DC Temple Lights and Kent's Stafford Festival of Lights

 Kent and I had a couple of times to see the DC Temple Christmas lights early in the month.

These first pictures were when we went to work on our Friday night shift. This photo shows us more clearly,

 but this one is better to show all the white lights on the trees leading to the Temple.

I love this picture because of the dusky lighting in the background and because it shows the stained glass on either side of the entry way.

I took up my Bible study friends to see the Temple lights on the Monday after the Nativity exhibit.

 These are all the lights around the Visitor's Center. We attended the nightly concert they had in the auditorium.

This tree was particularly full of lights. 

 It seems like every year the lights are a little bit different.

 This view was taken from the parking lot of the visitor's center.

I love this one with the temple surrounded by the colorful Christmas lights.

Each year Kent's Christmas lights display is a little bit different, too. This year he hired someone to put lights around the second floor roof lines.

This year he was inspired by the nativity exhibit to purchase a small vinyl nativity to put in the front of our house.

 This is the sign at the entrance to our neighborhood (which is on our property.)

Here it is again when we had an unusual light snowfall on the 9th of December.

 This is the sidewalk and gate on the left side of the house down to the backyard.

Here it is again in the snow.

Here's the view on the other side of the gate.

These are the light flowers Kent made to go with his "flower garden" theme. 

 These are the trees to the right of the house closest to the road.

 The same trees in the snow from a bit farther away. I love the lights on the little bridge!

Both the lighted fence swags and the azalea hill lights in the back yard (in the distance) were new additions for 2017.

Here's a close up of the azalea hill. It takes Kent several days in the month of November for him to put up all the lights, but they really are some of the prettiest lights in our area.

Putting on a Community Nativity Event

In the spring the Stake President asked me to be in charge of a community nativity exhibit to be held on two days in December at our church building. I said "yes", little realizing what I was getting myself in for!! It was a huge job and took literally hundreds of hours of my time to take care of all the many details.

This was the professionally produced flyer and small postcards that we distributed to the wards to advertise the event.

I wanted to have black nativity scene silhouettes to put on the walls in the hallway of the church building.

Kent and I went over to the church to trace them on the back of the paper. (It was white on the back and black on the front.) Other people cut them out for me.

At the last minute Kent and other men in our ward (the missionaries are pictured) ended up building the stanchions that would keep people from getting too close to the displays. They were made from PVC pipe and put into wooden stands-also built by men in our ward-to hold them up.

Here are a couple of shots of what our family room looked like the day before we were taking things to the church to set up.

We dubbed it "Nativity Event Central."

This is the only picture of me that was taken during the 40 hours I was at the church--setting up and staying at the exhibit for the entire time it was open.

 
It actually snowed (rare for December in Virginia) on the second day the exhibit was open, but the roads were pretty clear. The exhibit was open from 7 to 9pm on Friday and from 2 to 8pm on Saturday.

Kent cut out the wood for the "Welcome" signs and I used my cutting machine to cut the letters out of vinyl, which I put on the boards. I put one on either side of the building,

 Here are how the silhouettes looked on the walls. I'd ordered the paper online and it was flimsier than I expected it to be.

 These camel silhouettes turned out to be the largest.

 This was the easiest one to cut out and put up! We used painter's tape to put them on the walls.

This view shows how big they were--about four feet high. They were pretty fragile.

I made two wreaths with gold ribbon and added some gold leaves. 

This picture doesn't really capture the magnitude of the pile of glitter that was on the floor after I made the wreath!! My clothes were covered with glitter, too.

Fortunately, I'd bought two gold wreaths, too. I put the four gold wreaths  on each of the doors into the cultural hall.  

 Here are views of one side of the room.

I divided the space by continents.

 The area above was Central America.

This was the Asia and Hawaii section.

Opposite side view of the Asia section.

 We had display tables in the middle of the cultural hall, too.

 Some of the larger sets were displayed on the round tables in the middle.

I also had one table with only white and glass nativities, which was very pretty.

We hung twinkle lights up above and twenty-four large paper stars hanging from them for decorations.

 This was the Africa and Middle East section, which ended up being a bit sparse.Not surprisingly, I brought my nativity set from Nigeria and it was the only one.

 This photo gives a good view of the stanchions Kent made. The cloth is cafe curtains that I ordered on line and had to unpick a seam on all of them so they would fit on the PVC pipes.

This was our North America section.

It was by far the fullest section, though technically I think many of them were made in China! 

 I displayed the nativity cross stitch that I made many years ago,

and also this nativity wall quilt I made.

I did one whole table of nativities from Germany, and brought many of my own things to display.

 This was our Peru section. A sister is our ward is from Peru and brought most of them, though the one in the boat is mine that I bought when we were in Peru in April.

This is a close up of the Asia section. The Samurai nativity in the back was one of my favorites.

The Relief Society room was set up with cookies and water for refreshments.

There was also a children's room with nativity themed activities for the kids

 This cool backdrop was painted by a talented sister in our ward. The kids could dress up and take pictures in front of the back drop.

This was the craft the kids could make in the children's room.

I don't have a picture of it, but an idea I saw on pinterest that I did was to make an "I Spy" sheet for people to look for different figures in the nativities. It said "Find a nativity where the stable is an igloo", for example. People really seemed to like that.

I was physically exhausted by the time it was all done. I didn't get as much support as I'd hoped to set up, which is one reason I spent so many hours at the church from Wednesday evening to Saturday evening. That's seems to be the story of my life, expecting people to show up to help and being disappointed because they don't! 

I received many compliments on how it all turned out. Fifteen nonmembers that I invited actually came, which is one reason why I stayed there the whole time it was open. I really feel like I received inspiration from the Lord to help me, since I'd never done anything like it before.