Your Once Upon a Time is Now!

Dear Reader,

We had our Young Women in Excellence activity tonight. The theme was "Your Once Upon a Time is Now," based on the talk "Your Happily Ever After," given by President Uchtdorf in the April 2010 General Conference.

Our spread.

My second counselor made this cake! It was sooo amazing. And so perfect for our theme. (And it tasted delicious too!)

Little crown favors. (And the little tulle bags have mini "glass" slippers and raspberry M&Ms.)

Luckily the Relief Society had tons of lace we could borrow. And a piano. And a podium. And electric tea lights. And flowers. . . . Basically, thank goodness for the Relief Society. 

Our girls displayed some of the projects and experiences they had done with Personal Progress this year. (One of our girls even finished the program!!! I'm so happy for her!)

My first counselor (and friend) Kerri and I are thrilled it's all over. 

But look at their faces. All the work was worth it for them. :)

A-a-a-and two more:

As usual, Elder Holland was one of my favorite speakers at conference. The other was President Uchtdorf. Gotta love that man! :)

Two of my favorite conference quotes:

Dear Reader,

As part of my project for the value integrity (Personal Progress, what up!) I decided to make some memes of my favorite quotes from this last General Conference. 

Was conference as awesome for you as it was for me? Oh I hope so. 

Arise and Shine Forth

Dear Reader,

Tonight we had New Beginnings for my ward's Young Women (yeah, I know, kind of late in the year, but give me a break, I've been trying to get used to this whole being president thing). Our theme for the evening was "Arise and Shine Forth," which is the 2012 theme for the youth in the Church. (Find out more here!)

Because I'm super clever and definitely think ahead, I forgot my camera and did not take any pictures of decorations or food. Just take my word for it, it was pretty good. We had yellow decorations (sunshine...shining forth...you get it) and rainbow food (because rainbows are in the sky, much like the sun, and rainbow food is cooler than yellow food and the Young Women colors just happen to include all the colors in the rainbow).

For a gift for the girls, I made a poster and we gave them sparklers and the new For the Strength of the Youth book (Yes! There's a new one and it's SO COOL! Check it out here if you haven't seen it yet. And check it out here if you have.).

I do have a picture of the poster, so this is what that looks like:

And right about now you're thinking, "Ooooh, THAT'S why she did sparklers! What a clever idea Sister Beer!" Yeah, I know. Thank Pinterest for that one. Pretty sure I stole the idea from someone else's blog. That's what that site is for, right?...

Anyway, it was a success! So now I'm going to bed because the stress of putting on that event quite literally has drained all of the energy out of me. (That is a really good example of why I am the most introverted person on the Highlights editorial team, in case you are wondering. Because it's true, I am. We took the test and tests don't lie. Usually.)