The Fruits of My Labors.

June 4th was the BIG day for Mike and I. Mike took level II of the CFA and I had my big fundraiser. Like most things I do, my idea evolved from something small to something much bigger. I originally thought we should do a spaghetti dinner. After pricing it all out I knew we wouldn't make very much doing that. So we should add a bake sale to the mix and we should auction off some of the best desserts there. THEN I thought I could get a few actual items/services for the auction. In high school my choir always did an auction to raise money and it was pretty successful. The auction idea just snowballed out of control and we ended up with 50 items! Which was awesome. The only thing I didn't take into consideration was how much work it would be. I had to keep track of all the auction items coming in and who was donating them. Make description sheets for all the items. Make a silent bid sheet for all the items. Make posters to advertise the items so people would come to bid. Thats just some of the things I did. It took hours! And the worst part, it wasn't something I could delegate. It was such a tedious task that only one person could do it. My friend Cynda works with me in YW and came over a few times to help as much as she could. We are lucky things went as smoothly with the auction as they did.

Here are some pictures of how the RS room was set up for the auction

So I thought I had most of the work done with the spaghetti dinner until a few days before when I realized I didn't have centerpieces for the tables. I didn't want to spend a lot of money but I wanted the tables to look nice. That is when my awesome coworkers came into rescue me. They came up with the idea for three different centerpieces that would be easy to do and cost effective. They also got their hands on 15 vases for me to use so I didn't have to buy them. I spent a total of $30 on 17 centerpieces. THAT IS AWESOME! I wanted the whole thing to have an Italian theme so the table clothes were red, green and white (the colors of the italian flag) and the centerpieces were all very italian.

The red tables had a vase with multi-colored pasta at the bottom and spaghetti coming up the center fanned out for a full look.

The white tables had a vase filled with lemons (Italy is famous for growing lemons)

and lemon leaves sitting on top of more lemon leaves that were on the table.

The green tables had a box of empty pasta stuffed with red, green

and white tissue paper and an italian flag.

I was lucky to have a lot of help the night of the fundraiser. The girls came early dressed in black pants and a white shirt (like I asked them.) They all volunteered for the "stations" I needed them at and stayed at their post all night. The leaders and mothers were also awesome. It is a lot of work to feed over 150 people and they did an awesome job in the kitchen. I was so lucky to have them helping me.

All in all we raised a ton of money. Enough to pay for all the girls to go to girls camp and them some. It was such a blessing. When we started planning the whole thing the bishop told me 2 things. 1) don't stress and 2) let the Lord be in charge of this. I did stress, I can't help it. However, I did the best I could to let the Lord help me and he did. There were sooo many things I did because I was inspired to do them. Which sounds silly but I would wake up in the middle of the night and think "i need to call this person, check on the price of this and organize this." I was working over 50 hours a week (40 at school and 10-15 babysitting in the afternoon), preparing wed night activities and lessons (because I still had responsibilities for my calling) and doing all the house work (cleaning, meal planing, grocery shopping, ect.) since Mike was in intense study mode. As you can imagine I didn't have much spare time and all the free time I had went into this. There is no way it could have been done (and in such a successful and well organized manner) with out the help of the Lord. When it was all over I just wanted to cry, I literally felt a huge burden lifted off my shoulders.

I also have to give Mike some SERIOUS credit. He spent all day taking the CFA and just wanted to go out and do something fun to celebrate the end of the CFA. However, he came straight from the CFA to the church to do what he could to help. I have never been more happy to see him. I know what a huge sacrifice that was for him but he came. We stayed at the church until 10pm that night but we still wanted to do something fun. Our friend Ben had taken the CFA that day as well and came to the church to help Cynda. So the 4 of us decided we would go to our favorite place in stamford (Lucky's) for some post CFA/Auction dinner. After that we went back to the Johnson's place and played a game and watched a movie. We stayed up past 3am (which is big for us married people) and still made it to church on time the next day (your welcome, mom.)

I am glad it is over but have never been more grateful to work with such amazing women and girls who did so much to help. And for a husband who supports me, even when it was not convenient or fun. I'm a lucky lady and feel very blessed.