Silent Auction Success

Well, this weekend's fundraiser was a great success! I don't know how the pork chop side of things went, but the silent auction brought in over $2300! To compare, the last two times we did it brought in $1800 and $1300. The most sought after item was a stained glass cross piece made from glass leftover from refurbishing the church's stained glass window years ago. It went for $130! The man who made the piece has more leftovers, so he and another church lady cooked up a deal: anyone who didn't get the piece and is willing to pay the final bid will get one. He'll make more and donate the proceeds to ILS minus the cost of labor. After tallying up his stained glass, he has enough to make four more. Three are already spoken for. So we'll add that to the grand total of silent auction income. Awesome!

My kids sang, chimed, and rang well too. There were a few minor mess-ups, and people maybe wouldn't have noticed except my kids show everything on their faces... oops. Sunday was a busy day because there was a baptism during the service AND communion. We got everything on Sunday. The only lowlight was they played a Luke Bryan music video during the church service during communion. It's called "Harvest Time" and I suppose they picked it because it's harvest time, but it has nothing to do with God and church. One of my students and I bonded over our dislike of that video used during church, so there's that at least.

My favorite part of today was actually English class. We've been prepping for NaNo and today's topic was on Plot. I've used the same outline to plot student stories for years and years, but this time the NaNo workbook gives other options if you don't want to use the basic plot rollercoaster method. Of course, after mentioning it to the 5-6th graders, they immediately wanted to hear the other ways. The first one we clicked on is the Jot, Bin, Pants method, which is surprisingly how I like to plot my novels. Huh. Who knew? 

Basically, after figuring out characters and their conflict, you jot down all the ideas you have about what could happen to them, or scene ideas, or pictures or whatever. Then you sort them into beginning, middle, and end bins. When NaNo comes, you write by the seat of your pants, picking out what you want to use when. See where your characters take you.