how to throw a zombie event

I love Halloween. I mean who doesn't love vampires, werewolf s, and especially zombies. I eventually talked our Saline Music Boosters into putting on Zombie events this year as fundraisers for the schools music department. One at the high school called the Zombie Prom and another at the middle school called Zombie Bash.

Once the decision is made, immediately contact your local facility scheduler and obtained the gym at your school. Once your location is locked down, get to work on your marketing materials. I did several ... a full color image for distributing via email and a black and white for yard signs.

We printed up small coupon-like materials to distribute. The music teachers handed them out to music students and asked them to give it to their friends. You can't promote enough. Contact your superintendents office, they usually have a weekly email blast where you can advertise the event. Check with your local newspaper and community ed too. Have the school put the event on their website for reference.  And of course, the Saline Music Boosters had the information of our Facebook, Twitter, and website.

We set up a spot on our website to sell tickets online. A week before the event, we began to sell tickets at school during lunch hours. The first day will be slow, but as you get closer to the event, you'll sell more tickets. We wrote down names on a sheet of paper and had them at the door of the event.

The price of admission included a slice of pizza, bottle of water, a trip to the photo booth, and a DJ. We found local vendors who gave us a great deal.

We had a variety of other items to sell, candy, chips, soda and Gatorade. Don't forget to have paper plates and napkins available. We borrowed a food warmer from Food Service to keep the pizza warm. Make sure you have plenty of $1 and $5 to make change. Make it easy on yourself and don't sell anything that require change.

We had bracelets at the door that we put on each kid when they entered the dance. Whenever they got a item promised with admission, we used a Sharpie and marked on their bracelet. Worked like a charm and the kids didn't have to carry around tickets or coupons. 

We used SignUpGenius to sign up volunteers to help out at the event. It was free and has a lot of  useful features, like sending out email reminders before the event. Make sure you have lots of parents to help with food and to keep the kids in from leaving the building.

We brought our own decorations and asked our chaperons to bring whatever they had at home too. We ended up with a nice supply of decorations for the event and we didn't have to buy anything.

I borrowed a projector from our community ed department and downloaded the movie "Warm Bodies" on my laptop. I projected it in the very back corner of the gym. The kids that weren't interested in dancing hung out and watched the movie and it kept them from running around.

We had a game available and also a best costume prize. We purchased 4 $10 Amazon gift cards for best costume prizes. The music staff walked around the selected 15 best costume candidates. When it was time we had all the kids line up and the vote was completed by applause. The loudest applause won!

It appears that this event works best at the Middle School level and it was well attended and everyone had a great time! And .... we made lots of money to support our school's music program.

the giggle box turns 30.

My daughter Jacquelyn just celebrated her 30th anniversary. An amazing feat considering I was only 5 when I had her. :) Ok, that's creepy - I found out I was pregnant with Jacquelyn on my 21st birthday.  She was such a happy, giggly baby - that I always called her "giggle box".

Stacy and Jackie are besties. Jackie graduates this December from University of Michigan and Stacy graduated last December. Their birthdays are just days apart, so we had a birthday brunch for them this Sunday. Jac has a gluten allergy, so everything is gluten free. Pancakes, cookies, muffins .... good stuff.

For months I had been hearing about how everyone has a quilt but Jackie. "Mom, even the guy you work with gets a quilt for his newborn!" she whines. I knew she had a big birthday coming up and now was the time to make it extra special.

King size quilts are not easy to quilt without a long arm machine. I started out wanting to make a double ring quilt for her. I found this video which is a quilt as you go for double wedding ring quilt here. I was very excited about it and went to my nearest Joann's Fabrics to get a template. I started working on it and realized that my measurements were all off. That the template I had did not work how I wanted it to. After messing up several times and wasting a whole day and a yard of nice expensive premium fabric, I abandoned the idea.

Because it is a King quilt, I needed to go with a "quilt as you go" version and I found this video. This allowed me have a reversible quilt and to be able to quilt each block at a time. To give it some more depth, I created some double blocks.

The whole thing took me about 2 months to make and every block is done with free motion quilting techniques. It was nice to not have a huge quilt to push through the machine - doing just a block at a time. I believe there was 89 blocks in all.

And I took the opportunity to embroider some of the blocks with endearing sentiments with her name, date and even embroidered some peacock feathers in it. Peacocks are her favorites and I was super excited to find some peacock fabric.

The thing I love the most about it is that it is reversible - once side is brown tones with her beloved peacocks and the other is more modern with black, blue and a smidgen of red.

standing up at work

Aunt Dottie never needed a fitness routine as her entire day was filled with "lots to accomplish tasks". She remained thin and fit most of her life spending large amounts of time out in her garden and tending to tasks inside the house. Always on her feet.

