Something Extraordinary!!!

I had to post about our wonderful night before I forget everything!  About 2 months ago I was asked to be in charge of our Relief Society birthday dinner.  For those of you wondering what the heck that is, it's a celebration we have every March to remember the start (or the "birthday") of the woman's organization in our church.  It's called the Relief Society.  (This year is the 172nd year!)  Anyway, when I was asked a million ideas came to my mind....but I knew I would need the full support of Kirk to make them happen.  I told him, "I don't want to do this half way.  What if I went all out?"  He was 100% behind me, so we started making plans and working really hard to make that happen.  I can't even tell you how many hours we spent on the little details and the big details and everything in between.  My kids were heavily involved, spending many hours cutting, gluing, decorating and serving. Many times I heard, "why are we doing this?  Why do the ladies need this?  Why are you doing all that work for a 2 hour dinner?"

After last night I now know WHY I did it.  Because Heavenly Father loves his daughters and they deserve to feel that love.  They deserve to have one night with good food and inspiring music and words from his servants to make them better wives, mothers, daughters and friends.  I wanted each sister that came to think, "WOW!  Someone did this for me?"  I felt like I was on His errand and I knew it was important.  We have a smaller ward with many less-active sisters.  I was told at first to plan on about 40 people (which is double what we usually have attend on the regular meeting nights we hold each month)  I wasn't satisfied with that number and from the very beginning I told everyone I was planning on 80.  I'm sure that sounded crazy and unrealistic to many, but that number never left my mind the entire time.  Food-plan for 80.  Take home gifts-plan for 80.  Invitations-make 200.  I worked really hard on advertising.  We started putting flyers in our Sunday bulletin every week for 6 weeks.  For 3 weeks I handed out candy bar invitations for the sisters to take to other sisters. (It wasn't a planned idea, but we found these Butterfinger cups on sale for 15 cents and we thought it would be fun to incorporate them somehow!)  I was so excited and enthusiastic and told everyone about it in class and in sacrament meeting.  I promised the sisters that there was something there for everyone.  They would NOT regret coming and they would feel loved.  I tried really hard not to doubt myself and just continued working and praying A LOT that the sisters would come.  I knew all this hard work couldn't be in vain.

Well, guess what!!? They came!!!!  The number of seats filled were...can you guess it!!!  80!!

Here are some of the fun details from the night.  If I ever do something like this again I want to have someone in charge of photographing it, I was too busy to get very many good pictures which makes me sad, but here's some I did manage to take:

This is the basic scene when you walk in...dessert table in the middle, lights strung up, 15 paper lanterns hanging around.

At the entryway I had 3 greeters at the door welcoming the sisters as they entered.  A sweet sister let me use 7 of her quilts to display around the gym.  (I made that sign during my brave girls art class.  I used all my favorite fabrics and thought how unique they are just like our sisters!) I think it was a nice addition to the entryway.

 Here's another angle of the gym-you can see two more quilts by the piano.

This is the stage.  The curtains were closed when the sisters were eating dinner.  When the program started and I opened the curtains, I could hear a gasp from the audience.  The flowers looked stunning!!  They are all made from poster paper, coffee filters and hot glue.  Each flower had a coffee filter flower in the middle that used between 6 and 12 filters.  Almost everyday for a month we were cutting, gluing, folding....you get the picture!!  They took a while...but the effect was perfect!!!  We hung them up with paperclips poked into the paper on the back and safety pins hooked on the curtains.  (One fell during the program, which was horrible to me, but at least the others stayed!!)

This is where our narrators sat for the program.  I was soooo bummed I didn't get any pictures of the program!!!!  I had 2 narrators, 3 soloists and a women's chorus with 8 sisters.  I did one of the solos and sang with the group.  It was so wonderful!!!  

The tables had several special touches to them.  Each spot had one of our cute burlap sleeves with a potholder, program and two Andes mints inside.

I made the programs.  (I'm not very good at that kind of stuff.)  I basically pieced together a bunch of different papers and copied them front and back.  I cut all of the pictures out of a stamp catalog.  It worked out so well!!  I really liked the three fold style.  On the front and inside left side were quotes used in the program.  The middle showed names of who participated and the right side were the words to a hymn we sang during the program.  

On the inside fold was a special thank you section.  Kirk HATED that I put his name in there, but he really deserves some credit here!!!  He put in just as many hours as I did!!

