letters, recipes, photos and more) 
iConvert makes it and Brookstone sells it.  I think I paid somewhere around $100, and I feel like it was well worth the price to get the quality of copies that I want.  Here is the link to Brookstone http://www.brookstone.com/portable-document-photo-scanner-handheld.html?bkeid=compare%7Cmercent%7Cgooglebase%7Csearch&mr:trackingCode=69CAEFAC-3E30-DF11-AE5B-0019B9C2BEFD&mr:referralID=NA

I don't have anything to do with the selling of these great scanners, but I definitely would become a spokesperson for these.  When I went down to the library in the Genealogy and old records room, they would not let any of these books be checked out.  There were many of these books loaded with family history of my family and ancestors, with photos and newspaper clippings, clipped obituaries and such.  Well after I found this great scanner, I went back to the Library and opened up the books and scanned to my hearts content.  I will show you an example of something that I scanned....  These are some old checks that my Great Great grandfather signed back in the early 1900's for Lehi Roller Mill, which is my Robinson side of the family. 

I even found an old newspaper clipping of myself many, many, and I won't tell you how many years ago. I am the one at the bottom of the stairs.  It was so fun to remember about the good old days.  This was right in the binding side of the old Newspapers that the library keeps, and I was able to get this scan right up to the edge of the binding.  Anyway.... I think you can see the possibilities.  Once again... I like to pass on good tips and t his one is a really good one. 

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

The Visiting teaching message for the month of September, 2010 suggests that you take a copy of "The Family:  A Proclamation to the World" with you and give to each sister you teach. You can find it at the following links:

For some reason, this link will not automatically come up for me so you have to copy the link and paste it into the address bar in order for it to come up on your screen.  Don't know why  but we don't always know these mysteries.  This PDF has crop marks on it so that you can cut it and paste it to come pretty paper to give to your sisters.
http://lds.org/Static%20Files/PDF/Manuals/TheFamily_AProclamationToTheWorld_35538_eng.pdf

This one looks just like the Proclamation that is pictured above on this post.

http://lds.org/messages/images/fr09oct14_sharing.jpg

ALSO... I finally had to redesign my Word document design of the Proclamation because the link from Google docs didn't work so... I have rededigned it and made it a jpeg so you should be able to just click on my design and print it out now.  Sorry for all the troubles getting it here.  I simply didn't have the time, and I am on my way again sooo happy visiting theaching. 

Thanks,  Katie G