Purpose Statement

MOPS Purpose Statement: MOPS International exists to encourage, equip and develop every mother of preschoolers to realize her potential as a woman, mother and leader in the name of Jesus Christ.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

June 20 - Style on a Budget



On June 20 the topic was Decorating on a Budget.

Here is the information from the Interior Decorator from the DVD (Shari) for those that wanted it again.

A Great Room -Style on a Budget
  • Tips and ideas from Interior Decorator (Shari) and Mary-Beth
  • Go shopping in your own basement – concept of re-purposing, re-using things you already have
  • Aim for a home that reflects God, creativity and beauty. One that is warm, inviting, generous and has a sense of humour not one that is tight, rigid and merely practical
  • Be responsible with how you create your home. Don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a beautiful and inviting home
  • Start with colours that you like, use paint to change or brighten a room or tie areas together
  • Work with the things you have, if have a rug you like in reds and blues use those colours
  • It is ok to mix patterns as long as you select some of the same colours to tie together
  • Take clippings out of magazines and store in a notebook to give you ideas when comes time to redecorate
  • Ok to have a theme but try not to be “too cutesy”
  • Try not to decorate with fas, saves money to stick with classics that don’t date
  • Buy seconds eg kitchen cupboards slightly chipped/damaged but can’t see
  • Focus on making things both use-able and beautiful
  • Try unusual ideas such as painting the floor in a rug pattern (stencilling)
  • Know the meaning/impact/psychology of colours. Eg red is a stimulating colour so probably not a good one to paint and entire bedroom
  • Be careful doing a child’s nursery as is expensive to have to redo again when child outgrows. Better to go for basics and aim at an older age child
  • Take something from somewhere else to use in a different room eg a side table from the hall may become a bookshelf in a child’s room
  • Look for discounted fabrics for bedding/curtains etc and things on clearance sales
  • Make small spaces feel larger by painting walls and ceilings in the same colour
  • Ensure your master bedroom is a refuge
  • Ensure you have ample storage to reduce clutter
  • Build things yourself if you can
  • Putting photos all in the same colour frame unites them
  • Use kids art – again frame in same colour frame
  • Tie rooms/area together with a continuing colour in the walls or in furnishings/curtains (eg Shari’s lounge/dining curtains same at either end of one big area
  • Signal transitions from one area to another with a different colour paint or different style of art (eg Shari’s downstairs basement area much brighter primary colours than the more natural colours upstairs)
  • Let kids gather things they love to direct their style of their room as they get older
  • Cover damaged/uneven walls with a rough finish
  • Create areas in your home around what you do eg if you read create and area for reading/books, if your kids do a lot of craft create a craft area
  • Consider the atmosphere of your home. Think how you can make your home warm, inviting, fun and beautiful.
  • If rooms/home beautiful to us/our families it doesn’t matter if others don’t agree with your style
  • Try to create a sense of order and unclutteredness – beauty refreshes
  • Don’t have to redecorate your entire house in one hit. Start with a plan for the room that most needs help or is most important
  • Creating a home involves both the relationships and the atmosphere. A good home has both rest AND play areas (the inhale and the exhale). Important to get a balance here. A home that is too formal is one where you can’t play and relax, whereas one that has toys everywhere and no refuge or respite from this mess does not allow for rest. Try to see your home as a whole and create some areas to enable/encourage play and some areas to enable/encourage rest
  • Shari’s concept that the way you decorate your home reflects your view of God. We are created in the image of the creator God. God created order and beauty and a desire and appreciation of beauty in all of us

And also the 20 tips that appeared in the newsletter.

