"Purse" Enrichment

It's about that time again. We had our Relief Society birthday enrichment on March 4th. Sorry it has taken this long to get this event posted.

Since the Christmas enrichment was such a success, I was having a really hard time figuring out what I could do that would top it or at least match it. I was searching online and found a few ideas and this is what we decided to do.

The whole theme of the night was around purses, ya know Home Family and "Purse"onal Enrichment. I wanted to do a purse for the invite, so I went online and found the cutest pattern. It was one of the more difficult and time consuming invitations but in my opinion when you have a cute invite it makes people more excited and more willing to attend. I wouldn't have been able to make 100 of these without Tommy's help. He did all the measuring and marking and I did all the scoring. Then my committee came over and helped fold and glue them together. Here are some pictures of us putting the invitations together.

Inside of the purse we put a little piece of paper with all of the info. Here is what is looked like.

We decided since it was the birthday party to set up 12 different tables. One for each month of the year. The sisters in the ward signed up to decorate a table. This was such a good idea because then others got to help and they were all so different. Here are the pictures of each table.

For dinner we decided to serve chicken salad sandwiches and let the sisters bring salads and chips. The food was delicious.

I didn't have an on time drawing this time, but I did notice that so many people were on time or even came early. WAY TO GO sisters! So the sisters came in and sat at the table of the month of their birthday. If that table was full they could sit wherever the wanted. This was a great idea because it forced people to sit and talk to people they probably wouldn't normally talk to.

After the sisters ate we had a weigh in. The sisters were told to bring their purses. I didn't tell them anything else. I had a scale and the sisters lined up and wrote their name and how much their purse weighed. I gave a free car wash at Super Sonic to the sister with the heaviest purse. The girl that won had a purse that weighed 17.5 pounds. Can you even imagine lugging that around all day!!

After the weigh in our RS president spoke about the different "purses" we carry throughout our lives. She talked about how the different purses that we carry reflect our responsibilities in this life. She talked about how sometimes we don't like the purses that we have to carry and we want to trade it in for something new. She did a great job. She wrote a cute story that she shared at the end. She is amazing and really started the night off right.

Once she was done talking we played a game with the ladies purses. I would call out an object and the first sister to show me that object from their purse got a little piece of candy. I told the sisters that they shouldn't eat their candy because their would be a grand prize for the person with the most candy at the end of the game. This was hilarious. One of the things that I asked for a calculator. A sister in the back pulled out a huge calculator. I am talking desk size. It was so funny.

After that game we played a game of RS Jeopardy. This was by far my favorite part of the night. I explained the rules and handed out the buzzers for each team. We just had 4 tables of sisters group together to be one team. There were 3 teams just like there are 3 different contestants in Jeopardy.

The categories were Hymns Significant to RS, General Relief Society Trivia, Visiting Teaching, Know your RS Presidency, and two categories were Know your RS Sisters. I found some of the questions online and asked for help from members of the ward for the other categories.

We had each team come up with a team name and my friend Kristin was the score keeper. We started the game and I was surprised at how knowledgeable the sisters were. I really thought that I had some tough questions. As the game continued things really started to heat up. I had sisters yelling at me that they buzzed in first. We had teams yelling at other teams that they were first. Whoever said that RS sisters aren't competitive were wrong. I saw different sides of sisters that I had never seen before.

About halfway through the teams were demanding we stop and give a current score. I felt bad for Kristin because she was doing her best to give each team their points but didn't have time to add them up. So I told the sisters we would take a short commercial break to give the teams an accurate score. I was under the impression the sisters could just visit for a minute. Before I knew it the Primary President, another sister in the ward and me were singing the Mormon rap. If you haven't ever heard this it is hilarious and fit perfect with our night. This song came out ages ago but I grew up listening to it. I heard that someone videoed it but I haven't seen it. Wish I had it for the blog.

After we got the scores totaled we had a few more questions then it was time for final Jeopardy. We gave each team a piece of paper to say how much they were going to wager. Then we gave the final Jeopardy question. Boyd whistled the tune for us. I thought it would take them awhile to come up with their answer but once again I underestimated them. It seriously was the funnest and funniest moment yet at any of my enrichments. If anyone wants a copy of the game I am willing to share. I would love to see others use it. Just email me and I will send it right your way.

At the end we all sang Happy Birthday to the Relief Society and ate homemade gourmet cupcakes. You got that right. The night before enrichment I got together with a sister from the ward and her most willing and helpful daughter-in-law and made about 75 cupcakes. They were delicious and were way better then a piece of cake.

YUMMY!

At the end of the night I gave this song to the sisters to tie everything all together. Someone has taken the words from Count Your Many Blessings and made it into Count Your Many Purses. Way cute! If you click on it you can see the words.

All in all this was another great enrichment. I am off the hook again until the summer. If anyone has done anything fun in their wards please share I am always looking for great ideas!