Chinese Culture Night

This is Sherry.  She is from China and she is one of my student recruitment assistants.  She is so great.  I invited her over to do a Chinese culture night for a young women's activity at my house.  It was a hit!  She cooked and then shared interesting information about China.  The girls loved it - the food and the presentation.

This is cabbage and bacon and yummy Chinese spices.

Chicken wings boiled, then she put in new water, sugar, soy sauce, spicy chili sauce and let it boil down till all the liquid was gone.  These were fabulous.

 She also made tofu with spicy bean curd paste (?) and then added fresh chopped cilantro and green onions.  It was probably my favorite - it tasted so fresh.  But I didn't get a photo.  Everything she made was so good and then you would stop eating it and your mouth was a little on fire!  She is from the Sichuan area of China - spicy food!  It was a great evening. 

New Beginnings 2012

We had our New Beginnings. The theme this year is:

ARISE

 &SHINE FORTH

T H A T  T H Y  L I G H T

may be a 

STANDARD

FOR THE 

NATIONS.

So, I turned off all of the lights and talked about lightness and darkness and how darkness only exist in the absence of all light.  And how we often see light in others and that helps us to find and strengthen our own light.  I then turned on a (battery-operated) tea light candle and whispered to the person on the first row to look under their chair where there was a tea light candle and told them to flip it on and pass the information along to the person next to them.  So, then there slowly were these little lights turning on throughout the room.  It was pretty cool.  Then each of our young women came up and talked about the value colors and as they did so, they would flip on a lamp that corresponded with the color of the value.  Then we talked about how each lamp was a little unique and had a unique glow just like each of our beautiful young women have different strengths.  It was a really cool evening.

Eclectic display of lamps from myself, leaders, young women and a few from the thrift store

Emily, Megan, Mikayli and Ariel

 

Place mats - we had a yummy crepe bar for refreshments

Young Women in Excellence

We recently had Young Women in Excellence and I couldn't have been happier with how it went down!  We totally got this idea off the internet to do an awards show.  We made it fancy and formal, had the priests escort the girls in, had "red carpet" (red butcher paper) for them to walk down, had all the leders and guests "paparazzi" them as they entered, and even had "celebrity" presentors.  Each girl was one of the nominees in a category in which they had accomplished something significant over the past year (Seamstress of the Year, Gardner of the Year, Humanitarian of the Year, All Star of the Year, Camper of the Year).  For instance, for Humanitarian of the Year, the nominees were: Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, and Megan Loomis.  And, of course, our young women always beat out the other famous nominees and they each got to do an acceptance speech to share what they had accomplished.  It was silly but oh so much fun!  It was so incredible to see how each of the girls and leaders brought their strengths to the table from music to decor, hair and makeup to refreshments.  See the cute "tuxedo" strawberries!  Incredibly fun night!