"Women of Value:The Treasure Within" New Beginnings

Many months ago, (back when we were planning our "Daughter of a King" YWIE) my presidency and I stumbled upon these paintings/prints of women from the scriptures. The paintings are so beautiful that we wanted an evening that focused just on these women from the scriptures.

~PROGRAM~

"Women of Value:The Treasures Within" New Beginnings theme was born.

We decided that we would write a program that focused on the 8 different YW values and then tell the story about each of these women. That was easier said than done. I started writing the program and a writer I am not!! So after only writing the story of Hannah for the value of FAITH (4 hours=4 paragraphs)...I gave up!!

My second counselor, the LOVELY and WELL VERSED Jamie Peiper, volunteered to finish it for me. She did an AMAZING job writing a program.

With the permission of Jamie, I've attached the program for anyone else who'd like to use these paintings for their New Beginnings or YWIE. Thought we'd try to save others some time. She did such a wonderful job on it, that it really should be used again.

I began the program by talking about "earthly treasures" vs "spiritual treasures." When we gain a testimony of each value, we are literally laying up our treasures in heaven. We then had one YW read the story for each value. (so 8 YW participate) It was FAB-U-LOUS!

CLICK HERE to download a copy of the program

~DECORATIONS~

 We kept it simple...YES that's right...I did my best to keep it simple!! We really wanted to art to be the focus of the evening.

So here is a look.

We framed all the prints in large frames borrowed from our YW leaders.

Then in a smaller black frame labeled each picture with the name of the value & the name of the women.

 We bought fresh flowers in each value color and put them in a vase next to the pictures. We gave these flowers to the 11 yr. old that will be advancing into YW this year when we recognized them.

In the center of it all, we framed a beautiful picture of the temple. I found this site where you can download and print these photos of various temples.

Thank you to Mindy Evans Photography for providing this phenomenal photos to all of us who are always online looking for them :) you know you can never have too many pics of the temple when you serve in YW.

~PROGRAMS~

~DESSERT~

we served homemade cheesecake and had 8 different sauces for people to top the cheesecake with. One sauce in each value color, of course.

Our toppings we used wereFaith: White ChocolateDivine Nature: Blueberry syrupIndividual Worth: Strawberry SyrupKnowledge: KiwiChoice & Accountability: PeachGood Works: PineappleIntegrity: Blackberries

Virtue: Butterscotch

 ~HANDOUTS~

We made a small box for each YW to take home with her. We filled it with choc. treasures. 8 in each box. One wrapped in each of the value colors and labeled with the value sticker. So, so, so cute!! And CHEAP!! Less that $1 a girl. Plus, the girls always love it when the handout has something to do with food.

Good Luck to all who haven't yet done their New Beginnings program.

Hope this helps someone!!

Visiting Teacher's "Get Well" Gift

I just have to tell you that I have the most adorable Visiting Teachers. They are just both so darn cute!!

Last week, they scheduled appointments with me twice, trying to get into visit me for the month of November. Both times I had to cancel on them because the baby was sick. You see when they come, it's fun for us to visit and catch up...but they also bring their little ones and our kids have a blast playing together while we chat. Since my baby was so sick...I didn't want them to bring their kids over and spread the "love" (or germs) to their kids & families, the week before Thanksgiving.

So instead of a normal visit...they just did a quick drop by and dropped off this little goody.

 A "get well soon" basket for Hayes!! ADORABLE!!

HE LOVED IT!!!

If you know Hayes at all, you know that he is OBSESSED with any type of motor vehicle. (and OBSESSED may be an understatement). The little basket had a matchbox car, a car coloring book & some cookies...JUST FOR HAYES!!

What a great idea!!!

Thanks Necia & Kristen for being so thoughtful!! Hayes LOVED your little gift...and so did I!!

HALLOWEEN

I so, so far behind with posts!! this one will be just pics & not much writting.

Here is our food spread that we had when I had my family over for pumpkin carving the day before Halloween. The cousins had so much fun together!!!

Grammy made vampire mouths out of apples & almonds.

 I usually put strawberry jello in my skeleton heads BUT my kids have informed me that the jello was GROSS!! So this year, I used the head as salsa cups. The kids liked those much better.

