mother daughter time

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Mom-Daughter Dates

In honor of Valentine’s Day we decided to compile a list of five of our favorite Mom-Daughter dates. What are some of your favorite Mom-Daughter dates? As long as you and your daughter are being intentional to create moments that allow you two to grow closer together, then there isn’t a wrong answer. Have fun!

Ice Cream

Taking some time to enjoy each other’s company while you enjoy some delicious ice cream is sure to be a memorable time.

Tea Time

Find a local hotel, tea house or restaurant who has a dedicated afternoon tea time. Get dressed up in very elegant attire and enjoy some afternoon tea and biscuits (or scones). Enjoy!

Cooking Class

Growing up I loved to bake with my mom. There is something about the preparation and expectation of the result that helped our relationship grow. Take that same idea out of your home kitchen and learn a few new recipes together in a class.

Spa Day

Mani. Pedi. Facial. Relaxing during a spa day is such a great way to slow down and connect with each other.

Volunteer

Serving together can leave such a lasting bond. Seek out an opportunity in an area of need that interests your daughter. A few ideas are serving at a food kitchen, doing yard work for an elderly neighbor, or shopping to restock a homeless shelter together.
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Resolutions as a Family

The beginning of another year can only mean one thing…it’s time for a new batch New Year’s resolutions (or in some cases it’s time to start the resolutions that died off last January. With this being posted on January 12, maybe it’s already time to restart this year’s resolutions). Whenever I think about resolutions for the year I tend to think about personal Bible reading, fitness, learning a new skill, etc., and while all of these are great things I began to realize that I wasn’t thinking about the resolutions for my family. I’m sure there are many of you that do a great job of this each year (and I would love your suggestions!), but as a parent of a young family, family resolutions had never really crossed my mind. As I began to brainstorm I came up with a three goals for my family in 2017:

1.) DELIGHT IN GOD’S WORD

Wow. I read this verse and began to think about it from the perspective of my family. Each night we read with our kids a passage of scripture and discuss it, but I began to question if I am showing my kids how to delight in God’s Word. Do they see me taking joy from reading scripture? I want my kids to experience the same sweetness that the psalmist finds in God’s Word.

2.) GIVING AS A FAMILY

We are blessed, so we should bless others. Seems like a simple concept. That is, until we have that purchase to make or it takes away our free time. In 2017, I want my family to joyfully give of our time, talents, and money. Our kids will only do the same if they see the example that we set. Let’s stop talking about it and do it!

3.) PRESENCE

At this time of year we hear a lot about presents because I think we all love to give and receive those presents. However, in 2017 I don’t want to just give presents, I want to be present. I want my family to know that I am interested and engaged with what they are doing. Let’s put our phones down, turn off the TV, sign out of Facebook, and spend quality family time, engaging with one another out of love.

What family resolutions do you have this year? I’m eager to learn, so please share in the comments below.

Happy New Year!
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Celebrate Freedom!

4thofJuly

As we prepare for the 4th of July and get ready to celebrate our independence – it is important to remember what true FREEDOM looks like!

13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

– Colossians 1:13-14 (NIV)

Challenge yourself this 4th of July to talk with your Faithgirl about what that looks like.

 

For FUN:
We enjoy great freedoms as American citizens – and should celebrate accordingly!

We’ve thrown some craft + recipe ideas together on a NEW Pinterest Board: A Faithgirlz 4th of July.

Pinterest-4thofJuly

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Top 10 Summer Activities for Your Tweens

Summer-Activites-for-TweensSummer is here!

This break is something your girls have been looking forward to for months. You, on the other hand, may not look forward to summer with as much excitement. The time off requires a LOT of additional prepping and planning for parents.

There are many great resources around the web outlining fun summer activities for your girls. We’ve compiled our top 10 below!

10. Get a Job
Instill values of independence, discipline, and responsibility by encouraging your tween to work this summer. Now is a great time to help out around the house, babysit, look after a neighbor’s pets, walk dogs, wash cars, open a lemonade stand, sell handmade crafts – or anything else your enterprising young girls can think of!

9. Update A Room
As our girls transition from one grade to the next, we have to accept that they are growing up! Does their room reflect their maturing taste? If not – head over to Pinterest and look for new room inspirations for your girls. Need a starting place? Check out our Redo Your Room board. If you want even more inspiration – check out our Redo Your Room book!

8. Plan Outdoor Movie Nights
Get together with neighbors and work to set up a projector, speakers and family-friendly movie. Really amp up the space with comfy seating, string lights and popcorn! Click for more creative ways to dress up the space!

outdoor movie

7. Volunteer
What causes are important to your family? Reach out to organizations in your area to inquire about opportunities for your girls to serve. Animal shelters and food banks often have tasks for younger volunteers. Through their service, your girls will learn valuable lessons of sacrifice, humility and caring for others.

