Early Easter Eggs

Residents had the opportunity to color some early Easter Eggs - it was a full-on egg decorating party!

Smiles and giggles all round... the ladies had a wonderful time!

Becoming Book Worms

The Folsom Library is a beautiful building with many resources for people of all ages within the community. While they typically give library tours to school groups, we were able to arrange a tour of the library geared towards the senior population. The residents LOVED the tour and learned so much about the library they never knew including things like the Library's history and the construction of the building.

There was even an extra presentation on how to check out eBooks from the library website on Kindles, iPads and other tablets. Fun!

Creative Crafting

It's time to get your hands dirty!

Monday afternoons bring about special crafts. Yesterday, we made paper mache bowls. Using a plastic bowl as a mold, we first lined it with wet newspaper strips. Then, we laid strips of newspaper dipped in diluted white glue across the bowl. After putting down several layers of the newspaper, our bowls were ready to be set aside to dry!

The bowls will be used as candy bowls, key bowls or as a gift to give away!

When Music and Movement Visits Creekside...

Jerry and Chinta McCollum are a talented duo who travel to share their sing along, dance along music collection. When they come to visit us here, we can't help but move our dancing feet, sing with every song, and smile from ear to ear.

Terry, our dancing fool, was dancing with all the ladies for the entire hour!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Normally on Thursday afternoons we play Scrabble after lunch. But yesterday, we decided to try something new - a game called Apples to Apples.

A game of funny comparisons, each player gets 7 "thing" cards. For each round, one "description" card gets placed face up on the table, and each player must choose a card from their hand that they feel best suits the description card. Since you don't always have a great match in your hand, sometimes you have to get a little creative... or a little silly.

For it being the first time we played, there was a great turnout and it seemed everyone had fun.

Come join us next time!

A Different Side of Crafting

For many months our crafting focus has been on Crafts for a Cause, in which residents create items to donate to different nonprofit organizations within the community. To change things up a little, we've decided to start crafting items for the residents to either take home or give away as gifts. For our first venture, we created mod podge memory boxes that the residents can use to sort photos they have, store keepsakes, or give to a friend or family member as a gift.

They started out with a plain cardboard memory box. They were then able to choose different patterned paper they wanted to decorate their box with. After the paper gets trimmed to size, it's time to get dirty! The residents dipped their sponge brushes in the homemade mod podge mix (2 parts Elmer's glue, 1 part water) and brushed away! In order to get the desired effect, the box is first coated with the glue, then the paper laid down on the box, and finally the paper is coated with another layer of glue, saturating the paper and getting it to really stick!

The only modification we would have made, was using thinner paper! We used thick scrap booking paper, which due to its own stiffness did not conform to the shape of the box well. Next time, we'll have a better change of a seamless mod podge box.

Have you ever mod podge'd anything? It's a great way to customize trinket boxes, cups, storage bins, jars, bottles, folders or even binders!