New Beginnings 2014

(thanks to my brothers, dad, and husband for setting up the HUGE tent it was like 20 feet tall)

We had a wonderful New Beginnings this year. We went with an "Army" theme and it turned out so cute. 

The Laurels helped with our "New Recruits" (beehives entering YW in 2014). They spotlighted each girl and gave them a cute little gift. (see Below)

The Miamaids did the CUTEST skit. It was a little Army Cadence about Personal Progress. It was cute they made the whole thing up themselves. it was darling. They came marching in and ran through the tires then stood in a straight line. 

1 miamaid dressed like a drill sargeant and yelled out and the others would repeat. 

I now know and we've been told 

setting goals never gets old

I now know and it's been said (others repeat)

Personal progress is good for the head (others repeat) 

I now know and we've been told

get your medallion its worth more than gold. 

The Miamaids each memorized one of the value statements. 

They then took a step forward and repeated in an army strong voice their value

Ex. 

I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, who loves me. I have FAITH (the others would repeat FAITH in unison) in His eternal plan which centers on Jesus Christ, my Savior. 

Then the repeated the I now know cadence and marched off. 

And the Beehives made the Cutest cupcakes. They were even Camouflage and they piped on the frosting to look like grass (See Below) 

 It was a fun CHEAP event to decorate for. Just some cardboard boxes covered in paper, some ruffle fabric i had, some banners made of Paper sacks, and some Tires my mom borrowed from a local tire store!

 Our "target" for the year is to COME UNTO CHRIST. We have made 4 goals for our YW to help them.. We also talked about how each of the 8 YW values bring us closer to our Heavenly Father.
                                      
 We gave each girl a dog tag. It has the word STRENGTH and Phillipians 4:13 on it. We talked about how we all need to become stronger Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually.

We also gave each girl a folder with important papers. It had a page of important dates, a list of lessons, S.I.T (Spiritual intelligence Training: Sunday Lesson Schedule, P.L.AY (Prepare, Learn, Active Youth: Activity schedule for the year, A target of our Ward Goals, and Roster)

 We had a yummy dinner served from the "Mess Hall" it was pulled pork Sandwiches, Chips, Carrots, and Water. My mom had these old school lunch trays that were the perfect touch! (I forgot to take a picture of the food of course).

 Here are the Adorable cupcakes the Beehives made. They were even Camouflage on the inside. I LOVED them!

 Here is what we gave our new recruits. We had all the YW sign each one so that the new girls would know we are all in the same troop and are so excited for them to join us!

Here is our Program from the night 

Come Follow Me {February: Adversity}

Here are a couple handouts that can be used for February's Come Follow Me Lesson on Adversity. 

We talked about how Diamonds are made. Without Pressure/trials the rock wouldn't be a beautiful diamond. Heavenly Father sees us all as Diamonds!

I gave each girl a Ring Pop to go with their handout!

 This is a handout I made a while ago for the old lesson manuals but thought it fit this lesson well!

New Beginnings {BOOT CAMP}

This year for our New Beginnings we are having a Boot Camp theme. Here are the invites for the event. Here are the rest of the details of our night. http://alittlecrafting.blogspot.com/2014/02/new-beginnings-2014.html

Glitter Temple

Last spring I gave my YW a challenge to do a digital fast. You can see the details 

http://alittlecrafting.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-digital-fast.html

I was so excited, I had about 15 YW that followed through with the challenge!!

I forgot to post this earlier but Here is the little gift I gave those that finished

I bought a 10-pack of 8x10 canvas' from Michaels Craft store. It was $19.99  but I bought them when they were 50% off. Then just lightly traced a temple and modpodged glitter onto the canvas.

Come UNtO Christ

I introduced our YW to the 2014 theme on Sunday.

“Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness” 

I saw a cute UNO birthday handout a while ago on Sugar Doodle (See HERE)

It was the inspiration for my lesson. 

I broke the Scripture down into a few different parts to go along with the UNO cards. 

Come Unto Christ

DRAW 2-  I asked the YW what that meant, and had them give ideas on how to do that. Their answers were great!!

Be perfect in Him

WILD CARD- "Jesus Christ is the perfect example of all eight Young Women values. As you work on Personal Progress, your efforts will help you become more like Him". (Rachel Nielsen)

Deny yourself all Ungodliness

SKIP- Skip sin. "While boulders surely block our way, loose gravel slows discipleship, too. Even a small stone can become a stumbling block". (Neal A Maxwell)

REVERSE- REPENTANCE  

Draw 4- these are 4 goals I have given to my YW to accomplish this year. 

