Part II -The Activities

Friday night our women’s ministry group got together for a night of Christmas preparation.  The food was great, read more about the hot chocolate buffet and desserts here.  We had a great time together, and in addition to a word of encouragement and great food, we also had some great activities.  We broke our ladies into small groups, and rotated them through 4 different stations;  Cookies in a Jar, Handmade Gift Tags, Parade Decorations, and Sugar Cookie Decorating.

Cookies in a Jar

The first station was making cookies in a jar.  The station was wonderfully organized with all the ingredients lined up in order, with the amounts printed up on large easy to read labels, with the correct measurement.  There were home-made rolled paper funnels to help get the ingredients into the jars neatly.

After the jars were all layered up, there was a decoration area, with beautifully printed cooking instructions, ribbons, and wrapping paper.  If you’d like the recipe, look here, where they also have the really cute printable label that looks like a giant M and M, with the instructions on the back.

What a wonderful gift they will make!

Handmade Gift Tags

The next station was a gift tag making one.  We had all sorts of Christmas paper, paper punches and paper cutters, special scissors, markers, and embellishments.  There was also lots of rubber stamps with Christmas images, and the alphabet, and different colours of inks.

The ladies were like kids in a candy store, creating gift tags to go with the two gifts that they were creating that night.

Parade Decorating

The next station was making decorations for the upcoming Christmas parade and our church float.  We used old cardboard boxes, and cut them into Christmas candy shapes.  They were painted and decorated with glitter. More on the parade later this week!

Sugar Cookie Decorating

The final station was cookie decorating. The women were given a great handout with the recipes, and tips, and given a lesson on techniques like flooding, and flocking.  They were then invited to use all the colours, and embellishments they needed to decorate several cookies.

Everyone was given a sheet of wax paper to leave their cookies to dry on, and when they were set, they could be packed into a beautiful little bag for gift giving.

Describing these activities, it sounds a little like a birthday party for grown-ups, and that’s about how much fun we all had!  It was a great evening and we all went home with two beautiful handmade Christmas gifts, although I did hear from several friends that their cookies were already gone by the next day.  I think any of these activities would make a great ladies night for a group of girlfriends, you could pick one of the activities and have everyone bring some of the supplies.  The only thing more fun then creating Christmas goodies, is doing it with friends and turning it into a party!

This post is linked up to The Crazy Christmas Crafters at I Heart Naptime.