Relief Society Birthday Dinner and Green Party

March is the month I put on two parties, one at the church for the Relief Society Birthday Dinner and one at home for our annual St. Patrick's day "Green Party." 

The theme for this year's RS activity was "What's Your Story?" and we focused on family history.

I recently bought a spring-y looking tablecloth with yellow and pink flowers, and decided to pull my color scheme for the dinner from it. I found some pretty clipart online to use for the invitation.

This picture is mostly to show the tablecloth.

I used my wooden paint sticks to create a white picket fence. I had help with painting them white, and Kent put them together for me. I think they turned out very cute, and made pink and yellow tissue paper flowers along the bottom. The lights on both sides of the room  had tufts of yellow, pink and white tulle between the bulbs.

I used pictures I had of my ancestors on the walls in between the fences, and on the tables near the centerpieces.  Others also brought photos to put on the tables.

On the tables I used the matching cloth napkins as fabric under the silk flower centerpieces. A friend in the ward made the centerpieces for me using flowers I'd given her. Some of the flowers were ones I had from Adri's wedding ten years ago, so I was happy to repurpose them!

I used my milk bottles again, with a yellow and pink them. That's tulle ribbon wrapped around them, with small, individually made organza flowers on each one. We had pink and regular lemonade, as well as pink and yellow paper straws.

I found pretty floral napkins at Party City that matched the theme. The little books were given to the sisters to start writing their personal histories.

For our program we had the Primary activity girls sing "Family History, I am Doing It", and then had a few sisters from the ward share stories of their ancestors.

I wish this photo also had the yellow plates we also used, as well as the pink ones, but I guess I should be happy I have a picture of the food at all! The menu was chicken pasta salad, creamy strawberry jello, spinach salad, homemade dinner rolls and cupcakes.

I made the cupcakes and found yellow, white and pink polka dot cupcake liners to match the color scheme. The yellow cupcakes were lemon flavored, the white were coconut, and the pink were cherry chip. All with buttercream frostings of the same flavors. 

I didn't get as many close ups of all the fun details of the decorations since never have enough help with set up, and consequently I run out of time to take pictures. 

We had a very good turn out, with almost not enough place settings (I set up for forty, which has been plenty in the past).  I think it's because the activity was on an evening of a snow day with no school, and the sisters were anxious to get out of the house! 

Now on to the next party--

This year I had enough of the "GREEN" words cut out from previous years' invitations that I didn't have to make any new ones, I just printed the inside with this year's date on it.

One advantage of doing this every year is that I have all the supplies and don't vary too much.

This year's food wasn't as green as in previous years, but was still a good variety. I made the spinach crepes again this year, and a grasshopper pie.

Green mint M&M's are a staple menu item for the green party!!

This year I invited my Bible study friends. The Regers and Farrells weren't able to come, but we had fun with the Smiths, Propts and Mammarellas. Karen gave me a scarf to wear so we'd all have shamrock scarves for the photo. We had a great time!

Here we are playing the green Jeopardy game. This year we played men against the women.

One thing I did new this year was to put the questions into plastic pouches so it would be easier to switch out the questions and the amount of points they're worth, or to add a new question. That seems to happen almost every year, and now it will be easier to do it.
I gave out little treat bags to everyone as they left, but didn't get a picture of them. They were little green bags with green tissues, wintergreen lifesavers and Irish spring soap in them.