1- Memorize The Living Christ- In my previous post i have explained how we plan on doing that! 

http://alittlecrafting.blogspot.com/2014/01/memorizing-living-christ-printables.html

2- a 90-day Book of Mormon Challenge- We will all start and stop on the same day!
3- a 5K we can do Hard things. I think this will help with Unity.
4- Attending the temple (1+ as a YW group, 1+ individual classes, 2+ on their own)

So for their B-days this year we are giving them a Mini Pack of UNO cards and a UNO Card. It will be in a cute little cellophane bag with this handout! I was going to use regular UNO cards but had no idea they were like $6 each so we went with the Mini ones I found on Amazon for about $1.25 each. I think this could also be a really cute conference treat!

Memorize: The Living Christ printable part 2

Here is a 2nd set up printables for memorizing The Living Christ

memorizing, The Living Christ printables

Here is a set of printables to help memorize the Living Christ 

challenge 1: memorize the living christ

I will be introducing the theme for the year on Sunday. I have 4 goals I am challenging to my YW for the year. The first one, is to memorize The Living Christ. I will be giving the girls each this frame. It is so cute, double sided, and cheap. They are at IKEA for 99 cents! On one side it will have the 2014 YW theme. On the other side it will have the section of the Living Christ that we will be memorizing for that month. I am giving the girls 6 months (which should be plenty of time) to memorize it! I think it will be a great testimony building opportunity for the girls!

This picture shows both sides of the gift

Here is a 2014 free printable

Here is my printable for January for memorizing the Living Christ
I have made 2 different sets of cards for this. Both are pretty basic but I think will be helpful.

One is bright and colorful found http://alittlecrafting.blogspot.com/2014/01/memorizing-living-christ-printables.html

and the other set is a little more subtle

http://alittlecrafting.blogspot.com/2014/01/memorize-living-christ.html

I saw these frames as a Christmas gift on Marci Coombs Blog. and knew it would be perfect!( another idea: My SIL is giving them to her YW for their B-days).

Value Plates

We had a fun little activity with the laurels. Our lesson the previous sunday was on Spiritual gifts. For an activity We bought plates at the dollar store and on each plate wrote one of the young women values. I baked each plate at 425 for 30 minutes and let it cool overnight.  We decided to give plates to sisters in the ward that represented that value. It was so amazing to hear the Laurels decide what sisters should get certain plates. We had a list of about 5-6 sisters for each value. It was so hard to narrow it down! We wish we would have made more plates (: The YW each brought cookies to put on the plates.

 We attached a card that said
Thank you for being a great example of our Young women value : ______________
The laurels all signed the card and delivered it to the 8 sisters. I think it something we should make a yearly tradition!!

* After telling a lady in Jane's ward about the plates, they decided to do this for their NEW BEGINNINGS. They chose the sisters and then invited them to their new beginnings. They told the sisters to dress in the color of value they received. They had a Laurel tell a little about why they chose that particular sister for that value. They then had the sister talk for just a minute. I thought it was a cute idea!

Evening in Excellence

We had our Evening in Excellence this past week. It turned out Beautiful. I have some pretty amazing leaders! We couldn't do any of it without the amazing Jane.
Our theme for the evening was Stand in Holy Places: Live your life Higher. We wanted something that went well with the general YW theme as well as our ward UP theme.

 

I loved the talk by Joseph Wirthlin Journey to Higher Ground 

For my talk, I used some of his talk as well as things from Henry B Eyrings new book Choose Higher Ground 

We had it in the cultural hall, and I Loved how it turned out. I found the giant 36'' balloons and the plastic nets on amazon for $1 each. I only put these on 3 of the tables. On the other 6 tables we had pictures of different temples, and a little green & white floral arrangement

Jane painted this HUGE picture of The SLC temple. It is 11 feet by 9 feet. Most of the parents took pictures of their daughters in front of the temple. 

I had the Young Women cut out these cute lil clouds. 

We had each YW bring a few things to display. We told them it could be things they had done for Personal Progress or anything good they had been doing.  

Here is a closer look at the Hot air balloons we made

I found these aluminum bracelet cuffs on etsy for $1 each. I hand stamped them with our theme Live your life Higher. I did find a local trophy shop that would have engraved them for $5 each but that wasn't quite in our budget. It took me some time but it was worth it to me to save money!

I had 6 girls sing the song Temple Spires by Jenny Phillips. I had them sing this as our opening song. It really set the mood for the rest of the evening. It was beautiful. 

 Our program:
Opening song
Dinner
YW President talk
Video of all the girls doing good things throughout the year
Laurel Talk ( a girl that has received her medallion this year)
Bishop Remarks
Displays