An Evening in Excellence Tea Party: Alice in Wonderland

Our Laurels were in charge of coming up with a theme this year. They chose Alice in Wonderland—so I went on the search for a way to tie it into personal progress and found this quote by President Monson:

Let us not find ourselves as indecisive as Alice. You will remember that she comes to a crossroads with two paths before her, each stretching onward but in opposite directions. She is confronted by the Cheshire cat, of whom Alice asks, "Which path shall I follow"
The cat answers, “That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.”⁷Unlike Alice, we all know where we want to go, and it does matter which way we go, for by choosing our path, we choose our destination.

So there we had it, personal progress helps us choose the right path! Consequently this is the topic one of our speakers used—and we also sent it out on the invitations.

We decorated with hearts, books, and teacups hung from the ceiling to make them look like they were "falling down the rabbit hole." And one of my Laurels did the flower center pieces. She purchased white roses and actually "painted the roses red" by brushing red craft paint on them.

Also signs and arrows were posted around the room pointing in all directions. (We should have had some that listed the values, oh well.)

A second speaker used a quote from the Doorknob character above.

Food was all purchased from Costco: Muffins cut in half, Madelines, Aussie bites, Crackers and cheese, and fruit drink. We borrowed the tea pots from members of the relief society who were glad to lend them to us.

The girls had a great time! One of them told me it was her favorite Young Women in Excellence so far.

I can't share the invitation graphics with you, as I purchased them from Dollar Photo Club, a stock website. But at least this can give you an idea to do your own. However, I'm including a link to PDF sheets for the decorations.

New Beginnings: Girl on Fire

Although the idea of "Girl on Fire" for a New Beginning theme isn't original I think the young women pulled it off brilliantly. One of our Laurels found the idea and did all the research for refreshment and decorating ideas. The rest of the work was delegated between the girls and leaders.
I put the invitations together using the official movie poster fonts.

The girls created fireball poofs to hang from the ceiling.

And a welcome poster….

Our Beehive advisor created the dessert table and created labels for all the food using the font from the books. I was so excited to see she'd done that!

Keeping with the color over black theme, each girl painted a value onto black poster board and explained how the value keeps her spiritual flame burning.

We used all the appropriate labels for things such as:

Values = Districts
Girls Explaining the Values = Tributes
One of our girls received her Young Woman in Excellence that night = Victor

And the songs: The Spirit of God...like a fire is burning... and The Lord is My Light.

Of course there were speakers, a skit, and some teaching involved so everyone got to do something.

The skit was made up by the girls and was hilarious. The prompt was "Show us what Personal Progress is and how it works." So their skit included introducing PP to a classmate, carrying out a service project with her—raking leaves—and then going to a leader (played by a girl of course) to get it checked off in their books. We let the girls practice the skit a week beforehand—I'm glad because we got a lot of blank faces at first LOL.

It was a great evening…the Stake YW Leaders were there and couldn't stop their praising.  I LOVE that it was all headed up and started with one of the young women. I enjoy seeing what they want to do and the pleasure (and pride) on their faces when it all turns out.

I'm sorry, I do not have a template of the invitation to share at this time. (I think I deleted it by accident ugh.) But here's a .png torch file. Click on it to open it full size, then right click to download it. Note, this is the official logo for the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has been modified to fit this theme.

Olympic New Beginnings

The Winter Olympics are here again! What better theme for a New Beginnings? You can talk about going for gold—setting goals and accomplishing them. Have your girls march down the red carpet isle with their flag and introduce each theme. Give out awards and use lots of gold and silver everywhere...and golly—you could even fashion an Olympic torch out of the Young Women's logo.

Decorating Ideas:
During mutual have the girls cut out the Olympic rings and a whole TON of snowflakes.
Print off the invitations and help the girls assemble them as well.

Make winter cupcakes for refreshments. Don't forget the gold wrapper.

This cupcake display is just three boxes wrapped in white with ribbons wrapped around each one and then stacked. Brilliant!

Are you ready to know how we did some of this? Let's start with the flags. I'm sure you've heard of freezer paper stenciling by now? Print each value on the paper and then cut them out with an Exacto knife. Iron them onto the fabric and stencil them in.

The flags were 1/2 yard each. I made a casing on the side of each one which slipped easily over a wooden dowel. The flags stayed on nicely—and are removable for washing or if someone wants to hang them instead without the dowels (which we did the next year for a Royal Theme...you know, flags hanging in the "great hall"....)

Drill the appropriate size holes in a 2 x 4 and the dowels will stick in the display and show nicely. These flags have been used for various occasions, even the Stake has been using them. So they are worth the time investment.

