Mad Hatter's Tea 2009

Sunday March 1st, 2009 was the El Gizarette's Annual Mad Hatter's Tea.

I was so worried. We were not able to set up until the morning of. I had scheduled back in October 2008 to be able to set up for this tea on Saturday. Then found out on Wednesday on my own unit's luck that we couldn't. They had scheduled another event Saturday night. I was upset, mainly because the people (person) who scheduled the building didn't have the respect to call me and tell me of the changes.

Then via email and phone calls, changed the plan of events. We needed to clean out our closet (storage unit). You couldn't find anything. One of the unit ladies husband put up shelves. We also took down all of the decorations and items needed from our closet for the tea. The closet is upstairs and the tea was in the Bobo Room down stairs. We were able to clean out the closet, get shelves up, decorations down stairs and out of the way of the scheduled event (before they started showing up).

Then we went shopping for food items needed for the tea. All the members (the whole 4 of us) was assigned to 2 loaves of bread sandwiches, 1 batch of cookies and other items (tea, cream puffs, brownies, fruit, etc).

We all had to be there by 10 AM on Sunday morning to set up for the tea. Thankfully, a few of the husbands and 1 grandchild helped us set up tables, chairs and decorations. It was awesome! I was so worried that no one would show up. While we were setting up discovered we only sold 20 tickets ahead of time. I planned for 60 people. I was hoping for 40 after I found out about how few tickets were sold.

Then a miracle happened, we had 60 people show up. We had 2 empty chairs at 1 table. We had young ladies, a young man, a gentleman, 1 infant and several woman. I was worried we were going to have to set up another table, then I worried we didn't have enough food.

I couldn't believe it, we had enough food. We severed chicken salad, finger sandwiches, green olives, fruit, brownies, cream puffs, lime bars, cookies, tea, coffee and eclairs.

We had door prizes, auctions, a raffle and hat parade. I think everyone had a great time. I think it went over really well, at least where I was standing. Then the clean up was awesome. One of our less active members helped and brought friends, which made clean up time even faster. It was so cool. Specially since I made the mistake of only getting 2 hours of sleep the night before with baking my cookies, lime bars and making my sandwiches (rolled up lunch meats with cream cream in the center).

I was so exhausted by the time I got home. I had a good feeling about the day though. I was excited how my unit worked together and did their part. I loved how many people wore hats and the decorations for my sister Allison were great. They helped with the tea theme so well.

Thank you everyone for all your help and support with this event. I can't wait for 2010!