Popsicle Prayers

...with a preggar pic thrown in.

The hubs and I have been talking about having a family altar for a while.  What is a family altar you ask? Great question...one I had to ask as well.  A family altar is a place in your home that you deem as the center of your family prayer time and devotions.  There is a lot of information on the internet about the history of family altars and what items people include in their family altars.

A friend of ours wanted to get rid of a shelf, and I had a hard time turning it down, since it came at the bargain price of...free...and voila!, the humble beginnings of our family altar was born.

Surprisingly, this post is not about family altars.  It's about popsicle sticks....stick with me (ha! pun was unintended, but punny nonetheless!)  I'm always looking for ways to incorporate our faith into the little moments our day...so much easier to think about than to implement and execute...I'm working on that.  One of the girls in the Bible study I work with, came up with the idea (inspired by Pinterest I'm sure) to have a prayer jar with all of our names in it.  Each week we pick a stick with someone's name on it and pray for that person all week.  I was looking for a container that would serve this purpose in our home and while cooking came upon the perfect jar...or can rather.

 Sometimes I get caught up with wanting things to be perfect before implementing them...so many projects that I haven't done because I haven't figured out the perfect way to do it...rather than just going with the project and developing the idea in full as I go.  So this time, I went for the "it'll work for the mean time", undecorated aluminum can with the undecorated popsicle sticks, with all of our family's names written on them.  The popsicle sticks are supposed to be colored on one end (hence the sharpie-colored end of the sticks above) so that you go through all the sticks before repeating any of them, also ensuring that you get to everyone in the jar.

But the other day, it was pretty outside, and just cool enough (along with a little fan I rigged on one of the chairs) to sit outside and paint the popsicle sticks.  Tim had rigged a clothes line up to dry some clothes, and this worked as the perfect place to hang the popsicle sticks to dry.

 If you have an easier way to accomplish this, let me know.  I just decided I wanted a painted look rather than a colored-with-a-marker look.

Now, I did promise a preggar pic...

27 weeks

And for a close-up of Sprout :)

Sprout is in there smiling and waving...I'm sure of it.

Here was the final project, made with some modge podge and scrapbook paper.  Although, I have to work on my modge podge skills, because after a few moments, the paper crinkled :(  But it still looks cute... from a distance.