Another Successful Cookie Sale

I think I've finally recovered from our cookie sale.  It really was a lot of work, but once again, we had a very successful year!!  We made $266.50 from our little 50 cent cookie sale.  What was really amazing is that we were almost completely sold out before the 11 am Mass.  The selection was looking so sad by that time, we didn't even have the sale announced at the Mass.  We sold out!!

It started on the Sunday before, I made all the dough for the cookies. We were so blessed this year to be able to use the parish kitchen to bake the cookies.  On Monday morning, 4 of us got together.  It took us less than 2 hours to bake over 200 cookies.  The past 2 years, it would take an entire day to make the cookies in my oven.  Look at this beauty!!! We packaged them all and put them in the freezer.  It was nice to be able to put them in the church freezer instead of worrying about having room in mine.

On Friday, I made 100 chocolate covered pretzels, 5 batches of Rice Krispy Treats and 8 batches of frosting.  My kids kept letting me know that if I should happen to break any of the pretzels, they would be more than happy to eat them for me.  Such generous kids!

Saturday morning, we met at the church to decorate all of those delicious cookies.  This is a huge job.  I learned a very valuable lesson this year.  We didn't have as many moms to help this year and we were lacking one very important job, someone to really supervise the girls.  While the moms were frosting, the girls were putting sprinkles on the cookies.  When I say putting on the sprinkles, I should be saying DUMPING on the sprinkles.  Wow, did we go through a lot of sprinkles.  A whole lot more than in the past couple years.  It made for huge mess to clean up.  This doesn't even come close to the mess that was made.  So next year, one mom will just sit with the girls to keep an eye on things and there will be lots of plates for the girls to sprinkle over!!  Packaging all the cookies is what takes us the longest.  I still think the pretty packaging helps sell all those cookies!!

Next year we need to double Mary's famous chocolate chip cookies and add at least a couple more batches of sugar cookies. 

Thank you Lord for our very generous parish!

Looking for Other Little Flower Blogs

I would love to get a list together of all the other ladies who have blogs for their Little Flowers groups.  It certainly is helpful to be able to see what other groups are doing and a great way to get ideas.  If you have a blog or know of one, please feel free to leave the name or link in the comments.  The Little Flowers Girls Club had been listing them.  I would like share the links on the side of my page for easy reference for all of us.

Also we are starting a Little Women's Hospitality Group in the Fall.  If you know of any groups or blogs, I would certainly appreciate know about those as well.  We needs lots of ideas!!

Getting Ready for the Bake Sale

Time to get the prep work done for our bake sale.  There is a lot of work that goes into those 50 cent cookies.  I sent out the list of ingredients we need for the sugar cookies and frosting.  I wanted to get it written down so that next year I don't need to calculate it out again.  Considering we basically sold out last year, I added an extra batch. This ingredient list is for 7 batches of cookies using this recipe.

This is the list I sent out to all the moms.  I tried to divide it so that it was basically even.  The ladies filled the list up very quickly which I really appreciate. 

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 Dozen Eggs -

2 – 5 lbs bags Flour -

2 -  4 lb bags Powder Sugar (confectioners' sugar) - 

5 Cups Solid Vegetable Shortening  -

10 lb bag of sugar -

4 containers of sprinkles and 5 lb bag of flour 

I've started making all the prayers that we attach to each cookie.  Since we made a little over $200 last year, I need to cut out at least 450 hearts.  My Silhouette will be humming quite a bit over the next week.  

I will make the dough the day before and then a few of us will be meeting in the social hall kitchen to do the baking.  I can't wait to test out the ovens.  It should save us at least a few hours of work.  I bought a couple more heart cookie cutters so that we will be able to crank those cookies out.  Then we will freeze them until the weekend and then the decorating will being.

Hopefully having the list will help take away some stress next year.  I love our cookie sale and am excited to see it all come together.

