Decorations

This is the time of year when decorations reign supreme, and all the world is better for it.

Exhibit A: The handouts for the Young Women New Night of Beginnings of Excellence Thingy (can you tell I have spent the last eight years in Relief Society?). I recently had the opportunity to speak to some young women in That Other Stake about how the YW values can lead them to the temple and the handouts were beautiful. The YW leaders make each girl (and one very lucky guest speaker) an awesome temple block, while Valerie and I made the prism quote cards to go with my talk.

 All of the girls in Valerie's ward were current or former students, so it was fun to get to see them in a more spiritual setting (meaning I didn't whack anything with swimming noodles, warn them about an imaginary ceiling-dwelling mutant badger,  or reference Doctor Who or Iron Man). Two cute sisters told me they wanted to use their prisms to make earrings to decorate themselves (and hopefully to remember the theme of the talk?), and the next day Lil' Sis modeled the wearable handouts for the rest of the yearbook staff.

 

Exhibit B: The table decorations for an area scouting training (and dinner) that featured the General Young Men's President of the LDS Church. Since the dinner was for scouters, it was suggested that we use plates of butter as centerpieces, but Joleen, Sue, and Diane had a much better idea. The law of the harvest decoration motif was simple enough to please the brethren, but elegantly symbolic enough to make the sisters in attendance smile.

Exhibit C: My Christmas-fied dwelling, as decorated by my visiting niblets. Kenna and Kylie built and decorated the tree, then arranged my small collection of nativity scenes. My home looks much more festive thanks to their hard work. Even Bubba helped, rearranging all the nativity scenes he could reach so they fit more of a "If Godzilla attacked Bethlehem" theme.

When the kids had finished decorating my home, they made ornaments to decorate their own. And then they used my play jewelry and drama costume stuff to decorate themselves.

The highlight of the niblet decorating experience had to be when the girls asked me why the tree needed a tree skirt. When I explained that the tree skirt helped keep the tree's feet warm, Bubba promptly took off one of his socks and put it at the base of the tree to help ensure the tree's toes stayed warm and toasty. How cute is that?

I am also really looking forward to redecorating my classroom with a Christmas/End of Course Assessment Theme. After that, it will be time to decorate handouts for ward conferences lessons, and then comes our stake Relief Society meeting with invitations, posters, tables, and rooms to decorate.

Of course, all of these things are really just preparation for the greatest decorating job of all... A much sought after calling to The Celestial Decorations Committee! It is one of my eternal goals. You just know there has to be more than a few sisters helping out with all of those rainbows, sunrises, and sunsets because, if the scout leaders were in charge, there would be an awful lot of plates of butter in the sky.