Competition Leads to a Great Party

Today, as far as my #write31days series goes, I'll be erring a little more heavily on the side of the 'story' than on the 'dress' that I've promised for each day this month, but that's because I've a great tale to tell. Don't worry, I have maintained my goal of wearing dresses/skirts 4 days so far, and you can see what I wore today at the bottom of this post.

So, here's what happened. In late August, I heard an announcement that our church was going to have a Men's Day Out. They'd go out hiking to a remote beach and have a barbecue and ride on boats. My first thought was: Aww, sounds fun! My second thought was...wait a minute...if they're having a Men's Day Out, we need a Women's Day to balance things out...and it needs to be awesome, even better than whatever the men are gonna do! It may not surprise you to note that I'm frequently referred to as competitive. 

Now, to me, hiking to a remote beach and having a barbecue is just as fun for a women's outing as it is for a men's outing, if we have to have segregated outings at all, but I wanted the event for women to be as inclusive as possible--I didn't want to plan a highly active event which might exclude the elderly or those who aren't as physically able as others. I came up with the idea of party involving a variety of stations--something that would hopefully appeal to everyone, but would give people opportunities to try or do things they were interested in. 

I themed the event around "Hands and Feet", and provided welcome bags at the door that had information for the night's program, a few treats, and supplies for the nametag game we were playing as a way to help make sure that people introduced themselves to people they didn't know.

We ended up with five stations:

1. Manicures. This was an obvious go-to for me, as I was trained to give manicures in the states, and they're a pretty popular pampering sort of treat.

2. Canvas Painting. I bought little canvas boards and acrylic paint, and offered the project idea of using washi tape to block off patterns or words and then the ladies could paint around their washi tape pattern, and pull the tape off when they were done. I gave the project idea so it would be less intimidating for those without much art experience, but those who were more comfortable with painting took their paintings to a whole different level.

3. Henna Art Tattoos. My sister Rebekah is a talented henna artist, so this was also a very natural station for me to include. She was kept very busy the whole evening adding her designs to a few dozen arms and ankles.

4. Papercrafting/Card Making. We provided a plethora of card stock, envelopes, and scrapbook supplies and invited women to craft their own unique greeting cards to take home and gift to friends and family.

5. Sugar Cookie Decorating. We provided circular sugar cookies, 3 colors of icing, lots of different sprinkles, and boxes to take decorated cookies home in.

Besides all that, we also had plenty of yummy snacks, so even if ladies weren't in the mood for beauty treatments or crafting, they could sit around with good food and have conversations. We ended up with about 30 ladies involved in the event, including my small team who put everything together (my family always gets roped into my creative ideas...). It was supposed to be ladies only, but Angel came along to help with moving tables and carrying heavy boxes, and ended up being ordered to stay to serve as event photographer. He did not serve as photo editor as I'm not sure I could trust him with that responsibility, given his new 'photoshop' habit.

And finally, the dress. Which, today, is actually a skirt. And I was too lazy to get a photo done today, but I happened to be wearing the exact same combo as I was wearing in this post, so I'll use the photo from a few months ago, even though I didn't actually go to the beach today:

Which brings our live dress count to - Current: 3 Past: 2