6. Host a Board Game Tourny
Help your faithgirlz plan a fun-filled day at home. (This is a great option if there are a lot of rainy days in the forecast.) If you don’t have a huge collection of board games, ask friends to bring over one or two of their favorites. Be sure everyone knows the rules for each game and then roll the dice or pick a card to see who gets to select the first game.  For bonus points: If your girls are especially creative – encourage them to create their own game!

Game Pieces

5. Be a Tourist in Your Own Town
What is one thing you’ve always wanted to see in your area? Plan a quick day trip or outing to visit a unique landmark, attraction or eatery. Take this idea to the next level by dressing up as tacky tourists! Fanny packs required.

4. Pick a Book to Read Together – and take time to talk about it!
We are BIG advocates of summer reading… and so is our spokesperson Natalie Grant! Together, we’ve developed a great list of Faithgirlz! titles to recommend for your tween. We encourage you to pick one or two to read with your girls. These books are great conversation starters and can lead to some incredible chats about faith. Read up on Natalie’s summer reading suggestions here!

natalie-grant-faithgirlz-summer-reading

3. Create and Bury a Time Capsule
Identify special mementos that will help your faithgirl remember 2015. Include items to represent her best friend, secret crush (if she has one!) and her favorite Bible verse, class, band, song, sport to play, sport to watch, book, movie, actor and actress! Did you take a trip this year? Include a souvenir or ticket to remember a special family vacation or outing. Have fun with it – and only peek if she says it is okay!

2. Set Up Camp
Love the outdoors? Take an afternoon to create a campsite in your backyard. Grab some sleeping bags and enjoy a night out under the stars! Don’t have a tent? No worries! Get creative with blankets and sheets to make a colorful retreat. The benefits of camping at home? You have quick access to certain amenities (like a bathroom & kitchen) if you aren’t ready for the complete experience. Still seem like a stretch? If your girls aren’t the outdoorsy type – like mine – create a camp of sorts inside!

sheet-tent

1. Get Moving
Get your girls off the couch! Summer is a great time to try new activities. Gather all the necessary safety gear and encourage your faithgirlz to meet their friends for a bike ride, test out their roller blades, take a swim, paddle board or canoe on a nearby lake… anything to stay active (and tear them away from spending all summer on the computer or binge watching TV shows on Netflix). Just be sure to set parameters on where they can go, when to be back and who they can go with, etc. Use these ideas to give your girls a memorable, safe and FUN summer!

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Prayers for Your Daughter

As the school year wraps, we find ourselves thinking about what’s next…

What will the summer look like? What new or challenging things are in store for my daughter next year? Will she continue to be surrounded by good friends?  How is she growing up so fast? Oh… my goodness… will she start dating soon?

As the unknowns pile up, we often find ourselves grasping for control. I love this quote from Lysa TerKeurst.

Whether  we are excited, anxious or terrified about the growth of our girls, we have to remember that God has an amazing plan for their lives.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
– Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

I was given great advice last week – and I want to share it with you. When you’re wrestling with any matter, imagine you’re having the conversation with a friend. If you heard your story from their mouth, what advice would you share?

  • Turn to the Lord
  • Pray, pray, pray
  • Practice patience

I know! It is so much easier to give this advice than to take it!
To best equip our girls (and restore our sanity), we have to take our questions, concerns and celebrations to God. Pray for your girls each and every day and see how God shows up in your lives.

Need an outline? We’ve compiled a list of resources to help pray for your daughter on our Pinterest page.

Faithgirlz-Pinterest

 

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When you want to do great things for God… And He asks you to keep on being a mom

Enjoy these encouraging words – just in time for Mother’s Day. Guest post from the wonderful Jennifer Ebenhack
Do Great Things for God.jpg

Maybe your girlhood dreams resembled mine…

  • Rescue orphans like Amy Carmichael
  • Lead a jungle tribe to Christ like Elisabeth Elliot
  • Adopt fourteen girls in Uganda like Katie Davis

Or maybe your dreams have just recently developed…

  • Reach women with the written word
  • Fight to end human trafficking
  • Start a non-profit
  • Go into full-time ministry

God’s planted within you and me this desire to do something bold, something beautiful and purposeful. Something great.

We have these gifts we know are from Him, these passions, this fire in us that wants to change the world.

But, here we are… The “Ref” for another sibling squabble. The chauffeur. The maid. The teacher. The cook. And deep down inside, even though we know the good Christian girl answer, we wonder if a lot of the real “us” isn’t being wasted.

