The end of January we held our annual New Beginnings. This evening is held for the purpose to introduce the YW program & Personal Progress Program to the girls who are 11 turning 12 each year. This year our theme was "TASTE THE RAINBOW & SAVOR THE BLESSINGS" We've known for a LONG time that we wanted to do a "RAINBOW" theme for this evening after getting the idea for our evening from here~ marcicoombs.blogspot.com Love that Marci Coombs and all of her FAB-U-LOUS ideas!! So we stole the idea from her and gave it our own spin. Here's what we came up with.... Here is the invite that we made for each of our YW. We tied a rainbow unicorn sucker to each one. They turned out adorable & the girls loved getting an invite with a treat to eat!! Below is a BLANK copy of the invite that you are welcome to download and use. {a look at the front of the room} Each YW value has a color...We wanted to introduce these values & Personal Progress program to the upcoming girls by talking about each value, it's color, what its color reminds us of and the blessings that we've experienced as we've worked on that value in doing the Personal Progress program. We assigned the evening's program to our YW & may I just say they did a TREMENDOUS job!! The program went like this... YW THEME-YW YW LOGO & MOTTO'S-YW CLASS MEANINGS/LOGOS-CLASS PRESIDENTS INTRODUCTION/WELCOME-YW Pres INTRODUCTION & TESTIMONY OF PP PROGRAM-Laurels Class Pres SPECIAL MUSICAL NUMBER-6 YW {2 from each class} "I walk by Faith" {there is a new version of this song that now includes 'VIRTUE' value in it} VALUE PRESENTATION-1 leader & 7 YW We had a 1 girl introduce each value. We gave them a simple script to go off of and asked them to elaborate with there experiences & testimony. The script was "Hi my name is __________________. I've been asked to present the value of FAITH. The color for FAITH is White. To me that color represents __________________. I have tasted of this value and savored in the blessings by ______________________________________________. GUESS WHO? SPOTLIGHT & INTRODUCTION OF 11 YR OLDS-2nd Councilor (we presented each of these girls with a large rainbow sucker} CLOSING REMARKS-BISHOP This beautiful frame is my friend Terri's. She let me borrow it for my wedding I did in December & since then I've kind of hijacked it. :) I've used it MULTIPLE times & just LOVE IT!! I think I may need to buy her a new one and keep this one :) The decorations were VERY easy and cheap. The back drops were created with colored crate paper streamers. The balloons we hung upside down so we didn't have to buy helium. I brought marbles to put in them before we blew them up to weigh they down but forgot to actually put them in the balloons. I would highly suggest that you DO use the marbles if you hang balloons this way. Ours hung OK, but kept sticking to each other because of static and I think the extra weight of the marble would've helped avoid that. We already had the colored table toppers in our closet. Can't get cheaper than crate paper and balloons. Side Views There were a couple things that I made new to decorate for the evening. One was the value boards. We had these in our closet BUT they were old and icky from years of use. So I gave each value board a little face lift. They needed it!! I also put together the small floral arrangements for each value color. Believe it or not..I already owned the vases (from my friend Emily's wedding I did last year) & I had ALL the flowers in my craft box, EXCEPT for the white ones & the gold (that I had to buy). But making those were pretty cheap & easy! :) In the back of the room we had the refreshment table & a candy table. The candy table was what we had for the girls as their take home for the night. Isn't this table darling. Thanks to my second councilor, JAMIE PIEPER, for putting it all together. I made the pinwheels to go over the candy table. Super easy but time consuming. They make me happy!! But if I never make another pinwheel it will be too soon. My cute secretary, RACHEL BLASER put together these buckets for the YW to put their candy in. For the refreshments...We made rainbow cupcake & rainbow jello to serve. Both were a HUGE hit with the girls!! I can't take credit for either though. One of the advisers made all the cupcakes & My mom actually made the rainbow jello cups for me. My adorable secretary also made the 2 pennant banners that we had in the value colors. We hung one on the front table & one on the refreshment table. 2 things that I'm a little OCD about are having the paper products & water bottle labels match. I know...no one else probably even notices but it's kind of a big deal to me. We've had these cute rainbow napkins in our closet just waiting to be used for over a year. Don't they go just perfectly? The whole evening went off with out a hitch!! Im grateful to all my AMAZING YW & the job they did on the program that night. Also to my AMAZING YW leaders and for their help pulling it all together. I am blessed!! UPDATE: I AM ADDING the BLANK files that we used for this. You are welcome to download and use. Just right click on the image and save it to your computer. As always, if you post these images online, please just link it back to my blog. Thanks!!