Enrichment Night You Are One In A Melon

For over a year I’ve served in a calling in my church I’ve always dreamed of. I am the Relief Society Meeting Coordinator…or what I still call the Enrichment Leader. It’s something I was asked to do and I do it in my own time and don’t get paid for it. Doesn’t sound too appealing, but I LOVE it!
I get to organize uplifting meetings once a month for the sisters of my congregation. For August we had our second annual dinner in celebration for those who set a goal to read any or all articles from The Ensign April Conference Edition.

I knew this was coming up at the beginning of the year so I was on the look out for a fun theme. If you know me, you know it’s hard for me to just throw a dinner. A theme always make everything better! When I saw Sara’s from Tell Love and Chocolate “You’re One In A Melon” watermelon themed party, it was love at first site!

A super fun theme for a LDS Relief Society dinner or enrichment night! You're One In A Melon watermelon theme is perfect for summer. | mynameissnickerdoodle.com

Make sure to check out her site for the official “how to” but, here’s how I implemented it on a tight budget for 50 women in a boring church gym…

First let me say that I had great help from the board members I work with! I have some pretty stellar ladies who go with my crazy ideas and are super hard workers. Like, seriously!

Okay, back to the details. I had less than $200 to work with and that was for decorations, food and dessert. I used card stock as the main source for the decoration like Sara did for her party. Card stock is expensive now (I remember when it was $.25!) so watch for the sales. I picked mine up at Hobby Lobby when it was 50% off.

A super fun theme for a LDS Relief Society dinner or enrichment night! You're One In A Melon theme is perfect for summer. | mynameissnickerdoodle.com

Typically we use the large round tables for dinner, but I thought it would be fun to do something different and use rows of the long tables. I picked up white plastic table cloths from Walmart for $1.00 each. Then we used a jumbo Sharpie marker to mark the black ‘seeds’ on the tablecloths.

I also picked up the pink plates from Walmart. I think you can find 24 plates for $1.00 in the party section.

We were having two sisters share their experiences they had while taking on the reading challenge. I created a little backdrop for them using a paper garland I cut and sewed together. I also copied her sign (which she has a printable for) on some large paper I already had on hand.

I created a second sign for a little back drop for the table. Along with that second sign I created hanging garland using Sara’s tutorial. It really didn’t take a lot of time once I got going on it.

We wanted to make this a lighter meal since it’s still blazing hot in Texas! We served Southwestern Chicken Salad Wraps, watermelon (duh!) and some chips. There a few ladies with food aversions so we also had some wrap filling alone along with some baby spinach they could make a little salad with.

You can barely see them, but with all of the scrap paper I had I made little watermelon picks for the wraps. Adorable! I also used up my scraps by simply punching out different sized circles for some confetti for the table. In hind sight, I should have cut those circles in half to make watermelon confetti! Oh well, it was still cute!

I’ve learned in this calling these sisters love a cute straw! So of course I and a friend stockpiled a few of our Ikea straws from the beginning of summer.

When you pick a theme, you’ve got to just go with it. Earlier this summer Libbie Summers shared her version of refreshing water so, of course I had to incorporate that!

We had Swig Style Sugar Cookies for dessert. I’ll be honest, by the time I got around to decorating the cookies, I was pooped and running really behind. They aren’t as cute as I had envisioned, but they still tasted fantastic!

We stayed under our budget and I think did pretty well with everything. The sisters really seemed to like it!

When I was planning all of this, my husband was kind of giving me the side eye and was curious why I was going to all the effort. At one point, I had that thought myself. But, then it hit me. As grown women, when do we ever get a themed party thrown just for us?! Why not make it special for my friends and fellow sisters of my faith. We all deserve it and if at least makes one person feel special then it’s worth it to me!