She Shines

Well, after running 200 miles an hour through last week and being unable to record or edit a podcast, we finally arrived at episode 200! Can you believe this!!?!?!? For those of you who hang out with us on Spill the Beans each week, we thank you for spending extra time with us. We hope we make you laugh and think...and you feel encouraged when you're done!

Here's episode TWO HUNDRED!!!

Listen here

I wanted to give you a peek at the event our church had on Saturday! I will tell you that I don't have a huge variety of pictures, nor are any of mine great quality, because I took all of them ON THE FLY as I ran from one thing to the next. We'd planned to have a photographer there, but it ended up not working out, so we'll be thankful for what we were able to capture and not stress about the rest, right?

Our church tries to have an event for the women in the spring and again in the fall. We've pretty much been working on this one since our spring event ended in May. All during the time we planned this event, we had four transitions in team members, so I just have to say that I am crazy proud of our group for creating an event that seems to have been very much enjoyed by the ladies who attended.

Of course we didn't do everything perfectly, and of course there are things we can learn for future events, but when I sit back and look at our time frame and our team transitions, I could just squeal with joy for how beautifully everyone came together and worked to make a memorable event!

We called this one She Shines, and the purpose was threefold. On one hand, we wanted to present an afternoon that would allow the women to enjoy fellowship and food. (Aren't those things just expected at a women's event?) Secondly, we wanted to continue informing and educating everyone about what we offer in the realm of women's ministry, and finally, we wanted to showcase the works and talents of women within our congregation and community who have businesses or products as their livelihood or side jobs.

That's a lot to ask out of one afternoon, isn't it?

Despite fall being such a busy time for so many with sports...and despite fall break landing on that weekend for most of the schools in our city and county, we had somewhere between 100 and 125 women show up for the afternoon, and we were just thrilled with that!

The girls on our team who were in charge of food and decorations did an amazing job. We didn't serve a meal, but we served what I liked to call "hearty snacks," and if anyone went away hungry...well...I'm not sure how. The decorations were just simple and lovely and so fall. (Most of our front porch landed in the church commons for decorations. Ha!)

Here are some peeks at the room setup:

 This was the food table. Isn't that ladder in the middle cute? It had boards across it to hold food!

Ryan's cousin (the one I've been working with on the jewelry project) was one of the vendors for the shopping time, and we collaborated on a project together. It was so fun to see it all set up! She designed some leather bracelets and I wrote devotional pieces to go with each one!

The ladies all arrived around 2 p.m. and spent the first part of the time eating and talking together:

Then I served as the emcee and had a panel of women share about their experiences being part of our ministries:

And then we set them free to shop!

We had door prizes and all kinds of fun! We're going to call She Shines a great day!