Thursday, March 31, 2011

When Life Hands you Lemons....

This past weekend was insanely busy, but A TON of fun for Charlotte and me. 

Every year our town hosts a HUGE All-Town Garage Sale day...people from all over come out to participate...and we gets TONS of traffic through our otherwise quiet little neighborhood. So (flashback two years), we decided that this event provides us with the perfect opportunity to do a little fundraising for JDRF! 

We held our 1st lemonade stand to fundraise for JDRF (and provide a little Type 1 education to our community) during our All-Town Garage Sale in April 2009.  It was a lot of fun...and we were excited to have a little extra help with our event...my older sister, her hubby and their two girls (the same age as Charlotte) were in town for the weekend. They were awesome helping us prepare for our stand...making signs, drumming up business at the table, and just being there to support Charlotte and our cause!

Our 1st Lemonade Sale for JDRF (April 2009)
(Unfortunately, we missed out on the opportunity for 2010...the event took place during Charlotte's Spring Break and we had planned our family vacation to take place during that week without realizing that we'd be missing out on our lemonade stand.)

So...I made sure we weren't going to miss out again. We started talking about and mentally preparing for our Lemonade Stand back in January! Charlotte was VERY excited to be able to have another stand! But somehow in planning for other things, I didn't realize the date (yes, again) and her daddy (Jay) booked the weekend to attend a workshop out of town! That wasn't going to stop us though...we decided that not only were we still going to have our lemonade stand...we were going to make it bigger and better than the last one! 

So I called my parents a few weeks before the event and asked if we could pick up our "tent" that we use for our Walk...and sent hubby to pick it up! We decided that not only would we sell lemonade this year, but we'd bake cookies too! And I discovered and used Team JDRF to set up a fundraising website for Charlotte's Lemonade for a Cure!

So, the day before the event...Jay has left for his out-of-town workshop, but fortunately Nonna is able to help me out by taking Amelia for the night before. I head out at 4pm to go get the girls from their bus stop after school and on the way back stop to chat with our new neighbor. Of course, I manage to mention our "Lemonade for a Cure" and she mentions in response that our other neighbors are also hosting a lemonade stand for their grandchildren (just for fun). 

So now I'm thinking we really need to step things up a notch to be successful with our event. Our little table, tent, and poster just aren't going to cut it...but how in the world am I going possibly going to "upgrade" our stand AND get everything done in less than a day??? No problem, I'm Super D-mama right??? 

So...here's how it all goes down:
It's about 4:30pm on Friday afternoon, Nonna takes Amelia and Charlotte for a snowball while I make a run for some last minute items..ice, extra cups (cause I didn't think I had quite enough), and eggs for the cookie baking (cause somehow I forgot those). About 5:15pm, I grab Charlotte from the snowball stand and we drop the ice off at the house and than take off for a last minute trip to Hobby Lobby (gotta love that store!)...grabbed a bright yellow table cloth, some fake lemons and a cute little green bucket, and supplies to make a banner for our tent! We probably spent longer at Hobby Lobby than we should have....so we didn't get back home until almost 7pm and we grabbed dinner through a drive-thru on the way back. Once we got home we started to prepare gallons upon gallons of lemonade and make our signs. Then around 8pm we ran out to stake our small signs around (and just outside of) our neighborhood. Back home by about 8:30pm and starting to bake the cookies...finished that up by about 10:30pm. Then we designed our banner for our tent and off to bed by just after 11pm....Charlotte was exhausted but really excited and so managed to stay up to help out the whole time!  

Charlotte's 2011 Lemonade for a Cure
We were up and getting things ready by 6am on Saturday morning! I'm sure we provided some great laughs for the neighbors as we tried to pitch our tent (just me and Charlotte)...this feat took a good 30 minutes (but we got it done!) Charlotte and I got our table positioned and all prettied up and stocked with our lemonade and supplies! 

Our Lemonade Tent...we've "upgraded" since 2009
We had a great time on Saturday and really appreciated our family and friends that came out to support us...not to mention the numerous phone calls from people who couldn't be there checking in to see how things were going and letting Charlotte know they were thinking of her!

Charlotte "working" her Lemonade Stand!
All in all, it was a success! We had a great time (despite the last minute craziness and tent set-up challenge) and it turned out to be a beautiful day to spend outdoors! And...our little Lemonade stand raised just over $200 for JDRF!!!

Our motto:  When life hands you lemons....make lemonade! (thanks Lora!)

7 comments:

  1. AWWW...What a great idea. Looks like a lot of fun too.

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  2. Love this idea... you guys did such a great job. Great pics too!

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  3. What a wonderful idea! Love it! Our neighborhood is doing a neighborhood wide garage sale this weekend. I can't get my act together in time to do it this weekend, but will remember this for next time. Love how it is raising awareness as well.

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  4. that is such a fun way to raise funds! Way to go :)

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  5. Wow, great job--that looks like so much fun!

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  6. thats a great idea, and looks like fun. good work.

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  7. Just found you through the blogger basal :)
    Great job on the Lemonaid stand!!!!

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