There's No Place Like Home...



 I had the giddy fun and pleasure of creating lots of magical things for our Wizard of Oz themed New Beginnings that we hosted in February. Some of the fun items I got to create were:

- The Invitations (see above)
-A poem that went along with our theme I digi-scrapped and printed off
-Cupcake Circles (These are addictive to make! See example at bottom of post)
-Custom OZ character pictures
-Food labels (I love coming up with creative food name labels)
-The program for the evening
-Custom name labels circles
-Lettering to go on our 'brick road'
-Cute Country paper banners 
-Magic...  :)



This was our vision of what we started calling the "Chic Country OZ!"

 The program started with me introducing our theme and why we chose Wizard of Oz. I talked about how Dorothy represented all the girls on their own "journey" through Young Women's and how Christ has sent them people in their lives to help them along their way "home." Just as Glenda (the good witch) gave Dorothy the Ruby Slippers and a kiss to start her off right on her journey, each Young Woman has Personal Progress and us as leaders to do the same. 

Then, the next leader who talked represented the LION and talked about the COURAGE it takes to be in YW's, to represent the morals we believe in and to complete personal progress. The next leader represented the SCARECROW and discussed the KNOWLEDGE you gain while being in YW's and working through personal progress. She then walked us through an online demonstration of the new Personal Progress Online!  It was perfect!

The last leader who spoke represented the TIN MAN and represented the love and HEART we have as women in the program. We used this opportunity to introduce the new Beehives and show a short slide show of some of the wonderful things we did together last year set to the song, "Somewhere over the Rainbow" sung by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and his ukulele. (You may remember this song being played at the end of the movie "50 First Dates" with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.)

It was so fun to revisit memory lane and see the girls who will be coming in this year get so excited!

Mission Accomplished.

***



The food table





*My Inspiration*



Leslie (our YW president) made this amazing ruby slippers filled with Glenda the good witch's "gummy kisses" to give each of our Young Women to take home. She found the idea HERE at on of my favorite blogs Skip to my Lou





Here are one of the 10 different cupcake circles I created...I got a little carried away!




  



Seeing these beautiful Red Velvet Cupcake in every ones hand at the end of the evening made me smile... :)



Can I just say one more time how much I LOVE my Young Women...I can think of no better calling in the Church then the one I'm in right now. I'm so thankful for the girls in my ward and for the leaders I get to work with and I can't wait to see what other big ideas we will surely come up with next!