Our Daughters Shine

We had our Young Women In Excellent night last night.  It was so fun.

Our girls are so amazing.  They are just so strong and ready to fight all that the world throws at them.  

We based the night around this year's theme, Arise and Shine Forth.

The girls wrote their testimonies and framed them.  They also made the little easel name markers out of colored tongue depressors {Hobby Lobby} for their name tags to sit on.

Here is the printable I made for the name tags.  Nothing special, but they are in the rainbow value colors {minus Gold}.  You can download it HERE for free with Dropbox.

I mentioned the mini versions of my Arise and Shine Forth craft a few days ago.   I posted the patterns and printables for that HERE.  I made up 24 of them in all the rainbow colors also.  We used three different colored blocks in the center of each table, then let the girls all pick one to take home.

We still wanted to incorporate light, as well as the colors white and gold in the centerpieces.  Hobby Lobby had their battery operated led light candles 50% off this week, but they were still like $7 a piece.  We had 8 tables to decorate, so we just couldn't swing that.   

Instead, I made these candles.  

Um...I figure either they are really neat, or really, really lame.  Either way, they didn't turn out quite like I had planned, but I do kinda like them.  I bought one landscaping beam from Lowes {$3}, 4 4-packs of the tea lights from Hobby Lobby {$3 for the four pack from Hobby Lobby 50% off}, then used paint and glue I had sitting around.  That made two candles for each table, the candles less than $1 each.

Not bad.

We set up tables around the room, one for each girl, so they could display value projects they had worked on this last year.  

How fun to see all that these busy girls have done!

Everything from music to sports...

Artwork, sewing projects, and hobbies.  I loved seeing a couple of them celebrating their school grades.  It is really hard to do well in school with so much going on.  They should be proud of good grades :0)

For the program, one of our councilors spoke about the beginning of the personal progress program.  It began as a value immersion program, where the girls totally embraced one value for several months, searching for anything that made them think of that value.

The values are:

Faith

Divine Nature

Individual Worth

Knowledge

Choice and Accountability

Good Works

Integrity

Virtue

She spoke about how each value is important and it is important to study each value in order.

In those first days, they started with Faith and would contribute any life experiences, scriptures, stories or anything they came upon or thought of that was about or developed that value.  After several months, they would start on the next value. 

 I think it is a fabulous way to utilize the Personal Progress program.  It takes it from a book of goals to just check off, to a program that teaches how to live each value.  It takes this program from an activity to do, to a way to be.  Love it!!!

 

After that, we had a parent of each girl come up one at a time and share what kind of light they are.  This is kinda an abstract way to think, but the parent's comments were so very heartfelt, many of them choked up and fighting tears as they shared how they feel about their girls.  What a fabulous night. 

You know what the crazy thing was, out of the 16+ girls we had in attendance, only one or two parents had come up with the same light source.  It just really impressed upon me how unique and amazing each girl is all by herself.

I forgot to get pictures of the refreshments when we got them out.  We did a carmel apple bar.  Basicly it consisted of cut apples, three dips{almond bark, fudge, and caramel}, then a variety of toppings from nuts to candies.

You know the craziest part of the night???

Our church looked like this!

They are adding a little space onto the side and remodeling... apparently everywhere :0)

But our program went on anyway!

Nothing could keep us from celebrating our beautiful girls.

It is such a blessing to be involved in the Young Women organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints :0)