New Beginnings

Right now I'm serving as a youth leader over the group of 12 to 18 year old young women at church. Aside from teaching lessons on Sundays and weekly activities, there are also a couple of other big events during the year to plan and carry out. One of these is called "New Beginnings" it takes place at the beginning of the calendar year or the beginning of a new school year and is an overview of the program for the young women, their families and any of the girls at church who will be turning 12 and joining the program this year. We held ours a few weeks ago.

We decided to go with a winter theme for the symbolism of white and freshly fallen snow as a new beginning, a fresh start, purity, cleanliness and promise. The young women gave talks during the program, there was a beautiful musical number of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives", some comments from our bishop and then afterwards we had a light lunch.

The decorations turned out lovely and the lunch was nice despite being what my husband calls "woman food."

I wanted to share some pictures of our simple but pretty decorations (above) and the menu.

The Menu:
--Finger sandwiches (ham salad, egg salad, tuna salad, cucumber and peanut butter and grape jelly for the picky eaters)
--Pita chips and hummus
--Crudités with my favorite vegetable dip
--Crackers and cheese
--Olive penguins
--A selection of desserts including: brownies, powdered sugar doughnuts, white cupcakes with white frosting, Hershey's kisses, snowballs (that I forgot to put out) and homemade butter mints
--Lemonade to drink

I'll be sharing a couple of easy DIY ideas and recipes that we utilized in carrying out this event in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.