Last night we held our annual Young Women in Excellence program.
Our theme was:
Create Your Own Sunshine
The evening went off without a hitch.
Everything was perfect.
AND…we kept the actual program to under an hour. {Bonus! That’s MY kind of meeting!}
Here’s a peek at some of the details:
I find that the church gym is rather drab looking, no?
I thought that by creating some backdrops…it might help…lighten things up a tad.
As for the display of projects…we decorated those tables with burlap and mason jars covered in white lace with white flowers…some artificial, some real. All of my Young Women brought such inspiring projects that they had worked on during the past year. I was so proud of them!
Our dessert table backdrop was created from……a chalkboard! That’s right. You know those rolling chalkboard/bulletin boards that the church has? We covered it up in polka dot wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby, added a strand of lights, and wa-lah! It definitely spruced things up for us!!
As for the food…we did a dessert table which consisted of:
Cupcake recipe HERE.
Cake Pops. Lemon Bars. Butter Bars.
Butter Bars not pictured but recipe can be found HERE.
{Warning: they are incredibly addicting and quite possibly the best things I have ever tasted.}
Water Bottles Full of Sunshine.
Banner, water bottle labels, place cards and name cards all purchased as a printable package HERE.
{I especially LOVE this printable pack from etsy because it allowed me to edit everything on my own with no extra charge.}
As for take home favors for the girls:
We purchased 99 cent frames from Ikea {SCORE!} and made copies of THIS free printable at Costco.
{Thank you Kiki & Company for working with me on this!}
We’ve also started a tradition of giving each of the girls who have received their Young Womanhood medallion for that year, a framed picture of the temple that they want to get married in.
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For those of you planning a similar evening, here is some of what our program entailed:
Opening Song – Teach Me to Walk in the Light
I gave an introduction to the evening and explained why I felt inspired to choose the theme of
CREATE YOUR OWN SUNSHINE.
In a nutshell…my main point was to tell the girls to stop surrounding yourselves with bits of darkness..whether it be friends making fun of your standards, teachers, immodesty, etc. and MAKE your own Sunshine. You don’t HAVE to be in the dark. You have the power to SHINE! Don’t wait for other people or other things to bring you happiness today..encourage yourself to MAKE YOUR OWN SUNSHINE. Light is always stronger than darkness!
I also shared a few personal experiences, Matthew Chapter 5, and a few bits and pieces from THIS talk by Elaine Dalton.
All of our Beehives play some type of strings instrument and so we had them play a special musical number with different hymns about Light. It was a medley and it was incredible.
We had three of our girls who had received their medallions speak 2-3 minutes on
How completing my Personal Progress helped SHINE LIGHT into my life.
We showed 3 short clips online from Elder Bednar talking about Light.
You can access those HERE.
{If you’ve never seen them…watch them.
They are inspiring.}
We had a member of our bishopric speak about darkness and light.
And in lieu of a closing song, we showed THIS video presentation.
It’s set to the hymn “Lead Kindly Light” and includes a montage of different pictures of the Savior.
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Phew! Glad it’s over. {Smile!}
Sure feel blessed to get to be able to do what I do each week!
MY Young Women sure help ME to…
Create MY OWN Sunshine!
xoxo
We have decided to use this theme for our Y.W. in Excellence next month. Thank you so much for sharing this idea! Question… Do you have a link where I could get a copy of your invitations that you sent out for it? I am in charge of making the invitations for our's but if you have a copy already handy, that would be great! 🙂
Glad you included a disclaimer on those butter bars. Oh man! I can NOT make these anymore. I can eat half a pan, easy!
Did you buy or make the temple pictures? Can you share details? Beautiful!
My secretary found them somewhere online as a free printable and just printed them off! How great is that, right?
I think I am going to use this theme for our RS birthday party next month! Thanks!
Well done! As a new YW Pres. I am thankful for your creativity – it is already helping me… Would you mind letting me know how much you spent on everything for the evening? What if I paid you to ship all this stuff to Manti, Utah….and then returned it after????
Your blog is awesome!! I love all your creative ideas. I was having the hardest time coming up with an idea for my lesson handout this week. Lesson 36. Your handout was exactly what I was looking for. Not to sound cliche, but seriously it was an answer to my prayers. I am not even sure how I got on your website. Thanks for sharing, will be back.
Jennifer
Marci,
What did you use for chair covers?
Trying to find economical ways to dress up our gym, too!
Stephanie
Looks like it was a wonderful evening, I love the theme!
WHOA!! Marci, you did it again.
Great ideas!!
Look at you Marci. People loving your blog all over the world. So not surprised though 🙂
On another note. Saw these and thought you might likey!
http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2012/11/free-printable-christmas-tags.html
Hello!
I'm young president in my ward in Brazil, and I just LOVE your blog, so beatiful and inspiring ideas! I have mine too (in portuguese, for sure), but I was inspired many times by you for my ideas.
And this excellence was amazing! Thank you so much for sharing!
All such great ideas Marci!!
I love your blog.