Evening in Excellence - Keepers of His Light

A couple weeks ago we had our Evening in Excellence for the Young Women and it turned out so great! A couple girls decided they wanted to use this event as a Value Project for their personal progress so it was up to them to plan end execute the whole thing. I was a little nervous letting that all out of my control since I'm rather a control freak but I couldn't have been happier with how it turned out.

The girls decided on the theme of "Keepers of His Light" and all the decor was fall themed since we did it in October. Here are some pics!

These were the cute invitations we made. Aren't they awesome! We got the paper at Michael's and use the twine thread to tie a bow. :)

Isn't this great paper??

This is Rachel! She is one of the young women that wanted to help. She and Amber basically did everything!

This is beginning of the leaf lanterns that we made. The final product is further down the page... 

Rachel got a little hostile... ;)

This is Amber!! She amazing and did a great job helping out too. The two of them are dynamite!

So the leaf jars... We bought leaves from Micheals on a long chain and took them off. Unforntuately we have to take ALL the hard back off them and even iron them. I now have an orange spot on my ironing board. :/ Oh well. Then we used mod podge and put a thin coating on the jar. Then we waited for about 30 seconds for it to get sticky and put the very flimsy leaf on the stickiness. Then we gooped up the mod podge on the brush and put it on nice and thick making sure it went all the way through the fabric. It took a little bit of waiting and holding the edges down a little but eventually it worked! 

This is the relief society room board where the girls wrote out the program. So cute!

This is the podium table. The candle sticks belong to my mother that she's had forever and the leaves on the table are left over from the jars. You can see a few right there in front of the podium. :)

This is the food table!

Apples with a caramel apple dip and some orange slices. Word to the wise, don't cut up too many oranges... 

There were also cookies! Those are supposed to be leaves but I understand if you can't tell what they are. haha. We used a white buttercream frosting and then dyed it for the leaf design. We also dyed some sugar with food coloring and sprinkles that on it. 

This table was set for the girls to put out their projects from the year. They were so great!

These are 97 cent flowers from micheals that we put in little vases next to the podium. They were so cute!

And these are the leaf jars! We put a little electric tea light in each one to represent the light part of the evening and each girl got to take one home. Fortunately we only have 12 young women so it was easy. And totally awesome.

On a slightly more serious note, all the talks were about the Personal Progress Values and I ended the evening with a few short words. I spoke about how the Light of Christ is in all of us and we are responsible for sharing that light. President Uchtdorf spoke in conference a little while ago about light. He talked about how when you turn on a light in a room, it doesn't just create a circle around the light bulb. It fills the whole room! The light that each of these girls has can really light up a room if they let it. In the book The Mortal Messiah, Elder Bruce R McConkie said 

"Christ is the light; the gospel is the light; the plan of salvation if the light; that which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day." 

So in essence, the light of Christ is his love and the more we emulate his life, the brighter our own light grows! I'm so grateful to be part of such an amazing organization and get to serve with the young women. They are the greatest in the world and I love them to death. Their light shines so brightly and I know they're the ones that will take His light to the whole world. 

I love my Young Women!!!