But me ..... I sit at a computer desk all day long ... for hours .... on end. I awoke a few months ago to a news story how "sitting was the new smoking". Really? Crap .... I just gave up smoking 2 years ago, now this is on my head too? The news story stated that sitting all day was just as bad as smoking even if you exercised daily. Double crap. The issue was related to colon health.

I had begun to notice my hips hurting at the end of the day more and more and it struck a cord with me and I began thinking about it. Hmmmm..... but what to do?

I did some Google searches to find ideas on stand up desks. Some neat ones I found with treadmills attached, or hydroponic lifts. Expensive - super expensive. This was my work desk and I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money and I knew my employer wouldn't either.

Here is what I finally ended up ... but wait there's more to the story.

So, it started with me going downstairs in my basement and looking around. Hmmmm......

I found several of these Ikea tables. This table was probably the right height to put on top of my current desk, but not long enough. I could have used 2 but I didn't want to use both the tables as they were my daughters. I homed in on the legs .... they screwed in!

Burke was not happy when I had him disassemble an old pantry style cabinet. We threw some of the rough broken stuff away, but the side of the cabinet were in good shape. Shelves! I grabbed one of the long white shelves and unscrewed the legs from the small table and screwed them into the long white shelf.

Eureka!

This was my original concept. I actually used my computer and turned it on it's side to raise up my keyboard. It worked .... but was a little awkward.

So began my first day .... would this help me lose a few pounds. I'm not gonna lie, it was hard. I kept wanting to give up and just sit down. So I brought in a stool like this.

It worked and was sooooo uncomfortable that I never wanted to use it, but I had something if I really needed it.

Standing requires more effect and burns more calories right? So I started tracking my weight. There were days were put on my headphones and danced away in my little cubicle.

But still .... what about days where you just didn't feel good and wanted a nice comfy chair.

Hmmmmm.... what else? My conclusion was ...the best desk is one where you could sit or stand whenever it suited you.

I did try and use my comfy chair with my stand up desk, but before too long, I would get kinks in my neck from straining to look up constantly.

I thought .... what if I had a monitor on my actual desk for those times where I wanted to sit. My computer was capable of handling 3 monitors.

I couldn't use a big monitor because it wouldn't fit properly under my stand up desk. Which, it helps that it's small, so I don't like to use it too much.

Awhile ago, monitor stands were all the rage and my employer ordered a ton of them. Soon everyone gave them up and they ended up in the storage closet. I grabbed 4 of them. Perfect height!

I put two of them together and a shelf on top for my keyboard and mouse. I even turned one upside down and hung it on my stand up desk to hold collections of crap.

Since everything came forward a bit - my painting ended up being covered up a bit by my lamp and I still need to move it. But here is what it looks like. The fam ....

So the cost of my stand up desk - $0. I got a little creative and reused some items and worked out a method right for me. I spent most of my day either standing or leaning on my stool. And those moments when I really need to sit in my comfy chair - I do.

If you are standing for periods of time, I would recommend getting one of these nifty kitchen mats - it does help. They sell them everywhere with different colors and patterns. I did actually spend a couple of bucks for one.

It's been several months now and what I've found is that I want to stand more and my hips and legs feel better after a day of standing - and my colon health is solid! I also enjoy my sit down meetings more these days. :)

And as far as losing weight? Well ..... not that I've seen.

Michigan Ren Fest!

If Aunt Dottie was still with us, she would love love love going to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, MI. I can imagine her repeating, "Neat!" as she walked around.

We haven't been in a few years because it's gotten so huge and usually packed with people, but because of Julia's arrival and I had a feeling she would love it - we set out first thing in the morning.

It's also fun for me to say things like - "Holly, we're in Holly!" Or seeing, Holly Area Schools, or Holly Foods. I love how they made the O into a heart. I literally could go on ... but I'll stop.

OK - one more.

Julia's eyes lit up as we entered the land of Ren Fest. She's a HUGE Xena fan and I told Julia that Xena may just be there.

We started to make our way through the crowd and sat down for the Jousting match.

Our Knight was Tyler, the "ladies man". Shoot! Why didn't I get a picture of Tyler? He lost .... beaten down as the crowd yelled, "Walk it off!".

We took a little trip through Mermaid lagoon. It was packed with people. The trail was filled with mermaid themed art like this....

And then at the end was a real life mermaid! And ... she works on tips!