I LOVE the back of the program!!  I found this quote and thought it was perfect for our theme of "Something Extraordinary"  

I loved the painted branches.  I used two cans of paint to do them and it was hard to find a time to paint with all our rain lately!  Thank goodness the sun came out a few times last week.  My friend cut out the butterflies with her machine.  They added just the right touch I think!  I even had a sister there who took all of the centerpieces home and might use them for her daughters wedding in a few months!  Her colors just happened to have blues and whites!  A few other sisters took home some extra branches I had.  They are really cute!!  Also notice the nice napkin roll with the fork and knife tied with twine.  Kirk did all 80 of those!

For the center of each table I used two vintage children's books that I have, antique tea cups that a sister let me borrow, a menu and dessert bar paper, cinnamon honey butter, butter and homemade jams.  The extra little space on the right is where we put the roll baskets.  

Here's the start of the dessert table.  I didn't get a picture of it with all 7 desserts.  There were also chocolate strawberries and mini cheesecake desserts.  I've never done a double table dessert bar before, but after tonight I think I like it better!  It wasn't crowded and there was plenty of room for every dessert on each side!!  

The only desserts I could make ahead of time were the mint chocolate Oreos and the cake pops.  Everything else I made on Monday and Tuesday.  I baked from 5am-2pm on Monday and 5am-1pm on Tuesday.  It was insane!!  Here's the numbers:

Cake Pops: 50

Oreos: 65

Chocolate dipped Strawberries: 66

Brownie raspberry bites: 53

Lemon tarts: 77

Mini cheesecake desserts: 54

Mini strawberry cream cupcakes: 50

Everything was from scratch too.  The tart crusts and fillings, the cupcakes and frosting...all of it!!!

I found the BEST lemon filling recipe a few years ago.  I use it for pies, tarts, custard...it is the BEST!!

  I'll have to share it sometime.

I didn't get a good picture of the plates of food, but here's the crew dishing it out.  Each plate had a strawberry spinach salad with strawberry vinaigrette, angel hair orange spinach pasta and an orange curry baked chicken breast sliced.  It looked so beautiful with the bright colors of the salad and the golden chicken!  I so wish I would have taken a picture of it!!!  We also had gluten free, vegetarian and dairy free options which was a nice touch so none of the sisters came away hungry!!  The man there in the red shirt was in charge of all the dinner and cooking the food.  He's so good at that kind of thing (he recently did all the food for our entire ward Christmas dinner)  He worked soooo hard to make this dinner special.  He also made all of my flyers EVERY WEEK!!!!  He helped so much and I really appreciate all his hard work.

My sweet boys wheeled out carts of plates and served all of the sisters!  I told them the dessert bar was open, so while they waited for dinner they had rolls and desserts and just chatted.  It was such a happy and friendly atmosphere!!!  

For the drinks I made fruit infused waters.  I did blueberry-orange and strawberry-kiwi-lemon.  They were delicious!  Not too sweet, but just enough fruity flavor to satisfy you.  We made a "concentrate" the night before and just added water to fill up the drink dispensers.  I also made two huge ice circles out of round cake pans with cut up fruits inside.  They looked really nice.

At the end of the evening, everyone helped clean up and put everything in our cars.  The only desserts left were two tarts and a strawberry which Kolby happily ate.  Clean up is always easier than set up!!!  We were at the church setting up on Monday from 4pm-11pm and on Tuesday from 1pm-6:30pm when it started.  It only took 1 hour to clean it all up!  I think it was a HUGE success.  I had so many people helping me and everything just seemed to fall in place.  I had a lot of opposition during these two months of planning.  Two major trials that were completely unexpected hit me, and although they are too personal to share, let's just say I felt like I was carried.  We also had major flooding in our downstairs bathroom every time it rained  and it added so much stress trying to wash wet towels and clothes.  That and the pain after my root canal almost did me in!!  I wanted to make this happen so badly though and I know Heavenly Father wanted this to happen even more.  I was truly blessed to endure all of the hard things that were happening and make this dinner a reality.  It really turned out to be something extraordinary!!!!!!!!!!!  Now I need to get back to real life and clean up my house, catch up on laundry and make tons of thank you cards for all the wonderful sisters who helped out with the night.  Beth