Harris, Kyle, Ben (Kyle's brother-in-law), and Griff (Kyle's high school friend) signed up to be on a Chili Festival team, which means that the wives signed up too. Kyle picked, Chili Vanili, as our team name (and apparently it was a popular name because two other teams were denied "rights" since we turned our form in first). We then had to pick a theme to decorate our tent and organize our costumes after. This was the hard part. We brainstormed many ideas. A few ideas were Redneck Riviera (which we decided on but then Kyle vetoed since he said there would be plenty of rednecks walking around...there really wasn't though), Fall theme, Oktoberfest, Don't Be Trashy (recycle theme), 80's (which the guys decided on but Brittany and I after brainstorming said no because we couldn't think of how to decorate the tent. 80's costumes was easy but the rest wasn't), and the list goes on.
Finally, on Tuesday with event being on Thursday, Kyle and Brittany came up with a Breast Cancer Awareness theme since October is breast cancer awareness month. Brittany and I ran with it and decided it would be, "Real Men Wear Pink!"
We found inspiration (on Pinterest). Kyle's mom is a breast cancer survivor and asked the Race for the Cure folks if we could borrow their pink tent. And after a day and a half of planning, many glasses of wine, and hours of labor, here is the result....
A few things we tweaked after this pic was taken.
Our sign was painted on brown burlap (my new obsession) and mounted on scrap cardboard from a moving box.
Backdrop was paper chains. Brittany stayed up until 4am and worked on these. And figured out the ribbon in the background. Her wrist was jacked up from stapling but it looked awesome. Also, we threw together these "lovely" satin chair covers (they scream gypsy wedding) with a pink tulle wrap.
This giant pumpkin was painted pink and we poked holes and put sticks coming out of it. Then hung pink ribbons with pins on it and gave them out to everyone who wanted one. It was great to see so many people wearing our ribbons.
Kyle's mom painted pumpkins with breast cancer awareness ribbons and Brittany glittered some pumpkins. We had a jar of candies with pink ribbons on them that we gave out to kids (or to those people who came and took a handful).
Strands of crepe paper adorned the tent ceiling (this pic makes it looks janky but it did look good in person). Christmas lights were along the edges. And we filled paper lanterns with Christmas lights and lined them on one side of the tent.
Kyle had koozies made.
Our team:
Kathryn (me), Clayton, Harris, Ben (minus Kory, Kyle's sister...Ben's wife- she was a festival official so she was a silent member), Griff, Brittany, and Kyle
The decorators
(My shirt says "Save the Ta-Tas," which Harris told me I had to change when I arrived because he thought I'd offend Kyle's mom. Not that I would have changed, but I reassured him that she was going to paint it on pumpkins and I promised him she wouldn't be upset. FYI- she loved my shirt.)
The tickets to get in are $10. There are around 40 booths and all the booths give you a sample cup of their chili. I believe we were the only booth that wasn't sponsored by a business.
Cook Ben made the wonderful chili for our team. It was really good and got many, many compliments!
As the night went on and the drinks continued to flow, we remembered that we brought the fog machine.
Assembly line of "hot chili".
Every tent had a jar for the crowd to vote on their favorite chili. (Our jar was my grandmother, Sally aka MeMaw's candy vase.)
Every time someone put a ticket in our jar, we would scream in celebration. This was then mimicked by tents around us. Dang copy-cats.
We served by the spoonful every bit of our 5 gallons of chili by 7:30. That's a lot of chili!
Clayton was such a great sport and team mascot. Besides her parents prancing her around, she was so sweet and let many other people carry her around for the night. And many many thanks to Holly (Kyle's mom) and Bonnie (my new Tupelo friend who I met at bunco but let her take my baby wherever she wanted...thank goodness she didn't kidnap her. ha) for helping so much with Clayton. She finally said enough is enough and took a nap in her mom's arms since her parents obviously weren't going to take her home.
And then the awards ceremony..... Harris (intoxicated), Brittany, Clayton, and I went to the front of the pack to listen to the awards being called. The rest of the team was MIA. Kory (Kyle's sister/Ben's wife/festival official) was standing by us as well and finally after a few awards were called said, "Uh, oh....it's getting down to slim pickins on the awards left." And then we hear....."Best Presentation------Chili Vanilli for 'Real Men Wear Pink'!!!" And the crowd goes wild (not really but the 3 of us did). Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And we made the Tupelo news!!!! Brittany paused this pic of me standing in the background. Regardless, "I'm f****ing famous"!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment