Light The World for Yout

Light The World starts tomorrow, and I have been working all week on this Light The World Packet for Youth. I originally had thought to do just a couple of things to encourage my Young Women to participate. Then as I started creating, it just kind of took on a life of it's own.

When I started working on this there wasn't a program specifically for youth, and serving with and having my own youth, I decided it was a must. 

I am really happy with how this turned out and I really hope and wish that this packet is helpful to other parents, youth leaders, and youth themselves. I hope you will share it and use it.

Here is what the packet includes:

Light the World Calendar

Idea Sheet (Several ideas for each day.)

Scripture Cards

Printables (Coordinate with the stars on the idea sheet.)

                 - DIY Ornament

                 - Set of tags

                 - Sunshine Notes

                 - Memories of Mom and Dad

Here are a few sneak peeks--

I know it is the day before and some of you might see this after Light The World has already started. The good news is that you can start at any time.

Parents: You can download and print one set and go over it with your youth. Print tags, scripture cards, and calendar on cardstock. The rest can be printed on regular paper.

Leaders: You can download, print, and make copies. Same printing instructions as above. Assemble all the pieces in gallon resealable bags. Explain to the youth how to use it. You can even do several of the activities on the days they fall on youth nights.

I really hope you enjoy this and that it helps your youth get excited about this AMAZING way to celebrate Christmas.

Download Packet Here

New Beginnings: Donut Forget Personal Progress

Donuts are always a good idea. ALWAYS.

I recently used my love of donuts as a theme for New Beginnings for my church girls. New Beginnings focuses on Personal Progress. I had seen an idea while perusing pinterest using donuts, but for Young Women in Excellence. I loved the idea of using the play on word of donut with "don't". So away I went planning.

Once I had the idea of using donuts as the theme the rest came together really easily. I used the donuts as decorations and in the talk I gave about personal progress.

We chose bright and fun colors for the evening. We started by handing out these invites, which I made using PicMonkey. You might notice that the nights tag line is different on the invites then it was on the chalkboard for that night. Basically, I just remembered wrong. HA.  Either way, the tag line works. And I don't think anyone noticed my faux pas. While these invites are adorable, they weren't the best part.

The real show stopper was the peg wall of donuts in the value colors. Can you say dreamy much?

The idea of a peg wall of donuts is not a new one. Pinterest is full of images of peg wall donuts. However, since it was New Beginnings I figured donuts in the value colors were a must. We worked with a local bakery, and they NAILED the colors. The wall of donuts was not only decorations, but it was also part of the dessert for the night (and breakfast for my boys the next morning). The first donuts to go were understandably the gold ones.

Aren't those shimmery, metallic gold donuts magical? The bakery glazed them in a golden yellow and then brushed on the gold powder.

Before I get to what we did for the program let me talk about the other donut details. I put donuts on the straws for the milk we served.

I also made two donut cakes. The donut-shaped pan made it a breeze. I used a boxed vanilla cake mix. I frosted it with buttercream frosting and used homemade marshmallow fondant for the "icing".

I copied the image of the donut from the invitation to the cake and the paper donuts used as decorations.

Now, for the program.

We started with an explanation of personal progress from our secretary (also over personal progress). She read from the personal progress book and shared why we do personal progress.

Next I talked about personal progress in reference to making donuts. The theme was Sweet is the Reward of personal progress. We compared the sweet reward of making donuts and doing personal progress. I used a recipe that had eight ingredients and gave each ingredient a value.

Milk---Faith
Sugar---Divine Nature
Yeast---Individual Worth
Butter---Knowledge
Eggs--Choice and Accountability
Flour---Good Works
Salt---Integrity
Glaze--Virtue

I had eight Value Bakers. They each had pre-assigned parts and little half aprons that I made from fabric the color of each value. I talked about just as donuts need specific ingredients to turn out, there are specific attributes, characteristics, and principles that we should develop to help us achieve the sweetest reward, eternal life.

Here are the parts I handed to the girls. I printed them out, cut them into strips and then gave them to eight different girls.

Download HERE

We "made" donuts. I called up each value baker one at a time. Prior I printed out clip art pictures of each ingredient and cut them out. I had already given each value her coordinating "ingredient". I would call up the ingredient and the value baker would come up with the picture of her ingredient. She put the ingredient in a bowl I had and then said her part.

After each value, I talked about the importance of that specific value. You could also have girls share and experience with that value. After the whole donut theme and that donut wall, these little value baker aprons were my favorite.

