I’ve been promising to show and tell you the details of our church’s ladies’ luncheon from last weekend, so here we go. 🙂

In some ways I start thinking about the next luncheon right after the last one, but I don’t start really planning for it until after January. I like to have a theme built around a verse or thought from Scripture, and usually after praying about and often after a brainstorming session, something will come to mind, sometimes a few ideas. After a while something crystallizes and I feel sure this is the theme for the year.

This year it didn’t happen quite like that. I saw this plaque in Cracker Barrel:

I just loved the little house with the heart in it, and it reminded me of Psalm 101:2b: “I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.” And I thought, “Hey! That might make a good theme for the ladies’ luncheon!”

I eventually went back and got this for Mittu, because she uses red and black in some of the rooms in her house, and, of course, because of what it said.

And the more I thought and prayed about it, the more “A Perfect Heart” from Psalm 101:2b seemed like a perfect theme. It’s applicable to everyone no matter whether they’re married or single, have children or not. Home can be the place where we most easily let down our guard, but it is the place we most need to walk closely with the Lord. Yet as we look at our hearts, we can get discouraged because we’re so far from perfect: but that’s just a reminder of how we need God’s grace  and need to depend on Him moment by moment for the strength, wisdom, and everything else we need to walk with Him. Thankfully He does not give up on us when we fail and fall, but He forgives us when we confess our faults to Him and promises His grace to sustain us.

Practically, I wanted to use that little black house with a heart in it as a motif. I even photocopied the plaque before giving it to Mittu so I could remember what it looked like and possibly even use the house outline as a pattern. I wanted to get away from my usual penchant for pastel pink and Victoriana  because I know not everyone likes that, plus I wanted it to be different and more contemporary. I’ve seen a few weddings using red and black as their colors, and I have also seen that in some new brides’ decorating schemes, so I decided to use red, black, and white.

At our April ladies’ meeting, we made little plaques with black and white patterned scrapbooking paper as backgrounds and a little black house with a red heart and the theme verse. We used black and white patterned ribbon for hangers, and some of that as well as black  pre-cut decorative edgings I found at Hobby Lobby for trim. We used a flat 5 x 7″ canvas in the art section of Hobby Lobby and Michael’s — they were about a dollar apiece at Michael’s and a little less at Hobby Lobby. It was so fun to see what the different ladies came up with using the different papers and ribbon. Here are a few of them:

I ended up not using the little house from the plaque as a template — I wasn’t sure if that might be illegal or unethical. You can find some basic house shapes like this one online, but I looked through my Cricut cartridges to see if I had any that would do and ended up using the little church design from the Winter Wonderland cartridge and cutting off the steeple. 🙂 There were other little houses on the cartridge, but I liked that one best. (On a side note, I didn’t buy the cartridge just for this project — I already had it — and I didn’t pay that price: they frequently go on sale half-price here.) I also used the “blackout” feature (where it just cuts out the outer edges as a solid) of one of the snowflake designs for the background behind the verse. It was the first time I had really used the Cricut machine my generous hubby had given me some time ago — and now I want to use it all the more! With it, I was able to get everything cut out beforehand, so that at the meeting all we had to do was glue things together. If we’d had to have ladies cutting out things, it probably would have taken us more than one session.

For the centerpieces, I got some 6 x 6″ boxes, covered them with white card stock, and used the door and window from this template, enlarging them to fit the house. I found several neat patterns online for making a house with a folded design, but there was no way I could print them big enough — the biggest piece of card stock is 12 x 12, so by the time you get four walls from a design meant to be folded into a house, that allows for only 3 x 3″ walls, and that was too tiny. And folding is not one of my talents — origami, paper airplanes, etc. just don’t come out right when I fold them. So after a lot of thought and searching, it seemed easiest to do it as I did it.

This is all the little houses out to dry after being glued, and I thought they looked like those little subdivisions where all the houses are too close together and look alike. 🙂

I took photos of the step-by-step process if anyone wants me to do a tutorial, but basically it was just a matter of gluing the card stock on, kind of trimming and gluing as I went. A glue stick worked fine on the flat surfaces, but Tacky glue worked better on anything that folded or curved over an edge.

I had originally wanted to embellish them a little more, something like this — flower boxes at the windows, trim around the roofline, etc. But the day I had a friend coming over to work on them, I got sick and had to cancel, and only had time to just glue doors and windows on. I think it probably turned out better that way — with all the other things on the table, it would have looked too busy.

