It seems like every sentence I have spoken over the last few weeks started with “when convention is over…”
I think I have mentioned this before, but in our church we have callings. The amount of time we serve for varies as do the “jobs” or assignments that we fulfill. At the moment, I am very blessed to be working with the Young Women (girls aged 12-17). I have just been involved in organising a youth convention – for boys and girls ages between 14-17 in Tasmania. It was a HUGE job, and seemed to consumed my every thought and action over the last month or so but was well worth all of the effort and work that each person in the organising committee put into it.
I packed my camera, but it didn’t even make it out of my car, so these photos are all stolen from my cousin (and trusty Young Women sidekick) Lisa. She is an awesome “details” blogger, and has written a much more comprehensive post about convention here. I’m not so good with all the details, but I am good at sharing the pretty stuff!!!
We were all exhausted by the end of it. I even totally lost my voice and could only whisper for the last day which was not very helpful but did provide a bit of light entertainment and lots of (not) funny jokes!
My “baby” was to organise the decorating of the hall for the formal, sit down dinner and grand ball one evening. Of course this kind of thing is right up my alley, but working on a fairly tight budget meant having to be wise with choices and resources. I had doubts about how it was all going to turn out on the night, but couldn’t have been more happy with everything in the end.
We found white tissue paper at a florist supply shop really cheap and a few girls from church came to my house one night and we folded 150 pom poms following Martha’s instructions here. A couple of days before convention, a few more girls met at the chapel to “puff” all of the pom poms. They are very simple to make and look really effective, but when you are making 150 they are also very time consuming!!
On the day of the ball, a few of the leaders tied them to the fairy lights and strings of fishing line so that they looked as though they were floating in the air.
The colours for the evening were white and green (I couldn’t help myself with the green – I love it!!) We scattered bunches of helium balloons around the outside of the hall and the tables were set beautifully for the formal dinner.
My other “baby” was to put together the dessert bar. We decided to do something a little different than serving cake or something like that for dessert and made an Ice Cream Parlour with a long dessert bar set up one end of the room, filled with big jars and bowls of lollies and chocolates to sprinkle over bowls of ice cream. Leanne designed the banner and name tags for each of the jars – they looked great and dessert was a hit!
Once dinner was over, the tables and chairs were moved away and the youth danced the night away. The pom poms were quite low and it looked as though they were dancing in the clouds!!
I often have friends ask me if we get paid for our callings at church. The answer is, no. We don’t get paid in any monetary form, but I certainly do know that the more effort I put into my calling, the more blessings I get in many aspects of my life. And when we are working with such a fantastic bunch of youth, it is rewarding enough just to see them having a great time together 🙂
As fun as it was, I am feeling very relived that it is all over now! I can get back into “real life” stuff and have time to get back into sewing and other exciting jobs 🙂
Last week I was talking with my sister on the phone and she mentioned that her friend had made a delicious passionfruit slice. I happened to have some passionfruit in my fruit bowl (I never usually buy passionfruit, but they were on sale so I picked up a few) and asked her for the recipe. The recipe came from Taste….seriously, who needs a cookbook when you’ve got Taste?!! And it is super easy and so so so tasty.
Passionfruit Slice
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup caster sugar
100g butter, melted
1 x 395g can sweetened condesnsed milk
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 Tbs passionfruit pulp (I used 3 passionfruit, much more than the recipe calls for but good flavour)
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and line a slice tin.
Combine flour, coconut, sugar and butter in a large bowl. Mix to form a stiff dough. Press into prepared pan, using a metal spoon to press firmly down.
Bake for 12 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
Reduce oven temperature to 150 degrees Celsius.
Whisk together the condensed milk, lemon juice and passionfruit pulp in a large bowl until smooth and well combined.
Pour into the pan and spread evenly over the base. Bake for 15 minutes until just firm to the touch. Set aside to cool completely. Cut into slices to serve.
(P.S. The blog has been a little quite of late…lots of things going on here though. School holidays, trips away and I have just come home from a youth convention for kids in our church aged 14-17 that I was heavily involved in organising. It was heaps of fun, but has been consuming my every thought for the last few weeks!!! I’m breathing a sigh of relief this morning with the kids back at school and no so much on my plate…hopefully life will quickly get back to normal again!)
Jaron has been getting his new website up and running and took a few photos of the house for it on the weekend. Made me remember that I have never posted pictures of the finished deck. It was a long process, with Jaron working on it by himself every spare minute he had after work and on weekends for four solid months, but it was well worth it. The perfect place for the kids to play and ride their bikes and is an awesome extension of our house when we open the sliding doors. If we ever build again, a big deck will be top on the list of “must haves”. We are really looking forward to warmer weather so that we can enjoy it again.
The winter months have seen us doing lots of landscaping. Again, a slow process when we only have Saturdays to devote to it. But we are happy that in a week or two it should all be over! The grass has been sown and is growing nicely, we planted a small front garden and some fruit trees out the back last weekend and now only have to spread bark over the garden beds and do some planting around the back of the house. Bring on summer…with a nice big deck and landscaped yard to play in we are going to have some serious fun this year!
Congratulations to Linda! You are the winner of a fat quarter bundle of Saffron Craig’s new fabric range, Birdtree. You have been sent an email with more information 🙂
A big thankyou to my wonderful Cool Shops! for September. LOVE your stuff!
And a big thankyou to my awesome blog readers for all of your lovely comments 🙂