2015 YW Themed Leather Band

In Young Women this year, the theme is "O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind & strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." D&C 4:2

We decided to make a cute little leather band for each of the girls with the theme. I invited over the YW leaders to help make them, because after making one, I decided I would not be doing all 24 by myself! (lol) These are pretty labor intensive, as I was cutting the leather, punching the discs, etc. In a couple hrs, we had 8 completed, so a few more mornings and we will be done.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

2013 YW Girls Camp - "Rock Solid"

We have already had our girls camp this year. We went to Camp LoMia for the first time as a stake and the only week they had available was during Spring Break. There was a lot of questions of how the weather would be as we had a surprise snow storm the week before we were to leave!?! 

As you can see from the above picture, it really was beautiful weather, but a lot chilly & windy at night. These were our girls, minus 4th years, and 1st year YCL's. 

This is me and one of the YW counselors on the 1st year hike, which was really just a little walk. It was so pretty up there, with the river running. I am told the river is dry in the summer, though. We have on our stake tshirts. Love them. The theme was "Rock Solid" meaning, our testimony is on the fundamentals of the gospel and solid as a rock.

Such cute little first years! We call them "baby 'b's"!

And as you can see, there truly was snow still on the ground. One of the wards had a snowman they had built right by their cabin! Funny.

This is our ward tshirt that we had done for the girls. Our ward theme that we did based on the Stake theme, was "Anchored to the Rock" meaning our testimony is anchored to the Rock of our Salvation, our Savior. We did a little skit the first night there for our own girls, during our ward time, of us hiking and rock climbing. We made a kind of parody of how if we don't put the anchors in to the rock solidly, we can fall. We also talked a lot about how our faith in Jesus Christ is our anchor when the storms of life come upon us. Our faith is what will get us through. 

We made all the girls these fat quarter backpacks. They truly are simple to make and handy to use on the hikes, and carry everything to the different activities and classes all day. And it makes it easy to tell which girls belong to which ward. The link to the free pattern is here. 

We also made all the girls little journals with room for them to take notes, and journal prompts as well as quotes relating to the theme. As you can see, our assigned colors were navy & green. Our flag was just like the anchor pictured here, and we printed out the words with the banner, onto fabric and glued it on to the flag.  I wish I had a picture, but I just forgot about it!

These were our mailboxes. We saved cans for a few months, (FREE) & spray painted them ($6) and screwed them into some old wood I had laying around (FREE). Usually we use shoe organizers and put tags on each shoe pocket. Depending on the amount of girls we have, it costs anywhere from $20 to $30. So doing this, we saved some money, even though it was a bit more effort. One of the advisors put some tags on with ribbon. They did turn out cute.

One more thing we did, was put names on these water bottles that we found at the dollar store. The names were cut out of vinyl on the Silhouette. It was kind of time consuming to put all the names on, but we had 42 girls we were prepping for. Not all wards are that big. 

All in all, we are all super glad Girls Camp is over. However, it was awesome!!!

YW in Excellence 2012

We recently had our YW in Excellence program & I thought I would share some of the pictures from that night with you! Since the theme this year was "Arise & Shine Forth", we kind of brainstormed what would shine. I had a bunch of these silver stars left over from a camp craft a few years ago & immediately came to mind the song, "Like the Stars" by Jenny Phillips. I love the words she wrote:

Lyrics to “Like the Stars” 

by Jenny Phillips

The night is dark, the word is shifting

Everything is so unsure

But the stars above are always constant

Reminding us of who we are.

We were meant for higher things

And God you want us to be

Like the stars

Steadfast and unchanging

Immovable and unwavering

A strong and holy light

A sure and steady guide

When all of the world is falling apart

You want us close to where you are

Like the stars

So burn in me

True and steady

Give me strength to shine

Use my life

To light the darkness

Leading those who fall behind

It’s your design for me

And I’ll give everything to be

Like the stars

Steadfast and unchanging

Immovable and unwavering

A strong and holy light

A sure and steady guide

When all of the world is falling apart

You want us close to where you are

Like the stars

We will shine our light

We will shine our light

Like the stars

Steadfast and unchanging

Immovable and unwavering

A strong and holy light

A sure and steady guide

When all the world is falling apart

We want to be close to where you are

Like the stars

Like the stars

We printed these up on a card and as we called each girl to come up and share with their parents something they worked on that year and how it influenced their life or testimony, etc., we handed them the card and a necklace off the board below. 

Below is a picture of the podium all decorated up!

This was their "Walk of Fame", so to speak! 

At the end of the night, the girls all stood and sang, "Like the Stars" by Jenny Phillips! So beautiful!

We had wanted to have this night in a room other than the chapel so we wouldn't need to dress up too much, and the cultural hall was being used prior to our time, but that meant we wouldn't have much room to put their projects on display. So, we put them in the hall. (This probably violated the fire code, but it was only for an hour.)

 All in all, it was a good night. The girls were so cute, each adding a funny little way of expressing themselves, or sharing a testimony building story. Each girl only took about 2 minutes, so it went rather fast, and didn't make for a long night, which is always appreciated by all.