Coins for Katie Pancake Breakfast

We had our Coins for Katie pancake breakfast, silent auction, and cupcake sale this morning at Chili's.  I was so nervous while I was driving there that I'd pull up and there would be nobody there. . . Thankfully that wasn't the case!  I did our shopping last night.

(Chili's provides the space and cooks the food - we had to provide the food and the waiters.)  Someone donated $500 to us to purchase the food, and the Gammon Dairy donated fifteen gallons of milk for us to use.

We set our silent auction items and our cupcakes up on the bar.  It was perfect - everyone had plenty of room to walk around and look at all of the items.

These cornhole boards (made by my dad!) got the most bids of any item.  They looked great and sold for $175.  Thanks Matt and Crystal for bidding and winning!

The Fullbright family, who was generous beyond measure, added a k-cup holder and several boxes of tea and coffee tot he Keurig machine.  We also had the gift basket next to that donated by the Honeybaked Ham store in Murfreesboro.  

I was so happy with how our silent auction looked all set up.  

It was so exciting to see it all finally come together!

The silent auction items got a lot of attention. . . especially at the end!

We sold our beach vacation and our Cirque de Soleil package.  

Those two items alone brought in $1,500!

We had LOTS of cupcakes!

I made cupcake toppers with Katie's picture, hearts, and the cupcake flavors and 

just brought my cupcake stands and cake stands to put them on.

We had these big vases for the tips - this was probably the best thing we did.  Since they were all competing to see who got the most tips, you could really see who was winning.  They were the first thing people saw when they walked in the door, and they got a lot of attention.

Just in tips alone we made $2,672!  (That includes the $300 to be paid by the three "losing" attorneys.)

Three of our excellent waiters:  Brock, Andy, and Travis.

We had jewelry for sale, and 10% of the profits from her sales were donated to Katie.  

She had cute, cute things!  

Erica F. and Erica D. did a wonderful job seating people, greeting, and making sure everyone was taken care of.

This is the whole group from my office.  

We had an amazing morning.

Our grand total raised?  

$6,611.50!!!!

This breakfast FAR exceeded any expectations or guesses we had about how much we would raise.  The generosity, kindness, and friendship everyone who was there displayed is completely overwhelming and incredible.  There is absolutely no way we could ever communicate how appreciative we are of the support we have received from our friends, our families, and our community.  The only way for us to thank people for what we have received is to be the best family we can for Katie Ruth and to pay this generosity forward.  And that is exactly what we will do.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who came to our breakfast, bid on silent auction items, bought cupcakes, and tipped your waiters so generously.  This was an amazing day for our family!