Especially since they were on some of my beautiful girls.

This night was so fun, and relatively easy (setting aside the sewing of the aprons and the making of the donut wall). I certainly hope that my girls donut forget about personal progress and that you donut forget about this idea the next time you are planning a New Beginnings.

2017 LDS Youth Theme Posters

With the new year, comes a new spiritual theme for LDS Youth. The 2017 LDS youth theme for this year is the scripture James 1:5-6.

I work with some amazing young ladies, so I get to learn and work on the theme each year. Every year the theme is based on a scripture. For the whole year we spend time memorizing and focusing on activities that represent this theme.

So to start the year off right, I am teaching a lesson about asking and praying to your Father in Heaven for answers. I made the above poster to help with the memorization of the full scripture reference. I also made a simplified poster inspired by this moving VIDEO  introducing the theme.

I am really excited about this theme and the reminder it is that we are children of a loving Heavenly Father who wants to hear from us. He wants to know our questions. He wants to answer us. He is there for us.

Both of these printables can be downloaded as posters. I will only be printing off the full scripture as a poster. I will be using the simplified image as cards that they can put in their scriptures, hang up in a locker, or put on their mirror.

I put together a printable with this smaller option. I suggest printing them on cardstock.

Download 2017 Youth Theme Poster HERE
Download 2017 Youth Theme Simple Poster HERE
Download 2017 Youth Theme Simple cards HERE

Happy New Year. I hope you find these printable useful and that they help inspire your youth.

UPlifting Evening Invitation: YWIE

I said this post was coming, but I fibbed a little about how soon I was going to have it up. I may have said tomorrow when I meant in a week...hehehe.

I shared my UPlifting YWIE last week. This is the invitation I made to go out for it. Today I am going to show how you can customize this invitation for your own event.

I also am showing how I like to package up my invites. One of my favorite ways to hand out invites is using these sweet patterned goodie bags. I bought mine at Zurchers.

I always have some cute washi tape on hand and I use it to close up the baggy envelopes.

I print out invites on card stock because it holds up better.

Now they are all ready to hand out.

Here is the blank invite image that I made using PicMonkey.

If you liked the idea of an UPlifting YWIE and want to have an UPlifting evening of your own, you can use this image for invites for your event.

You need to right click and save the image onto your computer.

I use PicMonkey for the majority of my photo editing and image creating. I highly recommend using it for all of your projects. The basic edits are free, but the Royale membership is pretty cheap and totally worth it and you have access to even more.

Once you download the jpeg for this invite, you can head over to PicMonkey to customize it. On the main page you choose the edit function and then open your photo.

The photo opened in the program will look like this.

Click on the Tt to open the fonts. I used Lato for the ward name, the "please join us on" and the place, time, and the "for an". I had the font at size 100. I showed below about where I moved all the words to.

Next I used the font Coffeebreak. This font is a Royale font only available if you have the membership. However, there are lots of fun script fonts that are free. I used this font for the year, the title "Young Women in Excellence", the date, and later the "lifting" part of UPlifting. The font size was 213.

Next I used Arial Black for UP. I changed the font color to white and I made the size a lot bigger.

Now I went back to coffeebreak and I added the "lifting" in white. Last I went back to Lato, kept it in all caps and typed out EVENING.

So that is the easy peasy way to customize your own invites using this background and PicMonkey. Using PicMonkey is addicting and can make invites, hand outs, and posters so cute.

Hope this simple how-to was helpful.

An UPlifting evening: YWIE

A lot of you who have been around for awhile know that I serve with the young women in my church. For the majority of my adult life, I have been lucky enough to serve in this organization. Young Women's is pretty much my favorite place to be.

Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by such awesomeness all the time? Between the girls themselves and the other women I serve with I am pretty much the luckiest gal ever.

Twice a year we hold larger than normal activities. At the end of the year we hold an night called Young Women in Excellence. We have a special evening geared around a spiritual theme and we allow the girls to display something they have accomplished during the year.

Our theme this year was "Be UPlifting". We of course used the Disney Movie UP as part of our theme. Hence the mini UP house at the beginning of the post.

We decorated the room with lots of color. Colors that we pulled from the UP house and from this poster that I made (of course using PicMonkey). That banner is made from paper goodie bags I bought at Zurchers. I just bought a variety and then sewed them all together. I ended up getting two big banners out of four packages of bags.

For our program we watched a really powerful video about serving called LIFT. If you haven't seen this video yet, I think you should. It has such a great message.

