Wednesday, November 3, 2010

TGIN (Thank goodness its November!)

First, let me just say how thankful I am that the election is over and all of the political TV ads, mailings, phone calls and e-mails are done. Whew! Now, back to our regularly scheduled post...

October was an incredibly long month for me and I am so thankful it is finally over. In my job at a nonprofit we are involved in Breast Cancer Awareness Month activities and fundraisers and, having planned and executed most of these activities, I am exhausted.

This past month I have delivered flocks of 20 pink flamingos every night all over the region as people made donations for us to “flock” their friends. It was my crazy idea for a fundraiser, and darn it, it worked. But not without a lot of hard work, crazy people and long hours. But it was so much fun! All of the feedback we received was so positive. Who knew that people would be so excited to wake up to flamingos in their front yards! And now that we have done it once we have a whole bunch of ideas on how to make it even better for next year. It feels so go to have your boss find value in a new idea you have and to give you the support you need to execute it. It also feels good to really analyze the event and determine the strengths and weaknesses of it so you can improve it for the future. I love this about my job!

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I’ve also been involved in planning smaller awareness events this month which were also successful - but the biggest event I was involved with this month was a huge Halloween gala to benefit my organization complete with silent auction, fundraising games, a wine wall, live band, costume contests and a lot of fun. Actually I’ve been working on this event with a committee since I started this job back in May. It has taken months of organization, planning, procurement and execution to pull it off and these last few weeks of 45+ hour work weeks getting everything finalized and put into place has worn me out. As soon as the event was over late Saturday night, I crashed. All of the emotions of stress, excitement, long hours, etc. were finally past and I could relax. I slept until 10:00 on Sunday and I haven’t done that in years! It felt so good.

I spent the day Sunday getting ready for Halloween and I decorated our door for trick-or-treaters and put out two of the pumpkins that were painted for the Halloween event the night before. I can’t take credit for the cool painted witch in moon - that takes much more talent than I have - the best I could do was that owl on the left.

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To my dismay we didn’t even have one trick-or-treater and that puts my total at 0 trick-or-treaters in the five Halloweens I have had my own place. Its almost like validation that you’re a real adult when you have trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, as much as I LOVE my job and the organization I work for I am looking forward to the next couple of months with no work events on the weekends and no really big events to stress out over. I am looking forward to the coming holidays and starting some new family traditions with Dave. I’m looking forward to the birth of friends’ and family members’ babies in the coming months. I’m looking forward to watching Dave get closer to graduating. And I’m looking forward to relaxing evenings and weekends with fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate and good company. And when I’m finally rested up I’ll be ready to gear up for next October which will undoubtedly be just as crazy and busy as this one. Bring it on!

1 comment:

  1. I loved that flamingo idea! Such a great way for a fundraiser and a GREAT cause!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts!