Over tired

Well, today was the big car cruise-in that I am the chairman of. (don't tell me about ending the sentences with a preposition........I'm just too tired to care!) We started the day at 5:15 am and were out of the house by 6:00 am. Drove two of our classics to the show. Got there at 6:15 am and immediately set to work getting everything ready for the 8am gate opening. It was CRAZY!!! We had people in line at 6:30am. CRAZY!!!!

I knew this was going to be a great year. Our weather was in the low 80's, I think. Nary a cloud in the sky. This was the first year that we offered a theme. Hawaiian! We encouraged people to wear their Hawaiian duds for a special prize. At the end of the show we awarded a dashboard hula girl to the male and female winners. Gave little awards to people who actually brought surfboards along with their cars. We featured the Woody and the winning Woody got a special trophy. We also gave away a lei to each person as they entered the show. It was quite festive!

We had our trophies custom made this year and the winners seemed pleased! This was also the first year to offer an event T-Shirt. We ordered only 72 shirts because we didn't want to end up with shirts to take home. We could have sold at least 40 more! They were all gone before noon. I was tickled that everyone seemed to like the design since I'm the one who created it! We let people order them and have orders for 17 more.

Our raffle raised almost $2300 for Oregon Impact. They offer crash re-enactments for the local high schools and victims panels for DUII and court appointed cases. I know that many of the schools have their driver's ed kids go to them as well.

We did have an issue with the library that was open this year. They wanted all the spots in front of their library for their patrons. It would have been nice BUT it was a safety hazard with all the people walking around for the cruise-in. We reserved 20 spots for them off to the side but it was awfully hard to police the area and make sure only library patrons parked there.

I had a few 'fires' that I had to put out but not as many as last year. Oh....and did I say that we had 10%more entries this year! We had 331 cars this year!!! The most ever for our event. We might be able to go to 350 but that is all the lot can hold.

Well.....I'm hitting the sack after a short hot soak.......everything aches and I'm exhausted. We go to Montana next week with my daughter and her family but all the cruise-in data has to be typed up and reports made before Friday........no rest for the weary!!

Not a Card

I spent most of my day working on my T-Shirt design for our car club's cruise-in. The deadline for the design was tonight for our monthly club meeting. This is the first year we will offer a shirt. We are having a Hawaiian theme this year which is unusual for a cruise-in. Our club likes to do things different from the other cruise-ins and it keeps the people coming back year after year. We are also having our trophies custom made. I'll have to post a picture of them when they are done. Until then....Here is a picture of the T-shirt design. I'm not a professional.......maybe that is why it took me so long. That AND the fact that my computer decided that I was pushing so much data that it would take naps while it computed changes and additions I made while designing. The car was originally a photo and its color was red. The flowers were only a black and white coloring picture. The palm trees had curved trunks and the surfer was a muted photo originally. The design will be about 12" across on the shirt. I really wanted some pink in it but that was going to require a 5 color process instead of a 4 color process........more money on the bottom line. So the pink got shelved. Last fall I took some Paint Shop Pro online tutorials (over 125 lessons) and I must say that what I learned was absolutely priceless. I couldn't have completed any of this year's tasks without them!! Thank you, Cathy Yamashita for pointing me to the Stepping Stones Through Paint Shop Pro yahoo groups! So.....I know it wasn't a card but I hope you enjoyed the picture anyway!!