Relief Society Enrichment Night: An Evening of Stress Relief

In our church we have a women's group called Relief Society.

Once a month we get together for about an hour or so in the evening for something called Enrichment Night or and Enrichment Activity.
These Enrichment nights (or activities) are to help us come together as women, enjoy each other's company, and hopefully learn something new. 

As of a few months ago, I am the one in charge of coming up with these activities.

I was tossing around a few ideas for our activity for the month of September, but I couldn't really decide what I wanted to do.
After some debating I came up with a theme "Stress Relief".
Maybe it's because I was getting so stressed. Hah!
Anyways...
It took a little bit of prep work, but I feel like it actually came together really well.
I'll break it down for you to show you the different 'stations' we had and what planning was needed.

To start out the evening we had an opening prayer.

After the prayer I took a minute to talk to the ladies about stress.

I had read an article that emphasized that everyone has to deal with stress. We don't want to eliminate stress, (we can't anyways), we do want to learn how to manage stress though and reduce it's effect on us.

There are quite a few ways of reducing stress, and I briefly mentioned those.

They are:

Exercising/breathing

 Meditation/prayer

Being creative

Channeling energy

Taking a bath

etc.

So those are the ones we focused on.

I started out by leading all of the ladies, for a few minutes, in deep breathing and some light stretching. I felt that it was a good way to get us loose and relaxed.

We then split up into different stations. I didn't want to allot a certain amount of time for the stations, I wanted people to be able to move around when they were ready, and it ended up having a really good flow.

One station was the intricate coloring pages.

This goes under the 'Being creative' category.

The supplies for this table were coloring pages and markers.

I had googled 'adult coloring pages' and printed off two different sets of coloring pages so people had a choice. The markers we used were just fine tip markers.

Another station was DIY Stress Balls

This goes under the 'Channeling energy' category.

The supplies for this station were a few empty water bottles, a few funnels, a few 1/4 c. measuring cups, balloons, a permanent marker and powdered sugar.

I also wrote up the directions on a piece of paper so people could follow that.

Basically to make the stress ball you scoop out about 1/4 c. (or more if you want a bigger stress ball) of the powdered sugar and pour it into the water bottle through the funnel. Place the balloon opening over the bottle opening and make sure it's on all the way. Flip the bottle over and hit it until the sugar empties into the balloon. Remove the balloon from the bottle, tie the balloon closed, and draw a little face on your stress ball :)

*This one did end up a little bit messy, but nothing we couldn't wipe up.

Also, we learned that the more of the balloon you can get onto the bottle, the easier it is to get the sugar in.

The next station was DIY Bath Salts.

 Obviously this one goes with taking a bath :)
The supplies for this station were mason jars with lids, Epsom salt, baking soda, food coloring, plastic spoons (for stirring), 1 c. measuring cups, 1/2 c. measuring cups, paper bowls, chalkboard labels, liquid chalk markers, and essential oils.
I had announced in our weekly Relief Society meetings on Sundays that we would would have Lavender, Peppermint, and Lemon oils on hand but people were more than welcome to bring their own if they wanted, and we had quite a few people who did.
On the table I had printed out instructions for making the bath salts so people could follow that.
(I have a copy of the instructions that you can print out here)
*A few tips we learned were that our bowls were a little small, so not all of the salt and everything could fit into said bowl all at once. We learned that if people wanted to do just one all over color, it was easier to just pour the salt, baking soda, food coloring, and essential oil straight into the mason jar, put the lid on, and just shake it all together.
If they wanted to cut the recipe in half so they could do two different colors, then that ended up fitting in the bowl because it was less of an amount all at once. So they used the bowl to mix the salt, baking soda, oil, and the first color and then they used a separate bowl to make the salts with the second color, and then they layered the two colors in their mason jar.
Does that all make sense...?

The last table we had was where the chocolate fondue was set up.

Chocolate is just in a category all its own.

This was actually a mini chocolate fountain, but for some reason we couldn't get the chocolate to run through, so we improvised and just had a fondue instead.

The supplies for this table were chocolate chips, vegetable oil, large marshmallows, strawberries, napkins, and toothpicks.

I think this is the table I was at most of the night ha ha ha

And that's it!

Like I said, it was really fun and I was pleased with the final product.

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything!