Our women’s ministry group got together this weekend for a wonderful time of celebrating. We ordered in a little Swiss Chalet, did an ornament craft together, and enjoyed some sweet Christmas desserts. We went with a snowflake theme this year.

The main tables were decorated with simple twig centre pieces. I spray painted some sticks with silver spray paint -I do love a little spray paint! Then we put them into vases with some “snow” and decorated with some snowflake and silver ornaments.

I also decorated the tables with lots of candles, and these sweet mason jar snow globes.

We had fun making a simple ornament before dinner, and then we had take-out Swiss Chalet chicken, it was simple and everyone enjoyed it. We had a simple white cranberry juice punch, along with bottled water, coffee and tea.

I really liked how the snowflake lights looked on the drink table, such a simple way to add a little Christmas sparkle.

This table was waiting for the chicken to arrive.

After dinner there was a beautiful dessert table, with some traditional Christmas treats, and snowflake themed treats too.

I made these vanilla cupcakes, decorated with some simple snowflake sprinkles.

I used these sweet little snowflake place card holders to hold our dessert labels. We also had tiramisu in individual cups, and several kinds of delicious Christmas squares.

My friend Heather made these gorgeous snowflake sugar cookies.

And, she also made these cute little mini cheesecakes. She made the decorations with melted chocolate wafers piped into designs, and then placed on the cheesecakes after they hardened. I love the “w” and “m” for “Women’s Ministries” -love is in the details.

We had a wonderful evening together, celebrating the true meaning of Christmas, light shining in the darkness. I hope you having the blessing of amazing, encouraging, fun women in your life, and an opportunity to get together this Christmas and celebrate, because sometimes life really is a party!

This post is linked up at Between Naps on the Porch, and Tatertots and Jello.

Today was our local Santa Claus Parade, and we helped put together a sweet little float for our church.

The parade is always a little tricky, with really limited time and resources, but it’s always a lot of fun too, and a great way to be a part of the community!

This year our theme was “Every good gift is from God“. We dressed up a hay wagon and some big appliance boxes. The tags on the gifts were things that God has given us like: a home, food, friends, love, health, peace, and joy! We dressed up our little (and some not so little) folks as gifts.

We had a great time spreading a little holiday cheer and welcoming Santa to town! That’s what we’ve been working up to this week, now is it too early to start Christmas decorating?

Life is a party…a Christmas party!

We had a great time at our Fall Women’s Ministry Event last Friday, I shared the food and decor here yesterday, and today here’s the activity we did. After a word of encouragement, and some great food, we love to do something creative together, something that we might not ever get around to at home where there seems like there is never enough time or space or energy left for lots of women to do something they like to do. This was their night! We supplied the inspiration, the materials, and did the clean up!

We decided to make felted sweater flowers and use them as hair bands, pins, and hair clips. We started out with wool sweaters of various colours, and felted them ahead of time. I found them at second hand stores, just remember they have to be all wool, angora or cashmere, in order to felt. To turn them from sweaters into felt you simply wash the a couple times on hot, and throw them in a hot dryer.

We laid out the sweaters in a rainbow pattern from orange to white -I loved all the great colours we had to work with. After I demonstrated a few of the simple techniques to make the flowers the girls got creating with all the great materials. In addition to the felted sweaters, we had lots of fun embellishments, like buttons, beads, ribbons and tulle. If you’d like to know how to make them see my tutorial here.

The ladies had a great time creating some beautiful flowers, here’s just a sampling of their amazing creations.

This was a really fun activity to do together, and I’d recommend it for any ladies get-together. The pins turned out great, and they weren’t too hard for anyone to create. We made sure we brought in some glue guns for those who really didn’t want to sew. I shared a bib necklace I made for inspiration that showed several different types of flowers together.

I used a necklace from the dollar store as the chain, and made it to hang asymmetrically. The centre of the large flower is actually a ring, also from the dollar store, that I was able to cut apart and use. I love how it looks like a vintage pin, but only cost $2, which is even less than buying fancy buttons.

Making these fun accessories together was a great “girls night”, and I’m sure you and your girlfriends would love it too! The night out with no kids, great food, encouragement and the chance to be creative -now that’s when life really is a party!

