a relief society christmas

Happy holidays everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed time with your loved ones like I got to. This week our ward had its monthly relief society activity, and yours truly is in charge of enrichment! I absolutely adore Christmas and the entire season surrounding it, so I decided that the only thing I could do was go all out for this enrichment activity.

This months activity was titled “Merry Little Christmas Party”. On the invitation I mentioned it would be a cookie exchange with a full hot chocolate bar and asked that everyone come dressed in their coziest Christmas attire. All in all everyone enjoyed themselves and had a wonderful time chatting over some yummy snacks.

With the hot chocolate bar I wanted to keep it simple, but include flavor combinations that most people would love. Personally, I’m not a fan of milk chocolate hot chocolate, so I decided to make that and a white chocolate one as well for people that were like me.

At the end of the table I put disposable hot cups that I bought from Target. They were super cute and came with sleeves to avoid burning yourself when holding your hot chocolate! In addition, I got red ladles from the dollar store to match the theme but also conveniently scoop the hot chocolate.

Next came the fun part: toppings. For toppings, like I mentioned before, it was simple but delicious. We had three sauce flavors to choose from: white chocolate, chocolate, and caramel. For the other toppings, we had miniature marshmallows and peppermint chocolates, plus you can’t forget whipped cream. To make the toppings look fun, I decided to wrap the sauces and whipped cream in wrapping paper to make them look like presents. Lastly, I designed chalkboard labels so everyone could see what each thing was. 

(Here is the recipe I used for the hot chocolate: https://pin.it/grnztfrztfqs72)

After we did opening prayer and blessed the refreshments the hot chocolate bar and cookies were open for business. The sisters in the ward brought such delicious cookies and it made the cookie exchange such a success!

Once everyone had a chance to mingle and settle in, I announced that we would be playing a game. The materials and set up for this game was super inexpensive and overall it was such a fun time for everyone. The game was titled “the Wrapping Paper Fashion Show”. All you need is about six rolls of wrapping paper, I personally just used the many that I had collecting dust in my closet from past Christmas’, and three two-packs of scotch tape or six single ones. 

For the game, I split us all into two groups and let the sister missionaries stay back to judge our artwork. The rules are pretty simple, you have five minutes to create an outfit/masterpiece. Each team had to choose one person as the mannequin/model and the rest helped create the outfit. Once the five minutes was up, the sister missionaries chose which teams artwork they liked the most.

This part is completely optional but I decided that a prize was necessary. The winning team members each got a “coupon” that they could redeem for an act of service from the Relief Society Presidency for the entire month of December. 

In the end, it was a successful and extremely fun night. We got to mingle with fellow sisters in our ward over food, drinks, games, and holiday music. I really do love that our church has organizations like this that help build relationships over fun things that are Christ like. To finish, I’m so thankful to be a part of a church that gives me a calling that is so near and dear to my heart, and one that I can find a purpose in. 

Love, Lex.

(If you are interested in a downloadable version of the hot chocolate printables please click these links, toppings: file:///C:/Users/Hunter/Downloads/toppings.pdf and sign: file:///C:/Users/Hunter/Downloads/Hot%20Chocolate%20Bar%20(1).pdf . If you would like them to be custom to your liking, please email me at lexieferranti@yahoo.com. If you would like a customized version of the invitation please email me)