We live through days of drudgery. Where our brains, our skills, and our God-given talents are set aside for things like mopping a gallon of milk off the floor. And we’re just not convinced this is “it.”

But my sister, I’m beginning to get something…

I forget frequently, but day by day, year by year, it’s coming into clearer focus. I’m praying for the ability to fully grasp it and I pray that you will too:

I have been created, gifted, and trained specifically for these children, today. I am their mother, for “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

No, you and I aren’t in the times of Queen Esther, and our roles feel much less glamorous than hers, but can we stop for a moment and try to grasp the times in which we live?

Never before has the family been so brutally attacked by western culture. Never before have godly men and women been so few… so ridiculed… and, around the globe, so persecuted.

We mothers are the keepers of our homes. And while we may long for some noble calling that others will applaud on Facebook or in an auditorium, the battle is raging in our family room.

We’re not just soccer moms, homeschool moms or working moms.

We’re called to be warrior moms.

We’re called to use our gifts, talents, passions, and time to save our marriages, to save our kids, which can in turn save our churches, our countries, and our world.

Your day will come, as mine recently has, when you see your children’s desperate need for Jesus. When it hits you like a lightening bolt: Nothing in the world could be more important than this job I am doing today.

Yes. We long to do greater things than making another dinner. But out of obedience, we serve. We are here. We are present. And when our kids’ hearts break, when the moment comes that they’re ready for His Spirit to work, we will gasp in wonder. We’ll fall onto our knees with the heavy knowledge that God prepared and equipped us for such a time as this. This calling is worth it all.

Press on today, mother-friend. Your role is no accident. And it is great.

{Shared with permission from Jennifer Ebenhack | Originally posted at TheBetterMom.com}

MOM-BLOG

(Need a last minute gift idea?! Find arrangements like the one pictured at proflowers.com)

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A Look at Redo Your Room

Faithgirlz Redo Your Room

 

Have you heard about our latest release?! Redo Your Room is a great DIY book we developed with Girls Life Magazine. Whether you’re looking for an all-out room redo or a few new tricks to brighten up your space, Faithgirlz has tons easy how-tos that’ll morph your room into a true expression of y-o-u. Give your walls a burst of color (even without a bucket of paint!)  and turn your fave pics and keepsakes into inspiring art.

These floor-to-ceiling secrets help nix those piles of clothes decorating your space in favor of awesome add-ons, like mini murals and a magical ribbon chandelier (psst: we won’t tell anyone it took you a half hour to whip up).

We’ve already heard some great feedback about this book and are so thankful for the positive reviews. The YA Gal shared her thoughts:

Redo Your Room: 50 Bedroom DIYs You Can Do in a Weekend is a how-to book for jazzing up a tween girl’s bedroom. It’s full of bright pictures, easy projects, and good advice. At only 5 and a half years old, my daughter is not the target age for Redo Your Room, yet she was enthralled by the photography and studied every picture closely. We will definitely be holding onto this book for the future.

For me as a mom, what I really liked was that the projects were doable and not too expensive. One trip to the craft store and $100 later, you’d probably have everything you need to do at least five projects. I hate decorating books that build unrealistic expectations. Redo Your Room is not one of them. (Btw, this book would be a really cool present grandmas could give combined with a generous gift card to Michael’s.)

Ideally, *ahem*, I would have loved to see an entire chapter devoted to the art of cleaning your room and keeping it that way. But that’s the mother in me talking, not the twelve-year-old girl!

purchase-the-book

If you want a little inspiration – check out some FUN projects from Girls Life Magazine on our Pinterest Board!

 

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No-Sew Bandana Tote

DIY-Bandana-Totes
Enjoy this no-sew project with your faith girl! Create a fun bandana tote in no time!

MATERIALS

  • Two 22″ Bandanas in a fun color like purple or pink!
  • Fabric Scissors

DIRECTIONS

  1. bandana_totebagCut a 1″ border around all four sides of both Bandanas in one piece. Lay this border aside-it’s for the handle. Lay bandanas out, wrong sides together, lining up edges as best as possible.
  2. Using fabric shears, cut a slit every 3/4″ cutting up to the most inner printed square on the bandana. You will be cutting out the corners and discarding these small squares of fabric.
  3. Beginning at one of the corners, take one of the fringes from the top and one from the bottom and tie them together in a double knot. Tie one on each corner.
  4. Continue tying all around except for the top. This will be left open.
  5. To make the handle, cut each long scrap into two equal pieces. Discard one piece and braid the other three together knotting at each end. Knot and end to each side of the bag. Iron the top fringes down on each side.

Enjoy your tote bag and snap a pic! Share your pictures and tag us on Facebook and Instagram!

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