What about potted, budded chrysanthemums? They root from cuttings ("pinchings") in the spring and are full-fledged plants by the end of July and usually fully budded. The thing is, all those pots take up a lot of room, you have to keep pinching them back, poting soil and pots cost money, and hauling pots around gets heavy. On the other hand, you can go to King's, invest in 3 different colors and as you pinch the mother plants, put every single pinching into a pot to make another plant...each one will root with literally no effort except not letting them dry out. You might get pots and poting soil loally as donations if you're allowed to solicit. Or maybe you could sort of get a youth/4-H discount if you ask. By July they would be worth $3.00-9.00. The $9.00 one might have 3 pinchings in it and be in a 8" pot as opposed to a 6-inch pot. If you're a kid, have somebody help you choose the plants from King's. You could even write, call or emailKing's and see if they would give you a 4-H deal or help you choose which plants would be ready by end of July. You'll need something a little unusual and also "early" blooming -- this early blooming by Chrysanthemum standards. If you start now under lights, you could have a forest of Chrysanthemums. If you start later, in March, you would still have quite a lot. Lime

I can't understand the time it is taking to get these seeds to different players since they were mailed out......Candycow and Brenda in Ok let me know something Monday or tues??????????????????? I hope I can figure out what is going on with this.............. Brenda in OK yours was mailed the same day as the others.........Candycow you were mailed later my fault for losing YOUR address......Still look at the recieved dates of the players and all mailed the same day..........odd......let me know when you get these...................................Donna

hi. one other thing to mention besides stiletto high heels being dangerous and lethal to wood floors, is, if you have Both, a small And old house with an old floor, i don't think it's the best idea to hold Large parties there. not only don't a lot of women, and people in general, realize what and how much damage stiletto heels do to floors, But, most homes (especially smaller older ones like yours) weren't made and designed to hold parties, Especially Large ones of 90-100 people! i'm guessing if your floor was so Badly marked up and damaged that there was dancing?? if so, on such an Old floor, i take it that the room, And house, was probably bouncing and shaking like an earthquake?? lots of things shake and maybe fall over off shelves, etc., during these parties? you better also have your floor joists and support beams below inspected. chances are if you had these girls in stilettos dancing and jumping around at times on that old floor, you probably not only have significant damage to the actual floorboards, But the sub-floor, joists, and beams underneath! when contractors built homes like yours 'back in the day', (and some even Today), the homes are built to Live in and Walk around in, and Not have huge parties of So many people with needle-thin stiletto heels and dancing. they build clubs and bars for that. the floors contractors build for clubs and bars are built for Much more weight capacity and heavy activity such as dancing than homes. so, if there was Any dancing and jumping at All during these Large parties, i would have your floor joists and support beams below inspected a.s.a.p. before throwing Anymore parties. otherwise, you may not only have to worry about repairng a few floorboards, but also repairing the Whole floor and maybe you and your guest winding up in the basement, or whatever is below. also, although some women Do care about their floors and hate having them marked up and damaged by heels, i do know of some that actually Love to "leave their mark" in floors and totally damage and wreck floors with their thin stiletto high heels. so i'd check with some of your guests (maybe take a little survey) on that subject and see who may not realize what they're doing to floors like yours, but also, who Does And is Loving it. some of those girls may have done some of that damage and left those stiletto heel dents and holes in your floor and ruined those boards on Purpose. but now, on the otherhand, if the was No dancing, and your floor was damaged That bad from stiletto high heels just Walking around, i would Definitely do the "no stiletto high heels" rule in your house. (along with "no dancing") curious on some of these. good luck and hope to hear back from ya and hope your floor (both the boards above and the supports below) is gonna be ok.

