A Change in Plans, Spring Festival and Community Yard Sale Held Indoors
The weather forcast for the weekend looked grim all week. As of Friday evening, Saturday morning was supposed to have a 30% chance of rain, but that had gone up to 60% when we awoke early in the morning. Still, that means a 40% chance of no rain. So we decided to go on with the show for the Spring Festival and Community Yard Sale.
When we woke up Saturday morning, you could tell it wouldn't be a good day to hold an event outside. What we hadn't thought of before was that we have an abundance of hallway space, good interior hallway space with a roof overhead that would not let precipitation through.
So instead of hauling our stuff outside and setting our vendors up on the front lawn, we just set everything up inside, with our yard sale stuff in the McAffee Community Room, the bake sale in the nursery, the food sale in the kitchen (naturally), and the rest of our vendors in the hallways. A little before 8am, the yard sale early birds started showing up.
All day, we had a good steady stream of people coming in who weren't scared off by the weather. Perhaps we even got more traffic because there weren't many other yard sales to compete with due to the rain. We definitely got an increase in shoppers from our team of wavers standing out at the street inviting people driving by to stop in. As the day wore on, the stuff in the McAffee Room and the hallways started to disappear, as did the food and bake sale items.
Let me just say that we have some terrific chefs, cooks, and bakers at Fairfax Christian Church. Thanksgiving dinner is always an extreme taste-fest. The food on hand this weekend was just par for the course. Coconut cake, rum cake (ID required! ;), peacan pie, chocolate-covered marshmallow pops, smoked pulled pork, gourmet burgers with smoked mozzerella and diced portabello mushrooms. I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it.
At 10am, AIM Robotics showed up with their entry robot for this year's FIRST Robotics comepetition and began giving demonstrations in the sanctuary, even letting people take a turn at the controls and driving the robot. Fairfax Christian is a sponser of the team of high school and middle school students, and several church members help to mentor the team, including Bruce Swett, head mentor, who recently converted his basement into a robotics lab. It was pretty fun talking with the kids and letting them show off the results of all of their hard work. They even handed out a few brochures and talked to some prospective members.
In addition to the robot demo, food sale, bake sale, and yard sale, we also had kids' activities, including a bean bag toss, face painting, hand stamps, and a lemonade stand. Unfortunately, we could not set up the moon bounce we had borrowed because of the wet conditions. Oh well, something to look forward to next year!
We haven't held such an event for several years, so we were basically starting from scratch. To make the planning even more challenging, our target cost was $0. Fortunately, many people on the planning team chipped in to donate a few things here and there so that all we had to pay for was food, and after everything was totaled up, we raised about $1400 for the church. Not a bad take for a rainy day yard sale.
In the end, it probably only rained for 30 minutes total during the day, and that was still only sprinkling, but it was nice not having to worry about a potential downpour bringing things to an abrupt end. That allowed everyone to relax and create a fun, festive, and welcoming atmosphere. It was great to get to interact with the community face-to-face. Thanks again to everyone who donated items for the church to sell. Thanks to our vendors. Thanks to the people who stopped by to say, "Hi," and get some good deals and good food. And a huge thanks to our volunteers who did all the preparations and who came out and helped to make this event such a great time.