Next up: Snowflakes.

Print up a snowflake pattern you like. Tape the papers onto something flat and moveable. Then tape wax paper over that. 

Next whip up a batch of Royal icing and trace over the snowflakes. Don't forget to add a toothpick. These will take about 1-3 days to dry completely.

Lastly are the invitations.

Click Here: For blank pdf invitations. You'll have to import them into a program (like Word or Adobe Acrobat etc.) to fill in your own information and then cut them out following the crop marks.

For the ovals, once you've cut them out you'll punch two holes on either side to run the ribbon through. (We used gold and silver ribbon.)

Purchase multicolored paper. If you are holding the paper horizontally, you will want to cut a strip off the bottom so your invitation comes just to the top and bottom.

Paste the invitation in the middle and fold both flaps in. 

Punch holes in either side of the oval cut-out and thread ribbon through, tie in the back. Pass them out and you're good to go.

And now you're set! Just Google "Olympic New Beginnings" and you'll find all kinds of program content ideas.

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

Cheap Cat Ears

Whip these up in about 30 minutes. This cat ear headband was designed so our youth group could make several of them to add to care packages we are delivering to families at the Ronald McDonald House. They are VERY easy and VERY cheap, and little girls will LOVE them.

Big girls might like them too :)

Click on the Directions below and print them off.
Click on the pattern below and print it off (at full size it should be 8.5 x 11)

Note: you do not need all the ears from the pattern. Just one big ear and one small one. I've put more on a page just in case you decide to have a cat making party and want more patterns per sheet.

Supplies:
Headbands—these were under $1.00 for three at Walmart)
One sheet of black and colored felt—each under $1.00
Hot Glue
Scissors

Superheroes in Excellence

One of my Mia Maids suggested a Superhero theme for YW in Excellence this year. (She was beyond excited.) I threw together a quick outline of ideas and here's how it turned out.

We had the girls help make starburst signs for the room.

We asked each of the girls to liken her assigned value to a superhero. For example: Batman showed faith in the people of Gotham when he continued to believe they would make the right choice. As young women we show faith by ________________.

We then glued their written parts to the back of their Superhero's symbol. This way there would be a fun visual for the audience to look at.

The girls were happy to tie our value colored tablecloths around their necks as capes. Aren't they awesome for playing along?

We didn't go all out this year, but I think the decorations were perfectly acceptable!

We tried to make our treats fit the theme too. I found candy and related it to a hero in some way. Although this was fun, I don't necessarily recommend it. The candy was a bit too expensive. I would go the colorful popcorn or rice crispy route only—which we did have in conjunction with the candy.)

Below is the outline of ideas for decorating, invitations, the program etc. You will see we didn't use them all, which is totally fine. I wrote it out so there would be options to choose from. Feel free to click on the outline below (which will bring it up larger) and print it off to begin creating your own event.

Lemon Orange Wedding Cake

This cake was made for a young women's youth group activity, where we had wedding dresses for the girls to try on! So of course we had to have "wedding cake" as a refreshment.

It is a sour cream pound cake with homemade lemon/orange curd as the filling. I like using pound cake for tiered cakes...the bread holds up so well and the flavor and texture is SO good and dense. The floral decorating uses a brush embroidery technique. The cake took 5.5 hours to frost and decorate.

For more cake ideas CLICK HERE.

Campaign Trail - Vote for Young Women In Excellence

This year's Young Women in Excellence was a campaign theme; which is quite fitting: “Vote for Young Women in Excellence." The invitations went out as Voters' pins, upon which the girls added embellishments (like the ones seen below). Then we stuck a magnet to the back. As a leader I'm excited because the program is EASY, so I think you'll like it too.

Decorating should be a cinch. You can find all kinds of patriotic stuff for super cheap. (Or just borrow from your girls' parents or other members.) Our decorations came to us from a business who let us borrow them. I've included other decoration ideas in the downloads. The file is at the end of the post.

Each leader brought two dozen cupcakes, we split up the colors: red, white, and blue. I made the white ones (lemon sponge cake with lemon curd filling from scratch—SOOO good.) And then printed out these little flags and attached them to toothpicks. They looked awesome.

At the end of the program we watched a slideshow of the girls "On the Campaign Trail" which were pictures of them through out the year. This theme was so fun!

Below is an outline full of suggestions and a program for the evening. Click on them to enlarge. Actually you'll love it. The whole evening is spelled out for you. Boom. Done.) 

 

Here's a blank jpg for you to work with for the invitations if you wish, and flags for cupcakes or other such treat. Click on them to view and download.