September: Super Savvy Shopper

If you missed Septembers MOPS meeting you missed out on a ton of fun!  This month we focused on Super Savvy Shopping.  With the economy the way it is and with prices going up, everyone could use a few tips on making their dollar stretch.

We first started off by breaking up into five teams.  Each team was given a bag of items to come up with an outfit that was both fashionable and functional for today's busy moms.  The bag consisted of colorful tissue paper, a roll of toilet paper, and pink duct tape.  All of the teams had to pick a model, design the outfit and construct the outfit on the model before time was called.

The laughter filled the room as the ladies got busy making their fashionable and functional ensemble.  Once time was called the models gathered to walk the catwalk and strut their stuff.  These girls worked it!

The outfits were then described to show off their functionality.  We really have some creative ladies in this group!!!

Margaret Smith was our guest speaker.  She gave us many useful tips on how to save money.  

First step is to work on a budget and meal planning.

Next it was time for what we moms do best... BARGIN SHOPPING!  A few weeks ago an e-mail was sent out asking everyone to bring gently used clothes and accessories to donate.  As people arrived the tables soon filled up with all kinds of awesome clothes, shoes, belts, handbags, and jewelry.

Everyone broke into teams and were allowed to shop for 5 minutes grabbing whatever they wanted and only paying 25 cents per items.  We raised over $100 for Charity!

Everyone had a blast trying on and digging through the piles of donated items.  The money and the left over clothes were donated to The House of Ruth.  With the money raised, we are purchasing diapers and donating to the Always Hope Pregnancy Center.

August:You're Never "Just a Mom" We wear SO MANY HATS!

You're Never "Just a MOM"!

Wow!  What a way to start a new MOPS year!!!  Our first meeting we welcomed 60 ladies, 19 of which were new to MOPS.  It was so nice to see familiar faces as well as so many new ones.  This years theme is "Momology- the Art and Science of Mothering".  The tables were decorated with artist palettes, beakers with flowers and easels displaying the name of each table. 

As always we had some wonderful food to share and started off our meeting with some helpful information for the year ahead and a skit.  As mom's we wear many hats such as chauffeuring around our kids, to nursing boo boo's, to teachers teaching our kids the way.  The skit showed us how much we really do as moms on a day to day basis and gave us a way to find humor in it all.  

Since it was the first meeting to kick off the new MOPS year we played "Speed Friending".  Each table had a list of questions to ask of each of the ladies at their table.  Once the bell rang we had to move to another table to meet another group of ladies and ask the same questions.  What a great time we had learning new information about our friends old and new.  

For the art project we received a new box of crayons just as some of our children did on their first day of school.  We were able to doodle like kids.  It was so fun to see everyone getting creative. 

 Next MOPS will be September 24th.  As always we will meet at Hillcrest Baptist Fellowship Hall from 9-11:30.  Child Care will be provided by a loving staff on site.  Hope to see you there!