YW in Excellence

We had our annual Young Women in Excellence night last Wednesday; that's a night we have once a year towards the end of the year when the young women get to display, explain, etc. a 10-hour Value Project they have done this year. We had quite a variety of projects displayed; it was fun night. Definitely fun to decorate for! We had a theme of "Soaring with Eagles" based on a scripture in Isaiah that says "and they shall mount up with wings as eagles" which Elder Uchtdorf quoted recently in a talk, I think at the YW General Broadcast. Anyway our ward YW has had a "bird" theme all year so we closed out the year at YW in Excellence with eagles.

The set up took us about four hours but it was fun. We covered all the walls (front & sides) of the church gym with blue plastic tablecloth roll, and had clouds cut from white butcher paper, mountains cut from brown plastic tablecloth, and the yellow sun was a slightly-trimmed yellow plastic tablecloth round.

On the front wall on the right side we projected a video called "Flying over Arizona" (or something like that) which is all video shot from helicopters & small planes, showing different places around AZ. It was only about a 20-minute video but we just kept it playing & repeating the whole time (no audio). The idea behind the decor is that we're flying :) A fun touch is the eagle's nest we set up on top of the cleverly-disguised basketball hoop.

At the front of the room we had this awesome bronze eagle that I borrowed from my dad; he's had it sitting on the desk in his office for at least 20 years. That thing is HEAVY! But it was a nice touch and we displayed the quote from Elder Uchtdorf next to it.

The refreshments were also fun to plan (and execute). We had these cupcakes... I used some blue food spray that I had leftover from making this cake, and I held a cloud-shaped piece of paper taped onto a toothpick over each cupcake while I sprayed it. Turned out to look like a mottled mess but I guess you could tell they're supposed to look sky-ish.

My friend Julie, our YW President, made these cute blue Jell-Os with cool-whip clouds suspended in them. They were a big hit; I guess everyone likes Jell-O!

I made these little "nests" -- they're just Rice Krispie treats made with Cocoa Krispies. Super easy! Molded in muffin tins... and filled with little egg-ish candies I found at Party City.

We had several round tables in the back of the room with the girls' pictures displayed; Julie had taken each girl's picture against a green screen and then changed the background to sky. Nice touch! We had blue plastic tablecloth on the rounds with a big white cloud on each.

Here's our girls! Almost all of them were there.

Oh also, we had a table set up in the back of the room which was a hair-feather station; the girls could each get a hair feather if they wanted to, and that was a fun little activity during the beginning while everyone was getting their stuff set up for display, and parents were sitting and watching the Flying Over AZ video. It turned out to be a great night! Working with the YW is fun; it's been almost a year that I've been in there now and I finally feel I'm *starting* to get used to it.