YW -new Church online resource!

I was looking through the Ensign (church magazine) and in the back it had this article:

Church Preparing Online Resources for Youth Activities

In an effort to strengthen Latter-day Saint young men and young women worldwide, the Church is preparing an online resource for youth activities. The new youth activities section of LDS.org is being developed to help youth leaders and their adult advisers plan meaningful activities for Aaronic Priesthood quorums and Young Women classes in stakes and wards throughout the Church.

The site is intended to support the Church’s ongoing emphasis on strengthening youth, which was highlighted by the recent changes to age requirements for full-time missionary service, the new youth learning resource Come, Follow Me, and invitations for youth to participate in family history.

How exciting!  One of the struggles has always been coming up with creative activities to be meaningful for the youth, especially if the youth are being the leaders.  They sometimes are inexperienced with planning and have a hard time.  And this will help us tie in the lessons from Sunday.  Great!  I'm so looking forward to the help!

YW 2013 theme poster and wood block activity

This is a handout that I made for the Young Women using the youth theme for the year.

I wanted to signify that standing in holy places meant anywhere you are can be

a holy place.  So I went to the Church's site to see what they were doing.

This is their poster.

I love that she is in the wilderness which could signify the world but standing firmly on a rock, which I interpret to be Christ, our rock.  And she is looking up to her Heavenly Father for inspiration with a face of hope.  The other leaders and I agreed that this was a perfect expression of

how we saw the theme for the year.  

The issue was then to make it into a printable that would fit on a wood block

so that the girls could add it to their block from last year's theme (see here what we did).

So I did a little Photoshop magic and just used the graphic of the girl. Mine seems very similar to the Church's.  I used the same colors, just different lettering.

It's formatted for 6x7.5" to fit a 2x6 piece of wood.  The height is exact but the sides wrap around a little.

I cut and sanded the wood (next time I'll have Lowe's cut it for me.  My saw gave out towards the end).

The girls painted the wood then Modge Podged the handout to the wood.

We cut ribbon in the Personal Progress colors, tied a knot and hot glued to the front.

Some of the girls looked through my ribbon and found a rainbow ribbon to use instead.

We are also using this to put on the front of our binders for us and the girls.

You are welcome to use this for Church or personal use.

Simple Centerpiece--Young Women made it for the Christmas party

 Something to look forward to every year is our Church Christmas party.

I posted yesterday a couple of pictures of the festivities but today is about some of the

work that was put into it.  In our church everybody contributes.  

This year the Young Men and Young Women (teenagers) were given decorations.

So the Young Men took the walls and the Young Women took the tables.

Even though we have 5 talented women who could do it all, we wanted the girls to take part in the planning and doing.  We also needed to complete it in an hour's time since that is the time allotted to us on Wednesday nights. 

Pinterest to the rescue! 

(Go here to find other holiday ideas on my pin board.  I love the cupcake liner and pine cone trees)

I found these two adorable options for the girls to choose from.

inspiration picture from here

Loved these trees from Making Lemonade.  Click on her link and you'll
find the tutorial

 Although the 3-D trees were my favorite, it's probably wise that the girls chose the cone trees since our time was limited and we needed to do enough trees for 20 tables!

First I bought a couple packs of Christmas scrapbook paper at Michael's.

Next, I searched for a pattern but couldn't find one.  I did find a site where a woman makes a party out of making poster board trees with her friends for Christmas.  They decorate them with fabric and trimmings. Really cute!  The only problem is that she wanted to sell her pattern which was not on my church budget and her trees were too big for our purposes. But I found a site today with a free pattern at The Creativity Exchange. They're not just for Christmas! But for my project I thought, I'm crafty, why not figure it out myself.  After studying the pictures a little, 

this is what I came up with, a string and a pencil.

Geometry,who said we wouldn't ever use high school math?!

Esther is my model.

 I cut enough trees for there to be three different size trees at each table.

It was good that I cut them ahead of time because the stiff scrapbook paper proved difficult for the

Young Women to handle.  It took them a while to figure it out.

We quickly realized that double sided tape wasn't strong enough.

We started stapling the bottom seam then hot glueing the rest of the seam closed.

It was interesting to see that even though I cut all the same shape, when the girls put them together, they all came out different sizes.

Then we arranged three to a table, sprinkles a little snow and a few candy kisses.

We ended up with fewer tables, so our extra trees looked nice on top of the piano.

We even used them in our classroom the next day at church.

What I would change:

1. use fluffy snow instead of the confetti to make the centerpiece fuller

2. I wish we had taken the time to trim the bottom of the trees so they were flat on the table

3.  It would have been really cute if we had put stars on top or even a pom-pom

What I liked:

1.  Simple

2.  Fast

3.  Easy

4. Cheap: $15 for paper, $3 snow, $4 kisses

4.  It made the impact we wanted

This would be a great idea for little kids to do for the family dinner table too.  Give them some trimmings, glitter, glue and whatever else you desire.

Sweating with the youth

Mutual (youth) tonight was a conditioning hike for our upcoming pioneer trek in June.

Is that not a beautiful view? 

Sure makes breathing heavy and sweating a little more worth-while. 

YW Arise & Shine activity

I love this year's theme for the youth of our church.

"Arise and shine that thy light may be a standard for the nations"

The imagery is so inspiring.  So much so that I really wanted to

make an impact with the girls by taking one of our activity nights to introduce it.

I found the program on the blog The Three Sweet Peas and tweaked it for our group.

The girls came into a dark room with little flashlights.

We slowly (kind of) turned lamps on with their flashlights to show how each light adds

to the others and brightens the room.  But even one small light can dispel the darkness.

The youth have great opportunities to share their light with their peers through small

everyday acts of kindness.  Their love of the Savior will shine through and influence others.

There was a short video that I couldn't get to work, so I just bore my testimony.

I think they got the point.

I knew the program wouldn't take all the time, so I came up with something that the girls

could make and take home.  

Here it is! 

Most of the picture was designed by Dianne Rigdon Design at Two Peas in a bucket

but the words are mine.  I chose this backdrop for the words because it was so cheerful.

Below is the image that is sized for 6x6 inches.  You are welcome to use it any way you'd like.  If you do the blocks,  I would suggest playing around with the size before you start cutting your wood.

Below are the instructions

My wood is 1.5x7".  I just bought it in the lumber section of the hardware store.  

I measured and cut at 5.75".  It gave me about 12 blocks.

Sand your wood and smooth the edges.

Make sure you cut your corners of your picture so the paper will have square edges after being glued down.  Cover one side of your block with a layer of Mod Podge (glue), then center your picture, place it down on the block and smooth out bumps.

Now turn your block over and put Mod Podge on the sides.  Fold the sides of the paper over making sure everything is smooth.  I chose to paint at this point instead of before, so that I could kind of blend the paint into the colors of the paper.  Once your paper is secure, and your paint is dry, turn it back over and paint the Mod Podge on top of the paper to seal it and give it a nice sheen.

Once it is dry, just glue a flower or whatever your heart desires onto your block.  Below are a couple that were finished by the girls.  Some of them didn't use the yellow paint.  Also, be careful not to brush the picture for too long or the colors will smear.  You can see it in the lower block a little.  The girls got to talking and just kept brushing on the glue.  

It was really inexpensive and the girls had fun.  We served sun cupcakes (so cute, but candy corn was hard to find so we used jelly beans) and some lemonade.

It was a good night.