Post a Comment On: Larissa Another Day

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Donuts are always a good idea. ALWAYS.

I recently used my love of donuts as a theme for New Beginnings for my church girls. New Beginnings focuses on Personal Progress. I had seen an idea while perusing pinterest using donuts, but for Young Women in Excellence. I loved the idea of using the play on word of donut with "don't". So away I went planning.

Once I had the idea of using donuts as the theme the rest came together really easily. I used the donuts as decorations and in the talk I gave about personal progress.

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We chose bright and fun colors for the evening. We started by handing out these invites, which I made using PicMonkey. You might notice that the nights tag line is different on the invites then it was on the chalkboard for that night. Basically, I just remembered wrong. HA.  Either way, the tag line works. And I don't think anyone noticed my faux pas. While these invites are adorable, they weren't the best part.

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The real show stopper was the peg wall of donuts in the value colors. Can you say dreamy much?

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The idea of a peg wall of donuts is not a new one. Pinterest is full of images of peg wall donuts. However, since it was New Beginnings I figured donuts in the value colors were a must. We worked with a local bakery, and they NAILED the colors. The wall of donuts was not only decorations, but it was also part of the dessert for the night (and breakfast for my boys the next morning). The first donuts to go were understandably the gold ones.

Aren't those shimmery, metallic gold donuts magical? The bakery glazed them in a golden yellow and then brushed on the gold powder.

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Before I get to what we did for the program let me talk about the other donut details. I put donuts on the straws for the milk we served.

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I also made two donut cakes. The donut-shaped pan made it a breeze. I used a boxed vanilla cake mix. I frosted it with buttercream frosting and used homemade marshmallow fondant for the "icing".

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I copied the image of the donut from the invitation to the cake and the paper donuts used as decorations.
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Now, for the program.

We started with an explanation of personal progress from our secretary (also over personal progress). She read from the personal progress book and shared why we do personal progress.

Next I talked about personal progress in reference to making donuts. The theme was Sweet is the Reward of personal progress. We compared the sweet reward of making donuts and doing personal progress. I used a recipe that had eight ingredients and gave each ingredient a value.

Milk---Faith
Sugar---Divine Nature
Yeast---Individual Worth
Butter---Knowledge
Eggs--Choice and Accountability
Flour---Good Works
Salt---Integrity
Glaze--Virtue

I had eight Value Bakers. They each had pre-assigned parts and little half aprons that I made from fabric the color of each value. I talked about just as donuts need specific ingredients to turn out, there are specific attributes, characteristics, and principles that we should develop to help us achieve the sweetest reward, eternal life.

Here are the parts I handed to the girls. I printed them out, cut them into strips and then gave them to eight different girls.

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We "made" donuts. I called up each value baker one at a time. Prior I printed out clip art pictures of each ingredient and cut them out. I had already given each value her coordinating "ingredient". I would call up the ingredient and the value baker would come up with the picture of her ingredient. She put the ingredient in a bowl I had and then said her part.

After each value, I talked about the importance of that specific value. You could also have girls share and experience with that value. After the whole donut theme and that donut wall, these little value baker aprons were my favorite.

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Especially since they were on some of my beautiful girls.

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This night was so fun, and relatively easy (setting aside the sewing of the aprons and the making of the donut wall). I certainly hope that my girls donut forget about personal progress and that you donut forget about this idea the next time you are planning a New Beginnings.