All and all it was a very nice day, sunny but not too hot. As the afternoon drew around, it became even more crowded which was our clue to exit. But not after stopping at McDonald's for Julia's first double cheeseburger.

lemonade?

I put together Julia's new bedroom in anticipation of her arrival and realized she needed a quilt for her bed. She was due in just 1 week and since my time was short I thought I would buy one for her room. So Holly and I set off to several retail stores. I did find a couple of very very thin quilts on sale for $125. What? Are they kidding? Do people actually buy this? Knowing that I already most of what I needed at home. And after looking in several stores, I abandoned the item of buying. Does this make me a quilt snob?

I looked around for a pattern and found this one. The curtains in the room are striped so I thought the Layered Cake Lemonade pattern would work well.

Julia said her favorite colors were brown and red. The curtains are blue and brown so these were my final choices.

So reading from the pattern and calculating for a queen size bed, I cut the 10" squares.

I decided because the curtains were striped that I would add a bit of dimension to the plain colored squares. So I looked at some of the symbols that came with my Brother embroidery machine and picked just a line. Thought it would be cool to applique it. So I did ...

I sewed the squares together. To make the shorter rows, cut one of 10" row and cut it in half.

I think this is the biggest quilt I've ever made and it took 3 of us to sandwich the quilt together when it was done. I don't have a good place to do this and some people actually hang it on their wall to complete. I used my dining room table and my 3 helpers.

Took me a couple of hours to do the quilting. I finally decided on just doing lines.

I think it turned out pretty good. She really seems to like it!

sometimes .... it's just not good.

So with Julia coming, I began to look at the bathroom she would be using. It's the shared bathroom upstairs and I really never did anything with it when we moved it. It's very plain and absent of color.

I was browsing Etsy looking at wall decals, personalized ones and discovered some big tree decals that were pretty cool - but $100? I've got paint. I'm an OK artist - not great. The light bulb in my head started to flicker and then hit full blown flood light. I'll just paint the tree on the wall.

I found my target. This corner of my bathroom.

I started marking out the design on the wall and filling it in with brown paint. To be truthful, I think this is the best it looked.

And then I started adding leaves to the tree. Still not bad, but then things started to go bad. I began working on the birds and ....I really botched them.

LOL! The wings on the birds were soooooooooo bad! If this was a canvas I would just paint over it. But with the wall, you really can't. Unless you have spare paint the same as your walls, which I don't. Love the way the owl turned out even though it could get uncomfortable with a wide eyed owl staring you down as you get out of the shower. Notice the birds on the toilet? Oh boy ...

Well ... at least I don't have to use this bathroom. Sometimes, it's just not good. On the flip side, I found another way to NOT paint birds. Lesson learned.

Maybe my changes to the window will pull it together. Stay tuned for that! I love fabric shades, and I think this bathroom is due.

the julia adventure

Although I don't think Aunt Dottie had a foreign exchange student, she did take in and mother lots of kids during her life. Since I had 2 bedrooms open in our house, and Holly has a passion for Sweden - it just seemed like the right thing to do.

I contacted ASSE, which apparently is out of the norm. Usually they are begging people to take students, so if you have love in your heart and a spare room - give them a call.

We read over the profiles of all the kids from all over the world and knew Julia was the right person for us with her love of languages and books. We began communication with Julia and her mom and sent almost daily emails back for forth for about 1 month.

The big day was finally here! The airports website said to park in the short term lot and go into the terminal to pick up International travelers. Holly and I left in plenty of time to pick her up with rush hour traffic and the stop for gas.

We finally found the parking garage and went inside Detroit Metro. Still early ... we paused for hot chocolate and coffee.

We checked the sign and found her flight - 15 minutes before the flight landed. We imagined the pilot coming on ...."Ladies and Gentlemen, we are preparing for landing at Detroit Metro. We will arriving in 15 mins."  And how wonderful that might be when you've been in the air for about 10 hours. And then it happened - the sign reflected it.

We moved towards the doorway where the passengers would come through. Someone said it would be awhile before they came through - they still needed to gather their luggage and clear customs. So we waited.

And every time the door opened, our heart skipped a beat. Was that her? She said she would have jeans and a striped shirt on. Soooo excited and sooooo nervous!

Nope, Julia doesn't have blond hair. We soon noticed the family next to us. They had a sign and flowers and I heard them say several times, "is that her?" Their sign was great!Turns out they lived in Saline too and were waiting for their foreign exchange student from China.

Sigh ....I didn't get the memo on the sign and flowers. This was ours.

Yep .... lame, but effective. And then ... there she was. And so ... our adventure begins ... with Julia from Sweden.