Movie Night

Last year, the Knights of Columbus bought a big screen t.v. for our social hall, but because of the flood, we never got to use it.  This month's virtue was the perfect excuse for testing it out.  While the activity suggested learning more about slavery and perhaps watching Roots, I felt that was way too old for our group of girls.  I decided to just focus on acceptance so we watched 'Kit Kittredge, An American Girl'.  She had to learn to accept a lot of changes living during the Depression.

The girls were so excited to get to bring their pillows and sleeping bags and wear their pajamas!!  Of course, I can't let an event go by without doing a little crafting so I made all the girls personalized popcorn containers that they got to take home.  I just have too much fun crafting so the popcorn and drinks became a little concession stand.  Lots of fun.

Just so that I won't forget, we went through 4 boxes of popcorn and a little over a gallon of lemonade. The m&m's were just leftovers from Christmas cookies at my house.  I put them in little individual containers so that each girl could have one.  

Considering it's been a snowy day, we had a great turnout.  Worked out even better because tomorrow there is a 2 hour delay.  Yay!!  We all get to sleep in.

Acceptance

I had to think about this virtue for a couple of weeks before starting to plan out the meeting.  For some reason, I was trying to make it a whole lot more difficult than it needed to be. If you start looking for ideas online, you will find lots of lessons on acceptance of others and perhaps their lifestyles.  I realized that it is always best to keep it simple.  Since everyone appreciates being able to check off some of the activities, I decided to just work on them.

The girls and I tried to figure out the definition of acceptance.  It's always hard to give a definition!  Got lots of examples of what they had to accept.  Then we moved on to #5.  Using a children's Bible, I read the story of the Agony in the Garden.  I got the moms involved and asked them to share something that they had to accept and perhaps how they dealt with it.  It was great for the girls to have their moms sharing. 

We also worked on #4.  It was easy for them to think of the things they had to accept this week.  Well it was really easy to for them to think of all the hard things that they had to accept.  Our "Hard" list was much longer than the "Easy" list. 

While I was preparing for this virtue, I really struggled on how St. Josephine Bakhita was the right saint for this virtue.  How could a person who had been a slave teach us about acceptance?  I read the blurb about St. Josephine from the Member's Guide.  The connection was made with this statement, "Though slow of movement—perhaps on account of the torture she had suffered as a teenager—she did every job lovingly, with a contagious joy. To those who had more visible roles, she would say, 'You go and teach. I will go to the chapel and pray that you may do it well.'" from From Slave to Saint The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita.  She accepted whatever job was given to her and she did it joyfully.  

The girls were really fascinated by St. Josephine's story.  I think more so than any other saint thus far.  They asked a lot of questions about her being kidnapped and also about the scars she had on her body and about her family.  I was a little concerned that I had frightened them so I reassured them with this statement taken from the above article, “If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me,” she wrote, “I would kneel and kiss their hands. For if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today.”  It was important for them to see that she was "okay" even after going through such a horrible ordeal. 

We switched gears then to take about Sudan.  I learned more than I ever knew about the country preparing for this lesson.  A good resource to share is http://www.our-africa.org/sudan/welcome-to-sudan.  Lots of videos, maps and facts.  I took my ipad to the meeting so that we could watch one of the videos and see the maps and pictures.  I also passed out their pages for their passports.

I took our craft from activity #5.  String art wass an inexpensive craft costing less than $5.  My husband cut some of his scrap wood for me.  The boards measure 8 x 6.  I painted them and used a cross that I printed out on paper as my template to pound in the nails.  I used crocheting thread as the string.

We all have crosses to bear and it may be one that we just need to accept.  We need to remember the one that Jesus bore for us.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of all of the different crosses the girls made.  None of them were exactly the same just as the crosses we must carry are all different.  The heart in the middle is to remind us that God is always there for us. 

An Epiphany Party

Last week, we celebrated the Epiphany.  I just thought I would share some of the festivities.

Now what would be an Epiphany party without a bunch of crowns?

 Then we moved onto making beautiful watercolor designs using star stickers and kosher salt.

  I love the results!

They were so much fun to make using these simple ingredients. Here is a link to the tutorial.

