Blue and Gold Banquet 2011

Last year, being our pack's first year in existance and the fact that NO ONE knew what they were doing, we did not have a Blue and Gold Banquet. 

This year we made plans to do so.  We did it in the gym at our school, since we are a small pack of 17 kiddos so far.  We opted to go potluck, but when we printed up the invitations, we assigned each family to bring a main dish, side dish or bread.  We provided iced tea and ice water.  And the boys provided cake for dessert.

We did not do a theme.  That was a bit overwhelming.  No theme :-)  However, our neighbor's pack had an 80s theme this year.  Good for them :-)  !!!!

So here was our basic lineup for the evening:

Cubmaster gave a welcome sentence or two (I totally freaked him out when I emailed him the month before and told him it was customary for the Cubmaster to put on a solo skit....untrue of course but it was a nice joke).  Then the boys saluted the flag and said the Boy Scout Promise.  Then the Cubmaster invited everyone to eat before it got cold.

We had set up several long tables and the potluck was buffet-style.  We had set up the circle tables in a semi-circle with the flag and a long table at the open area for the badges and whatnot.  The buffet was on one side of the semi-circle and the cakes were on a set of long tables on the other side.



See the square boxes in the middle of the tables?  My wolf den made those out of popsicle sticks, bubble wrap and I cut out fleur de lys emblems.  I glued them together and then we put flameless candles in them.  I guess I didn't take a close up them, but I found the idea online somewhere.



I made little posters with each rank and a wrote a few of the requirements needed to achieve them so the parents who don't participate much can see what their kids do, in general.


What are the cakes for?  Oh, yes, I hear you asking.  APPARENTLY, February is the birthday of the Boy Scouts and therefore, the boys bake and decorate cakes in celebration.  I think it is traditionally called the Father/Son Cake Contest but several of our boys don't have full time dads, so....Cub Cakes, is what we called it.  But ahem....later.

After about 45 minutes, the Cubmaster got up and introduced the Bears, who had a skit prepared.  They did their skit and it was cute.  Then he announced our Wolves.  We had prepared two skits since we have 9 boys (all skits were found on www.boyscouttrail.com - quite a lot to choose from), the Darth Vadar skit and the Superman's a Jerk skit.  And guess what?  No one could hear our boys, I had to repeat each line so the parents could attempt to understand it and it was FINE.  Nothing says love like a bunch of parents idolizing their kids.

The Bears had also each prepared a magic trick to show...so 6 magic tricks.  It was fabulous.  Our younger kids LOVED it.

While all of this was going on, our Cubmaster and another committee member tallied up the votes for the cakes.  We had decided that each adult who came to the banquet would get 4 tickets to place in the cups behind each boy's cake.  We asked them to NOT stuff the ballots :-)  We handed out prizes to the top two winners and then each boy got a participant ribbon.  The cakes were fabulous....



This was the winning cake.  It was my boy and his best bud.  That's Spongebob, in case you can't tell.  Well, it's Spongebob if you're on acid.  Anyway, they won by a small margin but several parents came up to me and told me they voted for it "because it was obviously done without parent help."  Yep, that's me...."you're on your own, kid...make a cake NOW."



After that, the Cubmaster handed out each boy's badge. 



Sorry for the iPhone crap shot.  But this is the board I made to mount their badges.  My stepmom bought a Cricut machine recently and I totally abused it to make their little name tags.



In the end, I think the whole thing lasted under 2 hours and it was wonderful.  I was so proud and also impressed that it turned out so well.