20 Ways to Decorate Your Home with Little or No Money
Adapted from Anya Brighouse – Parenting, Issue 3 Winter 2008 (New Zealand)
1. Move furniture: move things into a different position, change the purpose of a room (lounge becomes dining room etc)
2. Winter/Summer: rugs etc for winter, bare boards summer, reposition furniture to catch the sun etc
3. Feathers: place in a vase or on the wall or frame. Can get cheaply from $2 shops or craft outlets
4. Shells: Collect from the beach or can buy cheaply, display on a table, in a bowl, vase, lamp base, make into a mobile, glue around a mirror, frame them etc. Set up as part of a ‘nature table’ as a conversation point
5. Photo walls: As big or small as you want, down an entire hallway or in your entry, create a feature wall.
6. Flowers and plants: Raid your garden, use foliage and greenery if you don’t have flowers
7. Fruit: Stack the fruit you buy in a nice bowl on the dining table or hall table. All one fruit (when cheap/in abundance) such as limes or lemons or pears can look great
8. Cushions: Re-use the same inners just update the covers. Easy to make your own covers using off cuts or material, or cheap tea towels or beach towels etc or look for cheap colourful ones to change the look of your room
9. Collections: blue and white china, glass bottles, jewellery boxes, tea cups. Cluster them together in sight not tucked away in the cupboards
10. Candles/Lighting: Very cheap, Ikea has bags of 100 or 500 tea lights for around $5. Use any safe container to display them in (vases, saucers, pot plants, teacups etc) Cluster same colour/different sizes together. Look out for cheap table lamps or floor lamps to change the look/feel of a room
11. Repetition: A row of the same thing, such as bottles with a single leaf or flower down the centre of a table or on a shelf. Can be cheap (keep and clean up San Pellegrino mineral water bottles etc)
12. Letters (alphabet): Again try $2 shops and craft outlets such as Spotlight/Lincraft. Can paint/decorate and add to a child’s bedroom door/wall. Can project on to a wall with an overhead projector and paint with a test post. Can paint on to a canvas and decorate with sequins
13. Paint: Paint a feature wall, change the colour of a room, paint an old piece of furniture to give it a new lease of life, paint a wall or section of a wall to be a chalkboard
14. Hand prints: or footprints on a canvas. One for each child or all the family on one canvas
15. Kids artwork: look for cheap frames to frame the special ones, or make your own frame out of cardboard, look for existing frames at op shops or garage sales. Replace the picture with your child’s artwork
16. Internet: search for decorating ideas, print things out to frame, find websites that help with things such as converting your digital photo to a canvas for you walls
17. Bunting: Triangle flags on a long strip basically. Quite expensive to buy from kids shops etc. Easy to make. Colourful for parties or kids room. Can be re-used or moved from room to room, placed around doorways etc.
18. Fabric pictures: photocopy fabric and frame or stretch over a canvas
19. Umbrellas: Chinese silk umbrellas, Chinese lanterns etc for wall decorations or as a lampshade or for parties/garden decoration
20. Read and collect inspiration regularly: Houses are organic and need to grow and change as your family does. If you are always keeping an eye out for new ideas then you will be prepared for transition times such as new baby, child outgrowing room etc
Posted by Michele @ The Hills are Alive at 9:57 PM Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hi to all our MOPS Mums. We would love you to leave a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Theme Scripture

Psalm 139

1 You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand — when I awake, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Annual MOPS Participation Fee

The annual MOPS Participation Fee of $10 assists MOPS Australia in covering the cost of training for Regional Coordinators to help other MOPS groups to develop around Australia. It also allows more MOPS group leaders around Australia to access regional training.

This will go a long way to helping MOPS Australia bring MOPS to more Mums around Australia.

When you register for MOPS each year, you will be handed an Annual Participation Fee form, and we ask that if you are able to pay this $10 participation fee, please do so before the end of April 2011.

The payment options are...
1. Direct Debit to MOPS Australia bank account
2. Credit card
3. Cheque payable to MOPS Australia
4. Cash to MOPS@MBC front desk

Thank you, from the MOPS@MBC team.

How did MOPS begin?

It was a Tuesday morning, at about 9.30. They each had faced spilled cereal, tangled hair, and a few had even been forced to change their outfits due to a last-minute baby throw-up on a shoulder or lap. They had driven, or pushed strollers, to the church and had dropped their little ones off in the creche. They had made it!

And now they sat, knees almost touching, in the circle of children's chairs from the Sunday school room. Hands held hot cups of tea and biscuits in utter freedom because this treat did not have to be shared with a child's sticky fingers. Mouths moved in eager, uninterrupted conversation. Eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. Hearts stirred with understanding. Needs were met.

That morning in 1973, was the first morning of MOPS, or Mothers of Preschoolers. Little was it known that from this small beginning in a church in Colorado, USA, the seeds of the MOPS concept and format had been planted. The needs of the women were met even then, through the opportunity for friendship, creative outlet and spiritual emphasis. MOPS International now charters approximately 2,500 MOPS groups in churches in the United States and 13 other countries throughout the world.

How did MOPS begin in Australia?

How did MOPS begin in Australia?

Nineteen years later and thousands of kilometres away, the same mutual need for sharing was realised by a group of mums with children under school age in Melbourne. After reading about the MOPS concept in the US, leaders introduced the program to the Clayton Church of Christ Fellowship in early 1990 and MOPS was born in Australia. From this small beginning, the seeds for future growth were planted, resulting in the formation of an affiliated body to support the ever-increasing number of Australian groups and the mums they served.

Since its formation in June 2000, MOPS Australia, Inc has grown rapidly and there are currently over 100 groups throughout Australia. In the last year alone, 35 new groups have commenced, with groups starting up regularly throughout different Christian denominations. Groups now meet in every state and territory in Australia, with an estimated ministry to approximately 2500 mums and 3000 children.