Then we had a guest speaker talk all about how we can uplift others through service and through our example. We were so lucky to have our speaker. She is such a great example of this principle and I am glad the girls were able to learn from her.

After the program, we had refreshments and walked around the room to look at all of the girls' displays.

This UP house was quite the hit. I am gonna be honest, it was SO much fun to make. I was a bit of a nerd about it. Making this house really was a labor of love.

I used images of the house I found on the internet to construct the frame of the house. I constructed the house out of foam board and hot glue. Needless to say I severely altered my fingerprints by the end.

I covered the exterior of the house with paper. Lots and lots and LOTS of paper. I went through a lot of glue sticks, of both the regular and hot glue variety. I cut strips, punched out circles, and made windows all of paper.

Then of course, I added balloons.

The house isn't to scale and it is missing a few key items (like the front railing and the hose). However, I still love it.

We also found these really cute colorful sodas at Zurchers. They totally reminded me of the soda cap pin that Ellie gives Carl in the movie.

We had such a great evening. I love my girls and I love being in Young Women's.

Like I said earlier, I made this poster as a decoration. I ended up using this background for a lot of things. I used it for the invites and for the programs as well. I just omitted the words on this poster so that I could add the information for the invites and the programs.

I wanted to make this poster available for anyone who wanted to use it. So here it is. You can right click on the image and save it as jpeg. I find as a jpeg it prints better as a photo. I printed mine off as a poster at a local store and I was really happy with it.

I hope you find this idea useful. At the very least I hope you love this poster and can find a place to hang it. Thanks everyone for reading!

Stop by tomorrow for details on how I made the invites for this night.

Young Women's Monthly Newsletter Template

For me, pretty much like everyone else, the new year incites a desire to be a little more organized. Or at least to be a little more on the ball. I am currently serving in my church with the youth. I love these girls and I love serving with them. I have served in Young Women's the majority of my adult life. You would think with all the time I have spent serving in this capacity I would always be prepared and on the ball.

False.

One of the things I have always been less than stellar at is providing a monthly calendar for the youth and their parents. This time around instead of a calendar I decided it would be more fun for me to make a newsletter each month. I found a really cute newsletter at Hanging the Ribbon on the Moon. I wanted to make a few design tweaks, so I made my own YW Newsletter Template using Picmonkey.

The template is really easy to customize in Picmonkey. Picmonkey is a free online photo editing program. I tend to go on and on about my love for Picmonkey. If I had to list all of the projects I have used Picmonkey for, well the list would go on and this post would be ridiculously long. So basically, just know I use it for everything.

To customize this template for your own ward, first you need to click on the newsletter above. Save the jpeg to your computer.

Go to Picmonkey and go to the Edit option at the top. Open the newsletter jpeg.

This is what it will look like-

Go to the "T" which is for text.

You can pick whatever texts you want to add in the information. I would suggest using the coordinating fonts, Futura Medium, Geo Sans Light, and Thirsty Script Bold.

First, add in the name of your ward above the Young Women title. I used Futura Medium at size 170.

I used Geo Sans Light size 70 for the date/activity. Stretch the text box to fit the calendar space and then type in the information.

 I also put the month at the top of the calendar box (using Thirsty Script Bold, size 100).

I used Geo Sans Light for all of the rest of the information. I used separate text boxes for all of the individual areas. The font sized varied depending on how much information I needed to fit in the spaces.

I know I am not showing your an actual finished newsletter, but since my newsletter has names and information about my girls I didn't want to share that with the whole world.

Once my newsletter was all done I emailed it to all of the parents. I even got a few compliments on the cuteness of this fun newsletter. I hope you find this template useful and that your world just bursts with cute newsletters.

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YW 2015 Theme Printable

Every year the youth program for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints assigns a scriptural theme for the year. The theme is encouraged to be incorporated in each young man and young woman's life.

The Youth Theme for 2015 is "O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve Him with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." -Doctrine & Covenants 4:2

I serve with the Young Women at church and I thought it would be fun to create a few free printables of the YW 2015 Theme. This theme is not specific to just Mormons, this motto of serving God is a great moral commitment to have for anyone who is devoted to a life of serving our Heavenly Father.

I made three different color versions of the same design. There is a turquoise, coral, and mint version of the printable. To save your own copy, simply right click on the image and save to your computer as a JPEG.

I hope you enjoy and that the message resonates with you, like it does me.

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