Fall Festival

I just wanted to put down the finer points of the PTA Fall Festival before the sieve is empty. The Fall Festival is a free carnival-like party at our school given in thanks for all the support of our PTA fundraiser. This year we ran with a pirate theme so the kids could dress up. It was October 30th from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. If you have pics email them to me and I will add them to my blog.

Some of our PTA mommies that have absolutely nothing better to do on an afternoon than plan a shindig for hundreds of people.

We ran five game booths, 1 craft booth, and the ever popular DJ NIX (who will be having a baby and won't be able to be at our Spring Carnival). We also served free chili for the whole family, a bake sale, and sold school T-shirts.

Our games were:

Bowling for Skulls - 6 2-liter soda bottles covered with skulls and a b-ball, Eyeballs Everywhere - red plastic cups duct taped to the bottom of a small kiddie pool and ping pong balls colored like eyeballs,

Walk the Plank - a balance beam that the kids had to walk down and back (I was skeptical but BLEE loved this one the most and said that it was very challenging),

Trolling for Treasure - fish pond,

Creepy Crawly (?) - cooked spaghetti noodles with plastic spider rings.

Our craft booth was a coloring contest. It worked out really great and kept kids busy. We gave out Starbursts for the top three pictures in 4 and under, 5-7, and 8 and up groupings. We had planned tootsie pop spiders, but couldn't find the pipe cleaners. I choose to do the coloring next year too.

We spent $25 on the orange punch from McDonald's - 24 gallons ($8 dollars off regular price). They check out their 10 gallon igloo and seriously JP was busy, let's never do a 5 gal. We did do a 5 gallon igloo for water (full time job). We opened 36 1-gallon cans of Chili served with tortilla chips (two or three boxes ?) and sprinkled with cheese (20lbs) - $350 (including some cups, bowls, plates (bake sale) and tootsie rolls for booth prizes).

We paid the lunch ladies to serve the chili and DJ NIX to do her thing ($$$ WELL SPENT on both parts). I don't believe we have to pay the janitors but after learning how to run the automatic mop we didn't need them for anything else.

For our next function we will need to buy more prizes for booths we usually get those bulk from Oriental Trading or the like. Plastic bracelets and tattoos and candy always go well. I'd like to steer clear of choking hazards...they just end up in the trash as soon as we get home.

The bake sale was sensational. Lots of donations. Cookies, cupcakes, and goodie bags seem to sell the best. Larger items that are more pricey sit until the very end. The bake sale was with the t-shirt sales. They were the only things that cost money. We brought in a huge amount of money. Next year I would like to keep record for how many shirts we sell so we can see what the profit is (we make no money on t-shirts). It would be fun to see what our kiddos bring in on a well stocked sale.

This was our third festival that the board has done this together and I think that it went really well. We really couldn't have done it without the men in our lives though - THANK YOU! High fives all around.

I am glad that it is done and went well. For me the best part was running the automatic mop. I so need one in my house. I wonder if they make the like of it for toilets...