Pumpkin Painting Party

Sometimes life feels like it moves at lightening speed.  You start getting really great at keeping up your blog and then all of a sudden weeks have gone by.  Its crazy how full our life can feel at times but I'm so thankful for each little moment, its all definitely a gift.  I have the pleasure each week of leading a small group of high school girls with a sweet friend.  We have just loved getting to know them, studying God's word and encouraging one another in our walk with Christ.  To help us have time to relax together and chat about life a little and get to know each other better we like to do something different and fun each month.  This month we decided on a pumpkin painting party.

Seriously, our students are the best. They are so welcoming and encouraging to one another which in turn is such an encouragement to me.  We are so grateful for these people in our life and I'm glad I get to do things like paint pumpkins with people I love.   

The first part of a pumpkin painting party is of course, picking out your pumpkin.  I love walking thru a pumpkin patch and seeing how each pumpkin is unique and different and then so beautiful all assembled together as one.  One pumpkin is great but a multitude of pumpkins makes a beautiful statement.  What a great reminder of the body of Christ.  We are each uniquely and wonderfully made but we are also made to do life together - to be united as one in the name of Christ.  And how beautiful and powerful it is when we are.

The next part of a pumpkin painting party is posing with your pumpkins and taking lots of photos together.  This is an essential step, do not leave this one out or your pumpkin painting experience will be ruined.

It was such a beautiful fall day so we opted to paint outside.  I grabbed a couple of tarps for the tables and some painting supplies.  I picked up a few paint sample sizes from Lowes which we found we liked the best for actual full painting coverage.  I also had some chalkboard paint - because you can never have enough chalkboard stuff and then some craft paints.  I also had various paint brush sizes, a few cups of water for cleaning your brush and some paper plates for paint usage.

It was really cool to see how everyone chose to paint their pumpkin, we have a talented bunch.  We also had a mini lesson on perfection built right in.  It was a struggle to want your pumpkin to be executed to absolute perfection but in the end we had to learn to embrace the imperfections and enjoy the process.

Pumpkin lessons are the best.

Hope you guys are enjoying the fall, enjoying the process and embracing imperfections while you are doing life together as one.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  Romans 15:5-7

Clothing Swap How-To

Ok, so this is the last day I will post about the clothing swap, I promise -but can't you tell that we enjoyed it so much?  As fun as it was, it was a lot of work.  So I wanted to just share a little bit about how everything came together in case anyone is thinking of hosting a clothing swap of their own in the future. 

So in case you don't know how a clothing swap works, participants bring in unwanted clothing (but still in good condition) to swap with other participants.  Now, we have a fairly large student ministry and I knew there would be some students who would not be able to bring in anything - so I made it clear in the beginning that everyone was invited and could participate no matter if you brought in clothing or not.  For me, I thought this was a ministry to others in a lot of ways - one of them being a great way for girls to give what they have to others who don't have as much.

Now, trying to get teenage girls to bring in anything ahead of time is almost impossible - but was doable.  We received most of the clothing a few days before hand and then several donations the day of (some even minutes before we started) so it was important to be organized and to have people there who know what the plan is.  We had organized and sorted sections of clothing so we could easily sort through a big bag as it was brought to us.

Some needed items for a clothing swap: 

1.  Clothing Racks (not completely necessary but it was really nice with items like dresses).  We found a couple of really cheap ones at Target (for $9.99) - and they were cheaply made but served their purpose.  We also borrowed some clothing racks from another ministry at our church.  

2.  Hangers - we asked for donations and got a ton, someone also clued me in on freecycle, which is a local online recycling community (there seems to be lots of these all over the US)

3.  Tables - pretty obvious

4. Shopping Bags - we just asked our adult leaders if they had any to donate, we ended up getting a ton of really nice ones with the handles 

5.  Lint Roller - there were just a few items that needed a little roll

6. Some sort of dressing rooms (we just used the girls restrooms since it had plenty of space and mirrors).

Other items that would help:

1.  Table Cloths - just to make things pretty (we just used plastic ones that we saved from a previous event, so no cost there).

2.  Clothing pins (to help pin up clothing items like skirts to racks)

3.  We also made signs, really just for fun and for the girls to quickly find what they were looking for

It's important too to remember that not all clothing will be taken so you need to have a charity or ministry in mind that you want to donate the remaining clothing to.

Another thing we did was add a check out table.  Mainly for us to count items, bag the clothing for the girls and also to break the girls up into their groups for the discussion sessions.  We gave them each a "receipt" or ticket that had a group number on it - much easier than trying to get them back together and divide them up.

After all of the swapping was completed the girls broke up into their groups where they were lead in different discussions based on modesty.  We talked about outward modesty, inward modesty and how God makes old things new.  The girls talked together, prayed together and had time to reflect and spend quiet time with God - the most important part of the night.

So that was our clothing swap journey - it was well worth all of the work and I do think we will do it again.  Thank so much for taking this little journey with us the past couple of days!