How did MOPS begin at MBC?

A Brief History of MOPS at MBC by Karen Askey-Doran (COordinator of MOPS til 2008 and currently Regional Coordinator).

In 1999, the leader of MBC’s women’s ministry caught the vision of MOPS. At that time I was a new Mum with little inclination to help; I was interested but not convicted!

Roughly a year later another meeting was held to generate interest. At this time I had another little baby girl, a 16-month-old toddler and, although I was unaware of it, Post Natal Depression. And once again people were interested but not compelled to lead.

In 2005 Holly, caught the vision of MOPS and began to sow the seeds of interest throughout the young Mums in our church. Robyn Robertson came to our first meeting and inspired us into action…the seeds Holly planted took hold!

People came slowly at first to fill the positions, it seemed there were a lot of blanks for a long time! Holly was going to be our Coordinator and when she filled out the charter she realised that a Mother of Preschoolers should really fill that role…. So she called me! Very graciously, Holly took a side step into a Mentoring role (very appropriate really).

God was moving in our midst, we had been blessed with an inspired team of 15 Mops Leaders and 9 Moppets Leaders, each one having a testimony about how God had lead them to this ministry!

I suspect that God has big plans for our group. I still feel very inadequate sometimes but I do trust God and I want to serve him and to reach out to Mums who are hurting, to support them. I want to encourage, you know, to build up… to make a difference in people’s lives, especially my children’s!

I know I’m not alone… In Romans 8:28 it says “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” He planned for my girls, my twins, my battle with PND. He planned for MOPS - at this time - in our church! The door has literally been flung open!

What happens at a MOPS meeting?

When a mum enters a MOPS meeting, she is greeted by a friendly face and escorted to MOPPETS, where her children enjoy their special part of the MOPS program. In MOPPETS, children from infancy through to school age experience a caring environment while they learn, sing, play and make crafts.

Once her children are settled, the MOPS mum joins a program tailor-made to meet her needs. She can grab something to eat and not have to share it! She can finish a sentence and not have to speak in words of two syllables!

The program typically begins with a brief lesson taught by an older mum who's been through the challenging years of mothering and who can share from her experience and from the truths taught in the Bible. Then the women move into small discussion groups where there are no "wrong answers" and each mum is free to share her joys and struggles with other mums who truly understand her feelings. In these moments, long-lasting friendships are often made on the common ground of finally being understood.

From here, the women participate in a craft or other creative activity. For mums who are often frustrated by the impossibility of completing anything in their unpredictable days, this activity is deeply satisfying. It provides a sense of accomplishment and growth for many mums.

Because mums of preschoolers themselves lead MOPS, the program also offers women a chance to develop their leadership skills and other talents. It takes organisation, creativity, and management skills to run a MOPS program successfully.

By the time they finish the MOPS meeting and pick up their children, the mums feel refreshed and better able to mother. MOPS helps them recognise that mums have needs too! And when they take the time to meet those needs, they find they are more effective in meeting the needs of their families.

Meeting the needs of Mothers of Preschoolers

The MOPS program is dedicated to meeting the needs of mothers of preschoolers. These needs have been identified by Elisa Morgan and Carol Kuykendall in their book, What Every Mum Needs:


The need for Identity: Sometimes I'm not sure who I am

The need for Growth: Sometimes I long to develop who I am

The need for Relationship: Sometimes I long to be understood

The need for Help: Sometimes I need to share the load

The need for Perspective: Sometimes I lose my focus

The need for Hope: Sometimes I wonder if there's more to life


Here's How Some Mums Describe MOPS

"MOPS means that I am able to share the joys and frustrations and insecurities of being a mum. Our meetings provide the opportunity to hear someone else say, "I was up all night," or "They're driving me crazy!"

MOPS mum, Perth

"As a single mum, this is the first group I've felt accepted in for who I am."

MOPS mum, Canberra

'On my first day at MOPS, I knew my life had changed forever! The women made me feel so relaxed. I had a peace I hadn't felt for a long time. They were so caring, pleasant, helpful…the list goes on! I just want to say, "Thank you MOPS!" If it weren't for MOPS, I wouldn't be where I am today.'

MOPS mum, Melbourne

'When I first started MOPS, I was very, very lonely. MOPS gave me a chance to get out of the house which I was grateful for. The talks were very informative. I found out a lot through these talks. My problems seemed to become smaller. When I first started at MOPS, I thought I was a Christian. I wasn't. Through MOPS I can now say, 'I am a Christian.' MOPS to me is not only Mothers of Pre Schoolers, but My Own Private Salvation!'

MOPS mum, Canberra