December RS Activity/Enrichment/Meeting Thingy

In case you didn't know, as of last year, the church no longer has ward activity committees.  Brandon and I almost lost our testimonies when we found out about that.  He was the activities co-chair in our singles ward, and he loved every second of it.  We served together on our married ward committee and loved that too.  So we were pretty sad to hear that we would never have the opportunity to serve on an activities committee together again.  But then we realized that because there isn't an "official" committee we actually have an opportunity to help with activities no matter what our callings are.  So far we have been asked to run the games at the camp out and to do a get to know you game at our Christmas party.  Allowing more ward members to help with activities is one reason activities committees no longer exist.

The other reason they have been discontinued is to help families have more time together.  I've seen this work in the past month.  The branch council is planning the Branch Christmas party, with the Relief Society doing most of the legwork.  When I found out that I'd be helping with the dinner part of the party I immediably decided that the weekday RS meeting for December would be as low key and stress free as possible.  The was no way I was going to try to pull off two huge productions in one month.  And I figured the sisters in the branch wouldn't want to feel obligated to attend ANOTHER Christmas event.  

Deciding what to actually do was a little hard.  All I knew was that I wanted it to be simple.  Soon I had an idea for part of the activity.  It would be what I called a "give and take table."  Everyone could declutter their apartments and bring the stuff they didn't use anymore to the activity.  Then they could go through what other people brought and maybe find some Christmas presents.  I love these types of activities and I've accumulated a lot of really great stuff this way.  

As much as I wanted to I couldn't just have the give and take table be the only thing we did.  I felt we needed something else.  After much thought, and some suggestions from the branch facebook page, I decided that we would make really easy ornaments for the tree at the Branch Christmas Party.

Here are the 4 types of ornaments we ended up making.  

1. Glass balls with stickers

This craft is completely made up from leftovers from the RS closet.  I cleaned out the aptly labeled Y closet back in July and found tons of random stuff from years of activities.  Some of it was Christmasy and I saved it in case we could use it in December.  I was right. 

 All you do for this project is put stickers on glass ornaments and then attach a bow.  In this case the bows had twisty-ties already on them so they were really easy to attach.

 The stickers were left over from other activities, so the ladies making these ornaments had to be creative in coming up with words they could spell with what stickers they had.  They did a great job.  There were balls that said, joy, peace, noel, Ho Ho, Christ, and so on.

 We ended up with about 25 of these balls.

Because this ornament was so easy, the sisters were able to chat and get to know each other better while they worked on the ornaments.  And that is what I wanted.

2. Candles

This was another ornament that I made up to use up stuff from the closet.  The candles were also part of my "possibly use for Christmas box."

I drilled holes through the middle of the candles so we could thread the ribbon through.  Then my sister Hillary figured out how to hot glue to ribbon around the candle to make it look cute.  

 The bells were the last addition.  It's almost like they were planned.  There were 24 bells and 24 candles.  Using up random stuff really doesn't get much better than that.

 My friend Stefani said that this was a pretty easy and stress free ornament to make.  These three ladies finished all 24 candles that night.

3. Acorns
This was the third use it up ornament (I wish I had a nickel for every time I said, "Use it up, I don't want to store it in the closet anymore" on Tuesday night.)

I found these totally awesome huge acorns while I was on a walk.  I brought them home and washed them.  Unfortunately most of the acorn nut parts were starting to rot so I had to throw all but 12 away.  The tops were still good so in a genius moment I decided to use the little glass ball ornaments from the closet as the "nuts."  The result was amazing.

 We spray painted the tops in the colors we picked for the Christmas Party, Red, Gold, and Silver.  We picked those colors because that's what the glass ornaments in the closet were.  I've always wanted a reason to buy shiny gold and silver spray paint and I finally got my chance.

 In another amazing coincidence, we had exactly enough balls to go with all the tops.  I thought for sure we would have too many tops.

4. Pine cones
This final ornament was actually the first idea I had.  I wanted to do something with pine cones.

 Brandon and I took the girls on a walk and gathered pine cones from parks and the side of the road (you can't take them from canyons or else it would have been a lot easier to find them.)

 I brought the cones home and washed them.  This is when I discovered something really cool about pine cones.  If you get them wet they close.  Then over the next few days they will open as they dry out.  So if you want to try this project yourself - give the cones time to dry.

 I drilled holes down the center of the cones and then glued ribbon into the hole.  Some of the ribbons had been tied around the candles.  Others were just in the closet, and others I bought.  

 We also glued clear stones to the tops.  These stones were also leftovers from another activity.  (The closet it so empty now!)

 The pine cones were still tacky from the spray paint so we didn't finish them at the activity.  I brought them home and gave them another coat of glitter spray paint (I wasn't very impressed with the glitter spray paint, but it did give the cones a sparkle without using real glitter that would have fallen off everywhere.)

 The girls watched while I sprayed the cones.  As you can see I put Lydia on the wrong chair.  She was basically on the counter by the time I was done.

My sister Hillary helped with gluing the ribbon and the stone on.  We made about 40 pine cones.  

I'm really looking forward to decorating the tree at the Christmas Party.  The plan is to let everyone who attends take home an ornament (because I don't want to store them)

 And what about the give and take table?  It was a huge success.  We actually had 5 tables full of stuff.  I forgot to take a picture of them when they were full, but here what they looked like right after I put out my stuff (sorry if you gave me any of this stuff . . . I just don't have a use for it.)

 We had 15 sisters participate.  I ended up with 3 of the things I sort of wanted for Christmas; a lamp, a little shelf with hooks, and picture frames.  Lots of people took lots of stuff home.  And then we still had several boxes to take to DI.

Over all this activity was a success.  We got rid of a lot of stuff in the RS closet, helped some people de-junk, provided some Christmas presents, and made cute ornaments.  All without adding too much extra stress to the month of December.