This weekend we had our Fall Women’s Ministry Event at church, and had a wonderful time together. We created a beautiful fall inspired, rustic dessert table. I mentioned my latest crush -burlap. It made a great table cloth, layered over white. To add a rustic, vintage feel, we used an old window frame, and several old wooden crates to create height.

At the drinks table we served coffee, regular and herbal tea, and hot apple cider.

Serving the apple cider in a crock pot worked out great, it stayed nice and warm, and smelt great too.

We decorated the table with lots of pumpkins, in white and orange, and lots of candles. I also reused a couple of the fall branches, see the instructions on how to make them here.

The desserts were delicious. We had ginger cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, a beautiful fruit tray, pumpkins scones (recipe here), apple cake, a chocolate chip bunt cake, and a pumpkin and pecan dessert, all served up with a dollop of vanilla whip cream! We tried to include lots of homey fall favourites.

I made a few fun dessert picks, that said “My Little Pumpkin” and “Happy Fall”.

At our sign-in table, more pumpkins and pumpkin scented candles.

I also brought in my twine pumpkins, and we displayed them on the large coffee table. See the how-to for them here.

We had a wonder time of eating, laughing, and creating together. With great women gathered together to share their life journey, and joys, all while nibbling great fall desserts -well, life really is a party!

Tomorrow I’ll share our great activity for the night, making flower pins out of felted wool sweaters.

The Food!

Tea parties call for little sandwiches, hot tea and homemade scones with clotted cream, and these were all included on our menu for our Women’s Ministry Royal Tea Party.

We started with an assortment of some of my favourite tea sandwiches. There were classic cucumber and cream cheese fingers.

We also had a vegetarian favourite of mine. It’s made with roasted red pepper, olive tapenade, fresh basil and goat’s cheese. And yes, it’s as good as it sounds!

We also served my famous chicken toast cups. You toast a buttered slice of bread in a muffin cup to make the cup and fill with a delicious chicken salad made from rotisserie chicken and top with onion sprouts.

We also had turkey with cranberry mayo on marble bread, and egg salad on a mini croissant. Along with the sandwiches there was a veggie tray.

The savoury food was delicious. For drinks we served a delicious lemonade punch, Perrier, and tea, lots and lots of tea!

The sweet table was so beautiful.

Since we were celebrating the recent royal wedding, I hung a netting canopy over the desert table and used cupcakes to make a wedding cake like display. I used simple bulk barn decorations and vanilla cake and icing.

The star attraction were the delicious home made scones -plain and blueberry, looking great on our home made cake stands -see how we made them in this post.

We served the scones with blueberry jam, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, butter and clotted cream. They were so, so good!

There was also shortbread, mini trifles, a fruit tray, and meringue cookies.

The food was all so delicious and everyone really enjoyed it.

We had one special guest who is suffering with some health issues, and has to be on a very restricted diet. I wanted my friend to feel included in the festivities too so I went to work trying to find some vegetarian, egg free, dairy free, gluten free, soy free, nut free options. I managed to find a few, so here are a few ideas if you’re ever in need. I wanted to make tea sandwiches for her so she’d feel as much a part of the party as possible. Through the internet, advice from a friend, and scanning the health food section I found some great options. I made her sunflower butter and banana sandwiches on rice bread, and also sunflower butter and blueberry jam on rice bread. I also found some rice wraps and made two kinds of wraps. One was homemade hummus, roasted veggies, and sprouts, and the other was homemade black bean dip with shredded carrots, julienne red pepper, and mixed salad greens.

I also wanted to offer her a few sweets. Along with the restrictions I listed above she also can’t have any caffeine or chocolate. I found a brand of gingersnaps that fit the bill, and then tried to find a recipe on line for something else. I came up with this recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies with oatmeal and changed the peanut butter to sunflower butter, left out the chocolate chips, and changed the oil to olive oil (the only she can currently have). They actually came out looking like cookies!

After living on this diet for 6 months, and always having to bring all her own food to every function she attends, she was very grateful. And I was happy to do it for her, and even re-discovered how much I enjoy ministering love to friends and family with food. There is something to be said for good old fashioned hospitality, and when she hugged me in thanks, I got a little tear in my eye too, just grateful that you can actually show someone a little bit how much you love them by going out of your way to invite them to the party!

See Part I for all the fun Royal themed decor!