Carnival Planning

I organized a carnival for the 2 mom groups I'm in. I thought a joint carnival was better to do all the work once for everyone all at once. And maybe new people would talk to each other.  It was a lot of work. I spent a good bit of time reminding people to pay or checking in with the people who said yes on meetup and facebook but did not fill out the actual form. Oh it was miserable just doing that part but I really needed a count to be accurate with my money.

I planned games and food.

 I was able to reuse the table cloths, big signs and banners, and photo booths from last year.

I made signs labeling all the games with directions for each game.  I made signs for the food. I also printed name tags. I had a sign in sheet printed on nice cardstock so we could check off who came and also confirm number of people. 

I made an agenda. Most things were out all day but I altered the rest to be able to handle it all.

Dave grilled hotdogs at the event.  We also planned for other food but it had to be inexpensive because of budget.

Prior to the carnival, I held a meetup for making cookies. It kind of failed but we still made peanut butter cup cookies and chocolate chip cookies. I just had to make the cupcakes and icing later.

I had a map in advance so that volunteers could know where things would be set up.

I feel like typing all of this makes it seem like not a lot of work. I had to borrow games from people and borrow various other things. So I had to actually get those.    I had a list of what to do in the morning but it didn't have everything on it. It helped though with a list so when volunteers came, they didn't always have to ask what to do.

The carnival was Saturday. Cooking baking was Wednesday.  Food purchasing was Thursday.  Friday was cupcake baking. 

The carnival was 10-1. I was there at 8 am setting up. I had my car totally full and then I unloaded that with 4 trips.  Then I came back after a bit to get the coolers, food, and grilling stuff which totally filled the trunk. To leave the event it took until 2 PM to clean up and lots of people were helped a little bit and a few people helped a lot. One person filled the back of her SUV and half her backseat and delivered it to my front door. Someone else had just a few things in her car. Dave walked home but I had to get the kids in the carseats so couldn't utilize that space in the car. My car was jam packed coming home too.

I'll have a separate post of the actual event.

There is probably more I'm missing here.