St. Brendan's Church annual parish Summer Festival

Weekend of Friday/Saturday August 7- 8, 2015

Keeping with tradition the last few years (except when I’ve been on vacation in August), I volunteered to help out at our annual church (St. Brendan’s) festival. There is always lots of pleading by the head of the festival committee, and this year they even brought in desktop computers to make volunteering even easier, though they went back to sign up sheets on a triangular kiosk closer to the festival.

I was a floater one year and was assigned to the St. Brendan’s Food Tent. I was one of the workers taking orders (then shouting them to the people behind me) and then payment. As I’m not exactly a math whiz and things were all different prices, it took me a moment to process everything, which ended up being kind of stressful for me. Hence, I decided from then on in to choose where I wanted to help out so I was the one to control the level of difficulty and stress I wanted.

Cake Bingo is easy because all you have to do is walk around and sell Bingo cards. The cards are $1 each and contain three games on a card, though often the person calling the numbers will play more than three games on a card, depending on whether any of the clergy is in the room. They don’t like volunteers to just stand around, so when we’re not busy selling cards, we’re supposed to do clean-up and throw away any used-up cards. I don’t mind doing that since it beats being bored when you don’t always know your fellow volunteers anyway.

As per usual, I also volunteered for shifts on both days. After learning the hard way that sometimes the 8:30pm volunteers don’t always show up (in which case they ask you stay on another 2½ hrs), I decided just to be one of the 8:30pm volunteers since I know I am reliable.

I also volunteered to make cakes and cupcakes for the Bingo games, and made three cakes and two sets of cupcakes. Hence, I spent lots and lots of time in my kitchen this week – more than I would have liked to, and also didn’t have a single spare cupcake, so I just satisfied myself with licking the beaters and bowl (yeah, I know I’m a big kid!). Below is my pride and joy. It was just so pretty I really hated to give it away, but it’s more cake than my husband and I want or need, so I just took pictures to keep the memory.

 

I’m glad to say that my cake was gone within the first two hours (though not sure how they choose which cakes get brought in first and which ones stay on the cart outside), so I hope whoever won it enjoyed it (it wasn’t frosted, so that might not be everyone’s choice).

At the end of two days, after spending 3½ hrs on my feet and numerous hours in the kitchen, I think I’m going to give it all a miss next year. After all, I only saw one other person I know from my church (a friend from over 20 years ago) who volunteered, so if all my friends decided to skip it (or attend and not help out) and didn’t feel guilty, then I won’t either.

Have a good week everyone!