No Rules Pinewood Derby

Looking for a ward activity idea? Or one for multiple families? Try a No Rules Pinewood Derby!

 We’ve done this at church for the past three years and it’s been hit every time. The ward budget covers the cost of the car kits and families sign up for one. Then, anything goes! They can choose to use all or none of the pieces in the kit and add their own twist because there’s NO WEIGH IN.
What about how much time it takes for every car to race every car? We don’t do that. What a relief right? I’ll talk about that in a sec.
But first here’s some answers to FAQ:

Can you add all the weight you want? Yes.
Can you build it out of all metal? Yes.
Can you roll a brick down the ramp??? Yes! as long as it doesn’t damage the track or impede an opponents car. (We had a family do this.)
Can you put a remote controlled engine on it? Yes!
There are only a few rules necessary which I’ve outlined below.

HOW PLAY WORKS
You will find that you’ll need two categories:
1. Gravity driven cars.
2. Power driven cars.
(It’s more fun and fair this way.)
Save the power driven car races for last. They can be the most exciting and it’s fun to end with a grand finale.

Have each team pick a name for their car, write it down on a piece of paper and enter it into the appropriate category. We had a bowl for each category.

Next your MC (pick someone who’s funny and isn’t shy) will take the Gravity Driven bowl and draw three names at random and call them out. We were in a church gym so a microphone was very helpful.

After those three cars, the MC draws three more names. Keep play going until the bowl is empty.
Then, throw all the names back in again, mix it up and start over. About three rounds of this is perfect.

After doing this for both categories the fun gets ramped up even more.
NEXT have the MC open up the floor to callouts. Players get to call out any other cars they want to race. This goes on until the evening is over.

We’ve had NO TEARS, and no complaints over fairness etc. This NEVER feels like a serious competition and there are no prizes. We’re all there for the fun. So if you have bad childhood memories of your pinewood derbys...no worries! This is nothing like it!

SUGGESTED
Include a potluck or treats. We had a tailgate themed potluck one year and a fourth of July breakfast another year.

The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE this activity. The adults get a kick out of it too. I like it because it’s so inclusive. Families with kids, singles, and couples without children all have fun. And I always enjoy seeing what everybody has built and “oohing, and ahhhing” over all their hard work. Each year the cars get more creative as people see what’s possible.

If you choose to do this, have fun!

The Towel: A Small Budget Relief Society Gift

This was a thoughtful gift handed out to the women at church for Mother’s Day and I’ve also seen it done with a Christmas towel / theme as well. It’s an idea worth sharing since it’s simple and costs very little.

Copy and paste the thoughtful words below into a document with a graphic of your choosing. (I can’t give you the one seen here because the rights to the illustration don’t belong to me.) This was printed on half of an 8.5 x 11 sheet. And tied up neatly with the towel.

"At first glance it is easy to look at a towel as a most ordinary object. Have you ever stopped to think that for thousands of years, the towel has been used for many wonderful purposes? For example, the mother who wipes the tears of a child, the physician who binds the wounds of a patient, or the woman in her home wiping her hands as she moves from task to task.

Perhaps the most significant use of the towel happened over two thousand years ago when our Savior, only hours before He hung on the cross, took an ordinary towel in His loving hands and dried the feet of His disciples. This simple, loving act personifies the selflessness and loving service we seek to give during our lives. It illustrates that an ordinary thing like a towel, in the right hands, and with a giving heart, can lighten another’s load. As with every action performed by the Savior on this Earth, His act of service reminds us that simple day-to-day-kindnesses are the Savior’s way to bless and comfort.

This towel is given with love and with the hope you will do works of goodness with it as the Savior did so many years ago."

Note: This thought has been shared so often online, I can’t find the original author. If you know who it is, please notify me, I’d like to give proper credit.

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.

Mountain Man Surprise Birthday Party

A girl I know accomplished an amazing feat—she put on a surprise themed Mountain Man party for her husband in her home! (I'm not talking about me.) She used cash and was able to hide the decorations and evidence of food preparations from him. Isn't that amazing!?

She borrowed a few animals for the walls, found animal figurines at the secondhand store, and purchased cheap plaid to create a fun backdrop for photos. I'm withholding some photos here (okay, I'll show one at the end)—but you can imagine some of the pictures we got after most of the group left.

Around the room you could find mountain men photos like this. She just searched the internet for the images.

Of course prizes HAD to be deer and moose droppings (peanut chocolate clusters).

She served cornbread in a skillet and soda in old fashioned bottles.

Chili was on the menu, with some trail mix and berries.

I hope you consider throwing a party like this. It was a total hit. 

Okay, okay…I'll show a little teaser of the photoshoot. I begged my hubby to put on my costume vest. This is what he did, and then I couldn't help it, I later added Dr. Pepper to the image. There are about a thousand great captions for that photo….

Fa la la!

Went a little crazy this year and hand made ALL my Christmas wrapping. I used some Higgins® Black Magic® Ink (watered down for a gray color) and Ikea Måla paper (from a roll) and started scribing with a paintbrush Fa la la on long swaths of the paper.

I was just going to wrap with it, but then there was enough left from which to make gift bags. (As seen on the left.) I made TWELVE of them. TWELVE. A little crazy maybe should be changed to a lot crazy.

And THEN I was having so much fun I scribbled MORE Fa la la's on some black paper with watered down white paint, to make boxes to hold some decidedly DELICIOUS and addictive Nutella truffles with Frangelico from MyBakingAddiction. 

Using eyelets in the lid, I strung black ribbon through it to create a loop pull. It made the perfect little container for the truffles. What a great presentation. I used this tutorial to make the boxes—which I love because this method doesn't leave any crease marks in visible areas of the box.

(There's some yummy cranberry orange bread from here  wrapped up in the photo below.) Isn't everything so lovely?

Now, you can go make your own wrapping paper!

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.

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