Little Flowers Wreath I Crafts

I'm finally getting around to sharing our crafts from Little Flowers this year. When we started out, I had every intention of doing wonderful posts like Jessica's, but it just didn't happen. I got the idea for these crafts from Jessica's blog, the Little Flowers Craft Companion, the internet, and even my mom. Along with our crafts, we also put together Jessica's scrapbook pages at each meeting. We also had some creative snacks, but unfortunately, I didn't always remember to take pictures of them. I also forgot to take pictures of the crafts at most of the meetings, so these pictures are from the day after the Tea Party in May, so they've been a little squished in the girls' binders. Our Little Flowers group had girls from ages 3 to 6 (a little younger than the average group, I think) so these crafts were kept simple, and the moms helped a lot, too.

Our pipe cleaner Sunflower from the Craft Companion for our first meeting

The second meeting of the year used Ivy as symbol of how Hope should cling to your heart. With my mom's help, we came up with this sewing craft. We used a Cricut machine to cut out 2 hearts for each girl and I punched holes around the edges of the heart of both and 2 hole on the front heart for the bow. Using green yarn as Ivy, the girls sewed the 2 hearts into a little pouch which they could keep something, prayers, a rosary, etc... The third meeting's virtue was Love of God. I found this craft at my local Michael's and all I had to do way buy it. One package had more than enough for all of the girls to make one. I especially liked it because not only could you read it as "Love God", but also as "God is Love", a very important lesson!

The fourth meeting's virtue was Love of Neighbor. We held this meeting in January and with St. Valentine's Day coming up, I found this craft online. Obviously, this example shows the young age of our members, but they still had fun making them.

The next meeting's flower was the carnation and I found the instructions for these coffee filter carnations online here.

The next meeting's virtue was Piety. We used this coloring page of the "Colors of Piety" from Jessica as our craft for this month.

For the next meeting, our saint was St. Catherine Laboure who Our Lady appeared to and gave the Miraculous Medal. We made our own medals using paper plates based on the coloring page here.

Front

Back

For our next meeting, I was horribly sick and stuck in bed. Our saint was St. Frances Xavier Cabrini so I printed out these coloring sheets that I found in Jessica's post and one of the other wonderful moms stepped up and led that meeting.

For our final meeting, the flower was the narcissus, not a popular flower for crafting (or snacks, I will add). I took a hint from Jessica, once again, and tracked down this craft online. I know it's a lily, but it did the trick and the girls enjoyed making another flower. I think it's especially cute because it uses their handprint.

I hope this post gets your creativity flowing and helps you realize there are lots of resources out there to help you if you think you might want to start a Little Flowers group of your own. This first year was far from the perfect picture I had in my head at the beginning, but factoring life in, I think we managed to do a pretty good job with the girls, and most importantly they had fun learning about their faith.

Little Flowers Tea Party 2011

This weekend, my daughters and I hosted the end of year Little Flowers Tea for our Little Flowers group. Don't know what Little Flowers is? Visit here.

The girls' table (with all of our craft projects from the year displayed on the wall).

I copied took inspiration from Jessica's Tea Parties and was hoping to have our party outside. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate (it snowed later that day and the rest of the weekend) and I changed my plans to inside. It was a little crowded getting around the tables at times, but I think we made the best of it. Because of the relocation of the festivities, I decided to buy some flowered garland at the craft store (roses and wisteria) to give a little garden atmosphere to my dining room. The pictures aren't the greatest. The sun glare was fighting with me and I was slightly rushed to get pictures taken before our guests arrived.

A view of both tables and some of the added flora

The little table to the left was for our 2 and under crowd

One more angle

This was the first time I had ever hosted a tea party. I don't even own a teapot! So I had to get creative on some things. A lot of what I used was borrowed. At both tables, there were borrowed teapots, cream and sugar sets, lemonade pitchers, and half of the napkins (the flowered ones). At the Mothers' Table, I used my china and crystal.
Mothers' table place setting

At the girls' table, I used cups from my punch bowl set for their tea cups and some borrowed glass plates. I used Holy Cards of the saints we were learning about as prizes all year, so I continued the theme in the place settings. I put the holy cards under the plates, which I thought was a cool effect.
Girls' table place setting

We had three courses and in between courses we had activities for the girls to include Jessica's word search and a Memory Game.

The activity table

This is our version of the Memory Game



We also did a craft, using all of the flowers I had purchased for the individual meetings throughout the year.

The craft prep area

This craft project is also in the Craft Companion guide

One of the finished hats (Dad got involved A LOT with this one)

The food was delicious! Each of the other moms was so helpful and brought a couple of dishes. We had three courses, which I think the girls got a kick out of. I forgot to take a picture of the first course, but it included strawberries, raspberries, grapes, and blueberry scones.


The second course included tortilla roll-ups, cucumber and egg salad sandwiches, and ham and cheese and jelly and creme cheese flower shaped sandwiches. Don't they look amazing?

The third course was DESSERT!


Brownies topped with cream cheese frosting and sprinkles, strawberry creme cupcakes, and a strawberry puff pastry dessert. YUMMY!


Despite all of my stress and worries, it turned out to be a wonderful time and most importantly, I think the girls had a lot of fun.

(Please bear with the poor formatting. Obviously, I've been away from blogging for awhile and I'm a little rusty. I just don't have the energy to fight with Blogger anymore tonight.)