For the past month I had been helping out the parent's committee to organize a big fundraiser for the preschool. We did loads of publicity, gathering of raffle prizes, and sorting out games, activities for the kids, and stalls for people to sell things.
Finally the day was here and packed up half of my houses Christmas decorations to jazz up the big room we had along with some fun little bits I sewed up to sell at the stalls.
We did lots of neat little things that I can't wait to try out when we go back to the US for future fundraising events. This was our Tombola, which you paid 50p for a ticket and if it had a 0 or 5 at the end then you won the corresponding prize. All the tombola prizes were donated by parents and included biscuits, chocolates, wine, candies, "smellies" (lotions), and more.
We had great success in getting support from the local butcher shop, the McDonald's, John Lewis, Fratelli's in Stamford, Steve Gerrard with loads of great wine, my wonderful neighbor Kev Scott with a free MOT, and even free entries in the Peterborough Racing grounds for our raffle prizes...everyone helped get such great prizes and in selling raffle tickets. We printed up 250 tickets and should have done double that as we ran out and didn't have any available on the day of the event to sell to people who came to the actual event. (250 was a lot considered they had a tough time selling 100 tickets last year). As a thank you to the businesses that donated we brought big plates of leftover cakes and cookies from our bake sale!!!
The Lucky Dip is focussed more on the kiddies. It's a huge box filled with shredded up paper and then sweeties dumped in amongst the paper. For 10 p the kids can dunk their hands in and grab a sweetie.
Name the Bear was an amazing money maker for us as for 50 p a guess, the kids could pick from a list of 50 names listed on the little Christmas trees that could potentially be the bear's name. Kerry's dad, donated this amazingly huge teddy bear all wrapped up in cellophane and topped with a bow. All the kids were drooling over it!!!
We also had a Cakes Sale and when the British talk about cakes - it's not your run of the mill cookie bake sale. These ladies brought in loads of traditional Christmas cakes, fairy cakes, cupcakes, Victoria sponge cakes, chocolate crispies cakes, plum loafs and my friend Joanna made these absolutely amazing Polish cakes!!!! We had soooo many cakes for sale on top of the tea/coffee we sold with a slice of Victoria sponge for 1.50 GBP each.
We also got a helium tank donated for the cost of the balloons from the lady at Happy Faces so we sold those for 1 GBP each and what parent is going to deny a kid a balloon when everyone else has one.
I helped make sugar cookies for biscuit decorating. We let every child decorate one for free then any ones after that were 20p each. My kiddos quite enjoyed that one.
Our neighbor, Sandra, brought her twin boys - Andrew and William to the bazaar and they had a blast decorating cookies as well.
One of the stalls we had planned fell through about two weeks before the event so I thought that I could sew up a few fun things like little aprons, tool belts and crayon totes to sell. It took me all of two weeks working late into the evenings to get enough made up to have a nice display. It was a lot of work on top of all the other things to get ready but it was nice to get some exposure and it fit well with the other things for sale. Lana sold her hairbows, her friend sold some brownie and homemade cake mixes and another lady who sold perfumes caught us at the very last minute to get involved as well. Crazy thing was that I had someone from Pampered Chef lined up to come but about 5 minutes before I left to head to the school that morning she called and cancelled on me...I wasn't too happy, so I was glad this other lady was able to step in.
Father Christmas came to visit the children and we made him up a little grotto to sit in our little back room for pictures and the children would get a little present of sweeties from Santa. We only charged 2.50 per child for the picture and sweeties and it turned out brilliantly.
Finally, the highlight of the day was when the kids all gathered up around the Christmas tree and sang Christmas carols that they had been learning for the past month. They did such a great job and so did all the parents in pulling together such an amazing event. We raised around 500 GBP!!! Way to go everyone!!!
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