In honor of General Conference weekend, we are going to have a fun LDS feature today! They are Melissa and Melanie the cute Mother/Daughter team from Green Jello With Carrots.

These ladies have mad illustration skills and offer a variety of super fun religious products, but we’ll get to that after the one-minute interview.

What is your favorite crafting tool or secret weapon?

Photoshop – without it we’d be lost. (Also we’re pretty handy with a good old fashioned pencil!)

Where do you get your inspiration for your drawings?

Melissa: I get my inspiration from my kids. They’re crazy and cute and huge guinea pigs for all our products.

Melanie: Church callings mostly. Being in the Primary and Young Women programs helps to know what’s needed.

What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Melissa: I have always like things in phases – currently my favorite artists are Sandra Boynton and David Shannon.

Melanie: The Flinstones (despite Melissa’s disgust with their three-toed characters – honestly, who can remain properly balanced on just three toes? Now, four toes….that’s better.)

Who is your favorite General Conference speaker?

Melissa: I miss hearing President Hinckley.

Melanie: President Monson and the way he relates to people.

Now for the faves…we’ll start with Melanie and Melissa’s and then I will share mine.

Our favorite products are the Dress Up Girl and Boy file folder games. I like to “help” my kids put them together in Sacrament Meeting, while completely paying full attention to the speakers and not the silliness of combining cowgirl hair with a princess dress, of course.

There are sooo many cute Dress ups! You will have to see it to believe it!

Also, the “I Can Draw Books” are awesome. I think people get a bit confused about them. They have progressive steps on how to draw things from the different topics (Noah and the Ark, Joseph Smith, etc.). My 6 and 4 year old love using them.

Ok, now for a few of my faves. How do I choose? Well we’ll start with the free stuff, of course. I am a sucker for the free stuff. There is a whole sections of fun freebies. Oh and did I mention Freebie Fridays? Every Friday on their blog they have one free item. That way you can see how fun their stuff is and become addicted like me.

I am really in to file folder games lately. Maybe because I am desperately trying to find anything to keep my almost two year old busy for more than two minutes. They also have a General Conference Packet with some fun activities for the kiddos.

Garden of Eden File Folder Game

General Conference Packet

I love their picture of Jesus. He is so happy and gleaming with the “Pure love of Christ.” So precious with the kids loving Him. I get a kick out of the Relief Society sisters. They are too cute!

Jesus and Me

Relief Society Women

This new baby clip art is adorable. Perfect for a baby book or a baby shower card. Ugh, it makes me want another one. Is the Love Everyone poster not the sweetest? Too, too cute!

New Baby Line

Love Everyone Poster

I just love what these ladies do and hope you do too!

Great stuff Melanie and Melissa! You are now entered in to the Hall of Fame!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.

Recently, my son came home from nursery with this.

Hilarious!! I totally laughed when he handed it to me. They are learning about eternal families this year. Seeing this on the fridge everyday made me realize that I wanted to teach my little one about his family and that though he has no siblings (YET. We are planning on having more. I don’t need anyone else asking when the next one is coming. How do you answer that question anyway?! Ugh.) he is part of a family that loves him. I wanted him to know that though our family is small he has a big family too.

I decided to start with Grandparents and Great Grandparents (seemed perfect since I came up with this on Grandparents day). I wanted to keep it simple at first because he has a TON of aunts, uncles and cousins. Don’t worry, we love you too!

I love the idea of a family tree and helping him to know that his Papas and Grandmas are Mommy and Daddy’s Moms and Dads. I made him a little family tree file folder game by altering the basic family tree found on Kid’s Turn Central.

I made two different sheets (printed on card stock and laminated using clear contact paper), one that listed everyone by their relation (mom, grandpa, etc) and one that listed them by name. This way he could start with the relation one and eventually grow in to learning all the names. I printed out 2 in x 2 in pics (they fit perfect on a 4×6 photo paper) of all of us to attach above the labels (forgot my sons pic, so he pointed to where he goes). Currently, we are using double sided sticky tape, but you could use Velcro.

Click thumbnails to download 8 x 10 file folder game.

Left is blank to personalize with names. Right is labeled with relations.

We had recently celebrated Great Grandma’s 85th birthday party, so this was a great chance to teach him about Great Grandmas. Unfortunately, this is the only pic we got of them together. Lighting pretty bad and the “scenery” leaves something to be desired.

Great Grandma went in to the hospital for some surgery so we decided to send her a get well card. I wanted something personalized in it, so I sucked the color from the photo, cropped, and softened it so it actually looked pretty cute. Then, I turned it in to a Great Grandma coloring page and let him color it. This was a great time to teach him who Great Grandma is.

We decided to send Grandma and Grandpa a little something for Grandparents day (a little late) and did some finger painting and sent them a card.

As one last little learning activity, I got these Todd Parr books from the library. They were so cute and he loved them! They are a hilarious and refreshing way to look at roles. “Some mommies drive minivans, Some mommies drive motorcycles.”

Images from: http://www.toddparr.com/books/

All in all, we had a fun week learning about parents, grandparents and great grandparents!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.