Steve and I had the opportunity to participate in the Festival of Trees for our fifth year. For those of you that don’t know about Festival, it is a tremendous organization that puts on a show for five days every year the week after Thanksgiving, and 100% of the donations go to Primary Children’s Hospital. The Festival Board and Committees are composed entirely of women (who all have wonderful husbands, sons, nephews and friends who pitch in to help with pretty much anything, myself included). Festival is held in the South Towne Convention Center (space rented and donated). On the Monday after Thanksgiving, volunteers descend on the Convention Center to put together the most amazing trees, wreaths, centerpieces, quilts, gingerbread houses, and always a couple of random but very valuable other things, which they have spent months making and decorating. These items are “priced” at the cost to make it and range from a few dollars to tens of thousands. Many of the trees are done In Memory of someone special to the decorator. If you’re ever at Festival and you see a photo of someone, there is probably a story that accompanies the tree. If you ask the Tree Wrangler (person that stands in the trees and tells people not to touch them), they can tell you the stories.
On Tuesday evening (this is our family’s favorite part), Steve and I put on our fancy clothes and headed off to be auction hosts. All of these donated items (there are thousands), are auctioned off that evening. Bidding goes on for a couple of hours (the evening is formal, of course), and when bidding ends, there is a bid-off for all items that have multiple bidders. Trees go for anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to tens of thousands, and every penny goes to the Hospital.
Every year there is at least one amazing playhouse donated. They are nicer than my own house!
The inside of the playhouse
Starting Wednesday morning, everything remains on display for the public (for a small entrance fee – 100% of which goes to the Hospital), through Saturday evening. On Saturday night at 10pm, the winners pick up the smaller items at the convention center, and the large trees are packaged up for delivery the next day.
A word on tree delivery: I’ll admit that the packing up is pretty fun. At 10:15pm, after the security sweep, a small army of people rush into the hall to start tree packaging. Requirements for tree decorating are pretty strict, and include rules such as everything on the tree has to be wired to it, and each tree has to have a plastic bag big enough to be pulled up to the top, under it. There’s a mad rush to make sure you grab the boxes that go to your assigned trees, then the tree wrapping starts. The plastic bags are pulled out from under the tree skirts, pulled up over the tree, tied at the top, and the plastic wrap goes tightly around the tree. Everything around it gets boxed up (this can sometimes be A LOT of stuff, from toys and books, to bicycles, furniture, etc. Some of these trees are VERY elaborate). Then, if you’re lucky and your truck is already there, the tree and it’s stuff are put on a wheely cart and put onto the truck (if you’re not lucky, you do this very early on Sunday). Then tree delivery starts. Tree delivery is stressful. Each Board Member has photos of their assigned trees. They and their small army drive around to the delivery locations specified by the generous patrons (mostly houses), with a photo of what the tree looked like at Festival. The tree and it’s accompanying stuff is unloaded, put wherever requested, unwrapped, fluffed, and staged to look exactly like the photo. People have paid a lot of money for these trees, so you want them to be perfect – but you’re moving a decorated Christmas tree… it’s stressful (did I mention that).
Imagine wrapping this tree and trying to make sure none of the decorations on top break… Trees are given “difficulty” numbers so that one person doesn’t get a hard one. Believe it or not, this one probably wasn’t given the highest level of difficulty
Anyway, we didn’t have to pack up OR deliver trees this year (although my saintly brother helped pack them up). I got to tree wrangle with Andrea (sister-in-law), which was fun. Our donated boutique items seemed to do well this year, and Steve and I, with a little help from the rest of my family who bid on our behalf, won a wreath (picture above). It was a great year! Can’t wait for next!
Cute Tree
I’m sure this one made a little girl somewhere very happy
It’s hard to see in this picture, but this is 4 trees, put together, and shaped like a wave. My Mom was there when it was delivered and it was brought in as four trees together. We have no idea how they delivered it. This one got quite a bit of attention at Festival this year.
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