The YW love a good spa night - especially if they get to invite their Moms! Here are a few ideas from ours:

1) DEVOTIONAL - on what true beauty is.

2) NAIL STATION - mothers and daughters give one another manicures (hand scrub recipe: 1 cup coarse sea salt, 1/2 cup liquid coconut oil, 6 drops of essential oil for scent), including painting one another's nails.

3) MAKEUP STATION - We brought some inexpensive cosmetics (new for hygiene reasons) and disposable applicators and one of the leaders demonstrated on a YW the proper way to apply makeup and then mothers/daughters did makeovers.

4) CRAYOLA LIPSTICK CRAFT - Recipe: 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil, 1 crayon (soak wrapper for a few minutes to easily peel off) broken into 3-4 pieces (or combine 1/2 each of 2 crayons) and 1/4 teaspoon vegetable oil (or essential oil if you want them scented) for gloss and easier spreadability). We put a frying pan on the stove with 1-2" water and brought to a simmer. Our frying pan held 4 ramekins so 4 YW could go at a time. YW prepared their ramekins with the oils/crayons and put them in the frying pan (in the ramekin so it's a makeshift double boiler). Stir with skewers (we had tiny plastic spoons that we used to measure the oils and to stir with). Then use pipettes to put hot lipsticks into lipstick containers. *We really only ended up purchasing pipettes and lipstick containers because we had everything else! There are many youtube videos on how to make the crayola lipsticks.

5) HAIR STATION - We downloaded several videos from Cute Girls Hairstyles and one of our YW manned a station where the YW and mothers could watch the videos and do one another's hair. Be sure to download the videos, because most churches block YouTube over the wifi (unless you're using a cell device, obviously).

6) REFRESHMENTS - We purchased nut cups and peanuts and chocolate covered fruit. We made little cups of nuts and little cups of the chocolate covered fruits and put little circle labels on them (see printable below). We also had little water bottles with labels (see printable below).

7) PRINTABLES - 

Water Bottle Labels - Here is a link to the label above PDF here or WORD document here if you prefer. These labels are 1.25" x 8." We used Kirkland brand water bottles from Costco (the SMALL 8 oz bottles) and removed the labels from them (don't remove the sticky glue from the bottles when removing labels!). The new labels were stuck to the old glue and then wrapped around and glued with a simple glue stick (you could use any glue but a glue stick totally worked!!). 

Round Stickers for nut cups or napkins or whatever - Here is a link to the PDF and here is the link to the Word document. (We used Avery 8293 round labels - which we had lying around)

*Font: The font is Cutie Pop and you can download it for FREE here.

Feel free to edit, change, whatever to your heart's content!

This is a good activity for older Mia Maids and Laurels. Have a "how to get a job" night. Have classes on job searching, filling out applications (making sure they are complete, what everything means, proper writing style... hint: no abbreviations or text-ese, etc.), how to interview (how to dress appropriately for an interview, what to say, etc.), and how to be a good employee and a hard worker.

If you have someone in your ward who hires/fires people in their job, ask them to speak about what they look for in hiring, and why people get fired. If you don't have people who do that in your ward, ask the employment specialist in your ward, or invite someone in management from local stores to come speak to the girls. You might also consider inviting more than one manager to get different perspectives since each type of job is different: fast food or restaurant vs. other retail stores.
-----------------------------------------------------


How to Get Any Job: Life Launch and Re-Launch for Everyone Under 30 (or How to Avoid Living in Your Parents' Basement)

Some girls are experts at styling their hair. Others... not so much. Have a "hair" night! Invite ladies in your ward who are expert braid-ers, up-do-ers, and curl-ers, and ask those girls who always seem to have perfect hair to share what they do and how they do it! Let the girls practice on each other, or let them practice on themselves so they can learn how to do it for themselves! It's a fun way for the girls to interact with each other, and helps those who struggle with their hair, by giving them ideas, tips, and confidence to try something new.

There are some other ideas in this "Makeover Night" post!

*When you advertise this activity, you may want to put a note asking all the girls to come with freshly washed hair!

This is a play on the old Newlywed Game. It is great for a Priest/Laurel activity. We did this after the Priest/Laurel dinner. You draw names for the couples. Send the boy or girl out, then question the partner. They write their answers on a card and put it answer down on their lap. After the questions are all answered, the partner comes back in and sees if the answers match. When all the answers are given, the other partner leaves the room and the process begins again with different questions. Usually 3-5 questions per round is good. That way you can get through one round quickly and if you have enough partners, you can give everyone a chance to play.

Sample questions: Does "Billy" still sleep with a favorite stuffed toy? Does "Susie" sing like a rock star into her hairbrush while getting ready? What is "Bobby's" favorite food? What is "Katie's" favorite movie? And so on...

The winning couple gets a silly prize.