Then it was time to munch on some star cookies and other goodies and listen to The Story of the Three Wise Kings by Tomie dePaola.  

When they were done, we played a short game and then we gave the girls their stars.  They probably could have spent the entire party just playing with them.

Before they left, they were given some blessed chalk and prayers to take home and bless their homes.

Just as a note to myself.  Next year, I think I would like to start with a little lesson about the Epiphany.  Otherwise, I would say it was a success!!

Prepping for the Epiphany

This year we decided to have an Epiphany party for the group instead of having a Christmas party during Advent.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls what the Epiphany was and also keep the celebrating during Christmas, not Advent.

Today I got together with one of the other moms, and sewed all of our stars for the party.  Wow, 12 stars didn't sound like much, but perhaps when we added the 5 kids running around, it took us a little longer than we thought. 

Hopefully this will be a fun activity for them and we won't wind up with rice all over the social hall.  The girls have so much fun just throwing the prayer ball back and forth that we thought making "shooting" stars for them to throw around would be fun.

Got to finish some of the decorations and the little matchboxes for the Epiphany chalk.  We'll be all set for our big party on Monday!

Unselfishness - Complete Lesson Plan

What a perfect virtue for the season.  I think all the moms appreciated having a review of what it means to be unselfish or giving.  It can be easy for kids to get caught up with the "I wants" at Christmas time. 


Shannon lead the group this month and she provided me with all of her notes.  Wow, I wish I could be so organized when I lead meetings!!  I need to take some lessons from her.  Everything is included for the meeting. 

1.        Gather on blanket.  Have unselfish written on board.

a.        What does it mean?

                                                               i.      Thinking only about yourself, not caring or thinking about others

                                                              ii.      Stingy, not generous

                                                            iii.      Egotistical – thinking you’re the best

b.       What are some examples?

c.        What is the opposite of Unselfish?

d.       What are some examples of selfish

2.       Talk about St. Teresa of the Andes (#2)

a.       Map world, maps of Chile/Andes (Why do you think she was called St. Teresa of the Andes?)  Pass out Passport pages.

b.      She was born in Chile, South America

c.      She read St. Therese’s Autobiography, The Story of a Soul – she was so impressed and excited about it, she wanted to become a nun

d.      She used to write letters talking about her life following Christ

e.      She gave up everything to give her life to God – unselfish

f.      She overcame a self-centered personality to become a person who put others before herself

3.       Split up: moms take girls to play telephone (while other mom’s hide boxes).  Telephone sentences:

a.        “I am unselfish when I think of others first.”

b.        “Praying to God will help me be unselfish.”

c.        “St. Teresa of the Andes was born in Chile, South America.”

4.       Sorting find the boxes activity: selfish/unselfish statements cut into strips and each one put into small boxes.  Hide boxes for girls to find –like Easter egg hunt.  Once a team finds a box, they open it, read the statement, decide if it is selfish or unselfish, tape it to correct piece of construction paper (two pieces of construction paper on table labeled “Selfish” and “Unselfish”)  See attached statements.

a.        Find boxes and tape onto correct paper

b.       Work in partners (older girl with younger girl)

c.        Ask girls how they can practice being unselfish while playing this game (letting others find boxes and giving hints to other teams)

5.       Talk about Christmas – a time to be unselfish, keep Jesus first, not focus on just the presents

6.       Unlucky Jim Story (#6)  See attached story

a.        Have moms leave the room

b.       Read story to girls

c.        Have girls draw a picture about the story Unlucky Jim

d.       The girls will share story with mom using the picture they drew

7.       Write a letter to someone (#4) See attached instructions

a.        Have you ever gotten mail in your mailbox?  How does it feel? 

b.       Write a letter, draw a picture, tell someone about St. Teresa or Little Flowers or just that you are thinking about them

c.        Moms can help daughters organize thoughts

8.       On your way home (#5)

a.        Talk with your mom about some ways she has to be unselfish as a mom/grandma and some ways that you have to be unselfish as a kid.  Is being unselfish easy?