Here are some of the tables:

We used a 12 x 12″ piece of black card stock and then patterned red scrapbooking paper as the base (I was going to use solid red, but they had such pretty red and black patterns I couldn’t resist!) (Can you tell this anti-red person is softening a bit? 🙂 ) I had planned to use geraniums as the flower, but one store only had pink ones, and another only had a few, and they were in humongous containers. So I looked around for other red flowers, and these petunias were just right. We put a little plastic base underneath the plants before putting them into the houses so the dirt and moisture wouldn’t leak (Wal-Mart had them for 35 cents) and cushioned it all around inside the house with Spanish moss. Then we put the favors around the houses, alternated red and black napkins on white tablecloths, and put the program in the center of the place setting. The caterer brought the plates when she came. At the end, one lady from each table who had a particular number taped under her chair got to take the centerpiece home.

Some weeks ago on a Friday’s Fave Five I mentioned how excited I was to find something online to use as favors for the little girls. Somehow the idea came to mind (the Lord dropped it there, I am sure) to have something for them to color, because there is a bit of waiting time while everyone goes through the serving lines. A quick online search for “house coloring pages” yielded a wealth of materiel. I could have either gone with different styles of houses on each page or different rooms in the house. I went with the latter from this site, with a house and the theme verse on the front cover, and a different room of the house with a corresponding verse on each page in side. There were just exactly enough pictures to go with the pages. Here are a couple of them:

I asked a teenager before the luncheon to take a basket around with the coloring books and a small box of crayons to any table with a child and pass them out.

Ok, that’s more than enough about the decorating!

The most important part is the message or devotional. Usually our speakers are from an area within an hour or so, sometimes a pastor’s wife from another church, sometimes someone from the Christian college. This year one of our missionaries was based in Georgia while on furlough. When she and her husband came to our church during furlough, she shared a little about their area of ministry before her husband preached, and it was obvious that she was a born teacher and speaker. I began to wonder if she might be able to come. She was far enough away to need overnight accommodations, so I asked a lady in our church who had hosted them before if she could do so again if they came, as we don’t have enough in our ladies’ ministry budget for hotel accommodations. The Lord worked it all out so that this lady and her two daughters were able to come: her oldest daughter had to be at the University for training for a summer mission team on Monday, anyway. She was wonderful! My impressions of her being a born teacher were reinforced when she brought a stack of visual aids and had an activity to get everyone involved. She brought a lot of things out of the chapter I hadn’t noticed, and, by the way, I love it and much prefer it when speakers take the verse in context as she did rather than running off with it into who knows where.  She basically took the “I wills” (“I will sing of mercy and judgment, ” “I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way,” etc.) and “I won’ts” (“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes,” etc.) from the chapter as pictures of what having a perfect heart within our home looks like. I did not think to ask her permission to mention her name or put her picture on my blog, so that’s the only reason I am not doing so.

Then, one of the most exciting parts was a special presentation we made. There is a lady in our church who makes beauitful little dolls, and she put a few in our missions closet. When this family was here before, they asked of she made any in different colors. They said the little girls in their neighborhood in Ghana loved to come over and play with their girls’ dolls, putting them in the little sling-type thing that the African moms carried their babies in on their backs. So I asked this lady if she could make a few for us to give to them, thinking she might be able to make 3 to 5. She made 13! And at the end of the luncheon we were able to present them to our speaker. Here they are on my couch beforehand.

She and her daughters were delighted with them.

On a personal level, it was neat for me to have both my mother-in-law and my daughter-in-law with me. Until my mil moved here, I always had to go to these things alone. I thought I’d have to talk her into it a little more, because she doesn’t usually like to go to much, but though she didn’t look excited about the prospect at first, she agreed. We had gotten her a pretty new dress for Mother’s Day that had a black background and red flowers, and she was so tickled to wear it to the luncheon. She commented about it all morning. And then Mittu wasn’t originally planning to come, but I didn’t know that at first — I think we forget sometimes how intimidating this kind of thing can be to a new person at church. But I asked her if she would mind sitting with Grandma and helping with whatever she might need help with, since I would have to be up and down, and she did so. They both ended up having a wonderful time. My husband had planned to get a picture of the three of us, but forgot about it in trying to get his mom in (he picked her up and took her home since I had to be there early and stay late). I wished I had thought of that, too!

But here is a picture of me holding one of the little dolls:

That little pin was made by Lizzie. I already had the black and white dress for years, but I knew I had seen that pin in Lizzie’s store, and thought it would set it off nicely, and I’d be color coordinated with the decorations, LOL! Plus I can use it at Christmas time or whenever else I might be inspired to wear red. Here is a closer view:

For those who might be interested in the other house-related ideas for centerpieces or favors, some of the links I found are here.

Overall everything went very well — the Lord blessed and enabled all along the way.

And though I enjoyed it — I am glad it is over!