In February, we had a Laurel class activity where the Laurels invited the Priests to a "Date Night".

One of the Laurels made cute invites for the boys, and we had simple refreshments along the Valentine theme.

To open the activity, the youth played "Do You Love Your Neighbor?" and then we had a cute young-ish married couple from our stake come and talk about creative and fun ideas for dating. They handed out 13 little trinkets that represented a different idea for a date, which they would have the youth guess about, and then the speakers would explain and expand on the ideas. As they did that, they also inserted thoughts about keeping the standards and not pairing off, as well as interacted with the youth asking questions about what was difficult about trying to date. They also gave some etiquette tips, as well.

Our Laurels & Priests combined for a group date activity night. We decided to go M&M Bowling.

We went to the local bowling alley and before each person bowled, they had to pull an M&M out of the bag and follow these rules:

Blue: Eyes Closed

Green: Backward, between your legs

Orange: Sing a primary song while you bowl

Yellow: Righties use left hand, Lefties use right hand

Brown: Granny Style

Red: Ballerina Style

We especially loved watching the priest and YM leaders bowl ballerina style!!

The YW love to have makeover night. We invited a sister to come speak on the importance of caring for our bodies. She had some great quotes and talked about caring for our bodies, minds and spirits. Really good. Just about 10 minutes or so.

Then, we gave the YW this handout with home beauty tips. Inexpensive ways to care for their skin. We reminded them that they need to put moisture back in their skin with an inexpensive lotion or beauty cream.

The YW were then paired up and they did makeovers on one another. We had a hair station, a nail station and a makeup station.

For our hair station, we had a laptop set up with videos on different hairstyles. We used the videos found @ "Hairstyles for Girls." The LDS woman who owns this site is AMAZING and has a knack for explaining how to do hair. Check out her Facebook page, blog or Youtube Videos!

The budget was FREE and I think it was a hit! They have already asked to do another makeover night - this time mothers and daughters!

*Right-click to save the handout (pdf format) to your computer!

We planned a life-size game night. This was a lot of fun and much easier than I at first anticipated. We played a version of "Pretty Pretty Princess." Here's what we did.

What You Need

1. For each YW - 1 ring, 2 earrings, 1 bracelet, 1 necklace, 1 crown (inexpensive plastic party-type stuff)
2. One Mirror - hand mirror or mirror on an easel - any mirror
3. Carpet squares (get from local carpet store - donated or small cost)
4. Masking Tape
5. Magic Markers
6. One giant spinner or dice - we just made a spinner from poster board we had at home. I printed out a spinner arrow on card stock and attached with a brad and washer.

Before the Activity

1. We invited a sister in our ward to speak to the YW on the topic of divine nature and told her about the game we were playing so she understood it was princess oriented. She brought her 3-year-old daughter and both were dressed like princesses - it was awesome!
2. We purchased enough crowns, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings for each YW. We bought these online at orientaltrading.com and they were very inexpensive. You could also find them at a local party store if you have one in your area. Just cheap plastic jewelry and crowns.
3. We went to a local carpet store and picked up a lot of carpet squares/samples (we called around first and explained that we needed them for a church youth group and asked if they had any they could donate - they charged a small fee of about .30c/each). To figure out how many squares you need take the number of YW you have and multiply by 2 or 3 (depending on how large your group is and how spread out you want the spaces).
4. Make a giant spinner or dice - something they can use to determine the number of squares they will move on their turn.

Set Up That Night

1. The class presidency came early to set up. They put the carpet squares in a giant circle around the gym.
2. In the middle of the circle they set up a small table with a tablecloth on it. On top we placed all of the jewelry, the crowns and the mirror.
3. We wrote on masking tape with markers the instructions for each square (some YW wrote the instructions and some taped them on each square). The instructions will be: You get a necklace - You get an earring - You get a bracelet - You get a ring - You get your crown - Take an item of your choice - Put an item back... Make one or two sets of each of these (depending on how many carpet blocks you have - you might even need three sets). Then on the blank square (if any) we let the class presidency make up things for the YW to do. They wrote things like "Do a princess wave" "Sing your favorite Primary song" etc. Make sure every carpet square has instructions on it.
   

The Activity

1. Speaker first (she was awesome) and then we explained the rules. We wrote each YW's name on a piece of paper to keep track of what order they would spin and take their turn.
2. Each YW took their turn spinning and going around the squares doing whatever it said. They could NOT get their crown until they had all of the other jewelry.
3. Once they had all of their jewelry - ring, bracelet, two earrings and necklace (they don't get more than one of anything except 2 earrings) - they had to land on a crown square.
4. Once they landed on the crown square they got to go to the middle to get their crown.
5. When they put the crown on their head, they looked in the mirror and said, "I'm a pretty, pretty princess!"
6. We played until all YW received their crown.