Carneval! No, Fiesta! No, Festival!

This past Saturday was our Summer Festival at our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda.  This is an annual event that raises funds to pay for something special for our Residents or to boost our Endowment Fund that provides the income to run the facility.  For many years, this was a two day event, but a few years ago, they went to a one day event instead.  It used to be that each Grand Officer had a booth to fit the chosen theme for the year and the Grand Officers collected donated items from all over the state to fill these booths.  Some booths are sort of pre-set, especially for the line officers, while many of the appointive officer booths changed from year to year to accommodate the theme.  The day started bright and early with the Associate Patrons preparing and serving breakfast and went well into the evening with a dinner and entertainment night to cap it all off.

Some changes were made last year that have carried into this year and some more changes made this year, so we are all waiting to see how it went.  Last year's car show came back this year, with even more cars on display, including some real beauties, and booths were again made available for outside vendors, which made it a nicer draw for the community and the public to come.  Most of the appointive officers did not have individual booths, but they did help out with drinks and other booths.  The line officers and a couple of other groups had their traditional booths, mostly serving food and beverages, except for the lucky Conductresses and Chaplains, who sold formals and books respectively.

Now the thing about the formals and the books is that they are bulky and they are heavy, so getting them gathered up from all over and brought down to Yorba Linda can be a challenge calling for an entire logistics corps, but instead, I had two brave Chairmen, who got it all together.  They were awesome!  Extra special kudos go to the husband of one of my Chairmen, who did the work of five people and I am grateful that he survived the experience, (although, come to think of it, I am not sure I did see him come back from that last dumpster run. :-)  I could not have managed without these three hardy souls.

The thing about the formals booth though, is that it is one of our biggest money makers because lots of people are thrilled to get a gently used formal for only ten dollars and our overhead is the lowest, since all the stuff is donated and we don't have to pay for ingredients or paper products like the food booths do.  But it is a never ending work load.  We no sooner got everything up and running but we were had our first customers.  It really takes two people to handle each sale, one to collect the money and give change and another person to bag the purchases.  At the same time, we had people who were dropping off more donations all day long, which was great because it meant that our stock kept getting refreshed and people who came by later saw new stuff and not just picked over stuff, which also gave people an excuse to come back and buy more, but it also meant that I had two people who were busy all morning and a pinch of the afternoon getting the new stuff onto hangars and sorted into our racks.  We sorted the dresses by color rather than by size because size sorting would have been impossible and usually, people are looking for a particular color.  But it was more work to keep it that way than it would have been to just toss everything onto a rack.

So that was four full time people all day, but then you also need to give people breaks and take turns getting lunch and snacks and water and such.  I only got out of the booth for a lunch hour and potty break which included the inevitable picture taking session for the Grand Family, so I never actually saw any of the other booths or the car show cars, darn it.  But we had a good day, I hope, and had a great booth!

Next weekend, I will not be going to Fresno, but I will go to Susanville if the weather cooperates.