I have a little experience with this kind of project. Acutally, a lot of experience, but that is another story. First some marketing suggestions. Having even a rough sketch or schematic of the playground will help in your efforts. It is a great marketing tool, show it sponsors and post it to keep a visual reminder in parents' faces everyday. From that, make a list of the major and semi-major components. Swing bays, slides, monkey bars, you get the idea. Set a price for each component, round up. Then break up your fundraising efforts into one component at a time. Then take that schematic to local businesses and community service organizations (Kiawanis, Rotary Club, etc.) Ask each group to "adopt" a part of the playground. You'll get a lot of "no" but even a couple "yes" are worth the rejections. You will need to set a way in which each group will be recognized for the donation. Remind them that a school is a 501(c)3 and the donation is tax deductable. That is what they want out of it: tax write off and local publicity. If you already have some funds, that will help convince them of your committment. If/when you get some sponsors be sure to have some kids color and write a real cute thank you not to the sponsor, the love to post that sort of thing in a business where customers see it. If you do that approach, have yourself together before going into with a written request and a list of the components available to sponsor, and any other sponsors already on board. Parents of students in your school who have family businesses might like to get involved with this one if they get even a little recogniztion for it. Then make fundraisers that will raise funds for one or two components at a time. That way you can publicize "proceeds will purchase the monkey bars" or whatever. When the fundraiser is over, it will raise morale more when you can say "YEAH! It was a success we raised enough to purchase the monkey bars" instead of "We are getting closer to the playground total." Also post a graphic of the funds raised somewhere very visual in the school. You could do a thermometer thing, or a complete picture of the playground next to one of only the components funded, adding them as they are funded. Final marketing tip, get the students really excited about it. The more they talk about the new playground, the more the parents hear about it, the more they pay attention (and contribute). It has to be put in front of them constantly. Some of the events we held to actually raise money: Penny/Coin drive -raised about $1500, the gimmick was to fill the bed of a pick-up truck Sold parts with kids names on it -bricks in a sidewalk might be the easiest thing at a school. Parents love to put their kids name on something permanent. We sold bricks for $100, but only paid around $15 for them engraved. So that leaves you a lot of room to reduce the price of your bricks if it suits your school better. Remember to budget for a contractor to install them, though. Something called "flocking" involving individuals paying to have a friend, relative or neighbor's front yard filled with pink, plastic flamingos over night. It was a riot, raised about $1500. If that sounds interesting, email me I'll tell you the details of how it worked. McDonalds will not outright give money to this kind of thing. Most, however, will let you have a fundraiser at a restaurant. I suppose it might vary between franchises, but our allowed to have a "Voucher Night." We distributed vouchers to be turned in during specific hours of a given date. A certain percentage of the sales with vouchers came back to our cause. We even got the local paper to print a voucher in the paper for that week. If you play your cards right, you might be able to get your local McD's to schedule Ronald for that night. If not, maybe you can get a magician or clown to donate his/her time for entertainment. At the same time, you might be able to get a local business to donate at item for raffle. We did all those things at our "Voucher Nights" to increase traffic into the event and to increase sales. I mean, given a choice, a lot of people get their food to go. If there is entertainment for the kids, they stick around, order dessert, sales go up. Every little bit helps. Then of course, the traditional raffles and bake sales. I like these things because there is little or no cost involved. Unlike the candy sales or other gift sales fundraising companies get schools to do. They can be good fundraisers, but also require a lot of volunteer time and the biggest profit is made by the company. The hardest part of a raffle is getting the prizes donated. But, if you go to businesses to sponsor a component and they tell you "we can't" then you can pull the prize card, they might be more able to give an item than cash. You could have a dinner and involve the students by having musical groups perform, or having them help with serving and clean up. Whatever you do, don't forget to invite the local paper or even news channel. A lot of times, they have bigger stories, but call them every single time and they might show up once or twice. A little press coverage goes a long way. They prefer events involving kids, it gets better ratings I guess. Ask your core group of parents for help. It's amazing once you starts asking people for things, what resources are out there. Somebody might have done a silent auction before, get them to do one for this cause. Or a golf tournement. List out a bunch of ideas for fundraisers, knowing that you can't do all of them, and see who steps up to chair what. You might find some hidden talent in someone you thought had none :o) Things to get the kids involved without selling, any -a-thon. Walk, bowl, how about a swing a thon at another playground? Pet wash, car wash. The best washes that I've seen sell "advance tickets." OMG, what a genious who came up with this! The kids sold the advance tickets, to neighbors or whatever, to come a couple weeks later and get your car washed. Though on that date, you could still drive up and pay for a wash. But they had to have sold hundreds of those advance tickets, and I bet half of them were never redeemed. I would always forget to redeem mine! At $5 each, that is just plain profit!! I still want to shake the hand of the person who thought that up! I'll stop there for now. The playground I led was a community playground, we raised over $250,000, it took about two years, then we had to get almost 10,000 volunteer hours to build it. It was hard work, but turned out very successful. Probably a different kind of project from what you're talking about right now. But I hope some what I said can be adapted to help you build your school's playground. Email me if I can be of further help.