Used a small pie pumpkin for our ranch dip.

Grammy brought Rice Krispie pumpkins with tootsie roll stems.

They were adorable.

Aunt Marisa made cute Halloween cupcakes as well...don't know why I didn't get a picture of those??

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!  

Daughter of a King YWIE

I have been blessed in my life to have 4 busy, busy boys. I've recently been blessed to have added 25 surrogate daughters as well. 

MOST my girls wearing their tiara's they were crowned with

Right after I was called as YW Pres. in my ward, my presidency and I started planning our YW in Excellence.  After LOTS & LOTS of prayer, we chose "Daughter of a King" as our theme. We had given a challenge to the YW at the beginning on 2011 to complete an entire value in Personal Progress. Which I am proud to say, ALL COMPLETED! (Unless they were new to our ward or new to YW).

We had each YW decorate a table about herself and the value she completed. We place those tables around the entirs culteral hall. We gave each YW a silver framed picture of the temple with her name on it to use as a nameplate for her table.
Then we had each girl present the table that evening. They ended their presentation by saying..."My name is _________________ and I'm a Daughter of God."

Talk about inspiring!!

They were then walked up to the stage (by one of the YW who has  already earned her medallion), where they sat in a HUGE throne, were crowned with a tiara (again they were crowned by a YW who's already received her medallion).  & awarded with stickers and bookmark ribbons in ALL the values they've completed while in YW.

The tiaras decorated the front of the stage

The evening turned out BEAUTIFUL!! I am blessed to work with inspired and hard working women that helped pull it all together. I'm also grateful & so humbled to be serving such an AMAZING group of YW.

Thanks to Rachel, for the pictures. I TOTALLY forgot my camera...AGAIN!!

Oh what do you do when it's conference time...

I LOVE General Conference weekend. The talks are always so uplifting and seem to be exactly what I need to hear. So what do you do while your listening to conference? I used to just lay around on the couch but then realized that made it REALLY hard to stay awake. So the last 2 years (4 conferences), I've done little projects during conference. Crafting is relaxing to me and it's the perfect way to keep my bum in one spot long enough to listen to a session.

So what did I work on...

Well I started by pulling out my Halloween decorations.

I'm in the midst of changing my living room decor so my Halloween decorations from last year that had lots of orange in them, had to be re-vamped.

So I changed everything for my living room to JUST black & white.

I re-wrapped my white candles that adorn my coffee table. I also re-cut my boys names in white vinyl to change their cauldrons that sit atop my piano. Lastly, I found a adorable free Halloween printable that I found on Eighteen25. I attached it to black card stock and just cut it to fit in the frame that ALWAYS sits on my piano.

Easy Peasy & free-sy!!

Next I made Halloween magnets for my chalkboard & my fridge.

I made them to match my fall "To-Do" list. Am I the only one who must have a different "To-Do" pad for every season??  

THEN I cut some new vinyl for my Halloween plates.

Got the idea for the skull on

House of Smiths

(her's is WAY cuter than mine. but it's not to shabby for just working with what I got!!

The bird was a free printable that I found on pinterest.

Its from a blog called bloominghomestead.

Then FINALLY

I have wanted to make a Halloween wreath for YEARS!! I've NEVER gotten around to it because I've never found anything that I liked.

This year...thanks to my new addiction *pinterest*, I found lots of cute yet spooky Halloween wreaths that I LOVED.

Here's what I came up with...

Don't know why but this year I am LOVING the crow thing??

Good luck with your Halloween Decor :)

Happy Haunting.

YW Handout "Change of Heart" Manual 3 Lesson 29

This Sunday's lesson was on having a change of heart. I really wanted to do a handout with heart shaped goodies (sugar cookies or rice crispy) but I was teaching on Fast Sunday, so that was out.

So I came up with this instead. At the end of the lesson, I asked the girls to think of things they could work on to have a "change of heart."

I gave each girl a small Chinese take out box with a great quote on it from Dallin H. Oaks.

I just happened to find these boxed when I looked through my Valentines stuff...searching for 'heart stuff' to go along with the lesson.

Inside each box were 4 hearts that my friend cut for me on her cricket (thanks holly!!).

