Arise and Shine Forth New Beginnings

For our Young Women New Beginnings night this year, we decided to use the mutual theme for the year, "Arise and Shine Forth". We thought hot air balloons fit perfectly with the theme so the week before the event we had the young women help make paper hot air balloons, modifying these directions. It was simple enough that most of the girls were able to easily make them with regular scrapbook paper and glue sticks.

 

To decorate the room, we strung crochet thread across the room (from air vents and existing screws...didn't want to make holes in the walls) and just taped up crepe paper streamers at random, purposely uneven intervals and then hung the hot air balloons with Christmas ornament wires, making sure our decorations were high enough that they wouldn't choke our attendees. ;)

My awesome friend Sara, who is also one of my counselors, made up a cute banner for the front of the room. It was lovely and dressed up the space quite nicely.

The girls also cut out small balloons for the pudding filled (YUM) chocolate cupcakes we made. We taped them to long toothpicks, (I cannot remember what they are called, but they're longer than regular toothpicks and smaller than skewers) and inserted them in the cupcake "baskets" to complete the hot air balloon theme. These hot air balloon cupcake tops were really simple so about 30 girls, ages 12 - 18 could make them, but were also really cute! Mixed among the cupcakes on the cupcake stand were hot air balloon Reese's and Rolo's. Some people don't like cake, ya know.

In my rush to finish up before parents and young women arrived, my photos were taken too quickly and this one and only shot I got of the dessert table is blurry. Buuuugs me. :(

It can be difficult to make the church building looked decorated enough to truly have that payoff for all your effort, but this time, we were really wowed. It did take time, but it was simple enough that we were able to have the girls assist us and that was what was important to me.