Pity Party

I'm throwing myself a "pity party." Wanna come? If so ~ read on but don't say I didn't warn you! Last night was the infamous "Quest Fest." I had been so stressed about getting the baskets together and done and the quilts finished up that I literally thought I was going crazy so Thursday night I took the night off. I was so stressed that I couldn't even eat dinner so I put my pj's on and went to bed and read. I picked this book up a couple of weeks ago because Jude Deveraux is one of my guilty pleasures. It's not quite "hard throbbing flesh" romance novels but it's not Jane Austen either. It's an "always happy ending" with characters that are likable and keeps me interested without taxing my wee little brain. In any case, it did the trick. Friday morning I was feeling great. I had a few things left to do but knew I could do them with a little time to spare. I finally finished the handprint quilt and was pleased at how it turned out. Baked some chocolate chip banana muffins for the bake sale and headed over to the school. Got there about 2:00 and started right in helping to set up for the festival. The goodies for the bake sale ended up covering about 7 tables ~ and I do mean covered. Once those were set up we (the kids and I) went outside to help set up the games. We were "in charge" of the duck pond (pick a duck and win a prize). We blew up the little pool, filled it with water and set the ducks to float. One problem ~ The ducks only floated SIDEWAYS! They were back heavy so Julianne figured out that if we filled them with water they would stay upright. That's my smart little girl! Of course it took us forever to hold those little suckers under the water till they filled up but we got it done. Did some other stuff out there too. There were all kinds of games and activities. Sumo wrestling (wearing those giant inflatable outfits) and a rock climbing wall, dunk tank, etc. All is good right? WRONG! Here's where the pity party comes in...
Now I've spent probably a good $150 on making this hand print quilt ~ not to mention the crazy amount of time and effort spent on each block but only two people bid on it and I was one of them!!!! So the quilt only made a whopping $10! How much does that suck? I knew that the parents from our class would be the only ones bidding on it but sheesh I saw at least 10 parents from our class that I recognized (and I'm sure there were more that I didn't) and only 1 parent bid on it! Not even the teacher bid on it. Now mind you the tickets were $5.00 each but come on people! It was positioned right by the front door and I saw lots and lots of people looking at it and "oohing and aahing" over it ~ just none of our parents. Needless to say I am completely bummed out about this and really not liking a lot of our parents or our teacher at the moment. And believe me when I tell you I will NEVER do anything like this again. I'm also bummed that I didn't win any of the baskets that were auctioned off. For $10.00 you got a sheet of 25 tickets and you could put as many tickets in as many baskets as you wanted. We got 2 sheets of tickets and probably put them into a total of 6 or 7 baskets and we won NOTHING! There were about 50 baskets to bid on and some people actually won 3 or in one case 4 baskets! I know in our last school, if you won a second basket most of the time the people would refuse it and ask that another name be pulled to be fair ~ but not here. Now I didn't do all this just to win something ~ I did it to help the school but I was already feeling sorry for myself about the quilt and this was just another nail in the coffin for me. Okay pity party over!
The good news is that the bake sale raised a TON of money for Aunt Grace. In case you hadn't read about her she is the full time volunteer at our school who is battling cancer and she is very much loved by all at the school. I didn't get too many pictures because I worked the bake sale the entire night and we sold everything and I do mean everything. There wasn't a cookie to be had by the end of the night. Needless to say I was one busy volunteer. Here are a couple of pics of the baskets that I put together. This one is for Nathaniel's class
And here are the baskets for Julianne's class
In any case, it's over. The turnout was amazing. The school made a lot of money and again ~ it's over and I can get my life back. Well, sort of. The week after next is teacher appreciation week so my home room mom duties are never over ~ is it summer yet?
So, How was your day?