I gave the girls a few minutes to write down 1 goal on each heart that she could work on. It turned out REALLY cute for a last minute hand out that was totally free. Best of all the girls LOVED them.

Overcoming Opposition Handout-YW manual 3 Lesson 23

Yesterday our YW lesson was on overcoming opposition.

Here is the hand out that I made for my Laurels.
CLICK HERE to download this handout

I printed up this little handout on card stock with the scripture reference of D&C 29:39

"...for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet."

Then wrapped it up in a small cellophane bag filled with Sour Patch Kids.

And tied it up with a match ribbon.

Too cute!!

"Worth of SOLES..."Board Meeting

One of the first things that I did when I recieved my new calling was plan a board meeting with our YW board. The whole presidency, (besides me) was new and most of the advisors had been in less than 6 months. I really wanted everyone to meet each other and feel comfortable in their new callings.

So stealing an ADORABLE idea from my BFF April, I put together a quick board meeting.

The Theme: "The worth of SOLES is great..."

D&C 18:10

I asked each YW leader to bring a shoe that best describes themselves so that we could get to know each other a little better.

That evening I had each of my councilors go over an important part of the YW program. One talked about the basics of the Personal Progress Program. The other talked about the importance of teaching by the spirit.

I then spoke about important things we needed to do to become great YW leaders. Using talks, quotes & scriptures, I related all the aspects of a good leader to the perfect pedicure. I gave each of the leaders a "Pedicure Menu" with all the quotes and talkes I referenced and put it inside a small bucket filled with pedicure kits.

Of course, I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE HANDOUT!! Dang, I HATE when I do that. But I do have a copy of the "Pedicure Menu" that went with each item in the bucket.

CLICK HERE to download the YW Spa Menu (2 per pg.)

The evening turned out great!! And was also fun to give each of the new leaders a cute handout.

Getting our YW Personal Progress Organized

Since I've been called as the YW President in my ward (which by the way...was a total shocker to me...but that's another story for another time). I have felt a VERY STRONG need to get our YW working on their Personal Progress. I am bound and determined to have each of my YW get their Young Women Medallions.

 Sooo...here's how we are getting started on it...

A PERSONAL PROGRESS PIE night. The girls HAD to have their PP books with them in order to get a peice of pie. Then with the help of my AMAZING 2nd councilor & Laurel class Presidency we came up with a Personal Progress folder that we had each of our YW put together that evening at mutual. We put EVERYTHING that we could think of that the YW would need to work on PP into this folder.

It was a lot of work and took a lot of time searching for items online for the folder BUT all in all, it was TOTALLY worth it!!

I am attaching a list of what we included in our PP folders for any of you who'd like to do the same for your YW. Feel free to use whatever you'd like from what we did to save yourself some time & energy.

YW FOLDER CHECKLIST:

WHITE 1" FOLDER

ZIPPER POUCH to hold

     Personal Progress book & journal

     For the Strength of the Youth Booklet

     True to the Faith Booklet

1 PLASTIC SLEEVE

     Quote from Ezra Taft Benson (front)

To DOWNLOAD the pages BELOW that were used for my YW PP folder CLICK HERE

Picture of the Temple (back)

3 WHITE TAB DIVIDERS:

Tab 1: ROSTERS/CALENDARS

Tab 2: YW ESSENTIALS

YW Theme

YW Motto & Logo

YW Classes & Symbols

The Living Christ (ordered from Distribution Center)

The Family Proclamation (ordered from Distribution Center)

13 Articles of Faith

TAB #3: PERSONAL PROGRESS

Personal Progress Tracking Sheet

Colored Cardstock Value Dividers with notebook paper between each value

(made each image in Black & white and then copied them onto cardstock in the value colorS.

To DOWNLOAD the YW value folder dividers CLICK HERE

Book of Mormon Reading Chart to go with VIRTUE.

After assembling their folders the YW scrapbooked covers for them. We just printed a couple different subway art pages that they could use on the covers and then let them decorate with whatever we had.

YW VALUES SUBWAY ART
(I didn't create either of the YW subway art below, so I don't have a link for you to download them :( SORRY!)

YW THEME SUBWAY ART

2011 MUTUAL THEME SUBWAY ART

To DOWNLOAD the 2011 Mutual Theme CLICK HERE