2024 March meeting/AGM highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday March 24, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Gale & John H.
• Marlene & Bill M.
• Cherie S.

1. Annual General Meeting
   • One of the main activities during the club’s Annual General Meetings is to elect members to the executive positions.   These positions are essential for managing club’s financial and running “day-to-day” operations.
   • There was no exception to this year and 3 positions were up for grab: Secretary, Program Planning and Membership.   Nominations were opened to the membership and these positions were filled by acclamation.  As a result, Ruth T., Gail H. and Andy N. would start their 2-year term as Secretary, Program Planning and Membership respectively.
2. White Elephant Sale
   • As the club faced some financial challenges after emerging from the pandemic recovery, we decided to run a “fund raising” event where members were asked to donate Department 56/display items that they no longer needed.
   • In the March meeting, these items were offered for sale in the form of a “White Elephant Sale”, where items were up for sale as a certain dollar amounts; if these items were not sold after a certain time, their prices would be lowered until all these items would either be sold or eventually returned to their donors.
   • This turned out to be a fun and exciting event as you could tell there were 2 types of buyers: those who had to grab the items they had their eyes on and those who were patient enough to wait for the prices dropped before they jumped on the items.
3. Display Challenge – Year ‘Round Display using only accessories
   • As for the show-and-tell display activity, the club was asked to create small displays that are representative of different months of a year using only Department 56 accessory pieces.   You can tell from the photographs below that our members sure came up with some nifty ideas, such as a Canada Day parade float, a winter skating party, a Snowbaby spring flowery scene, etc, etc!