Mercer County has the longest running fair and horse show in the nation and after my first year of working floral hall I noticed that many of the same items were being entered and many divisons went with little to no entires. After seeing the amount of time and energy our volunteers put into our fair and horse show I wanted to implement a program that would expand our floral hall entries into those divisions that were going unentered. 

After taking inventory of the divisions that had been entered over the last 5 years the first step I took was forming a committee consisting of fair volunteers and those who enter items in our floral hall and we eliminated several outdated divisons from our catalog and added new divisions for diginal art and other digital age medias. The second step I took was to plan a program that aimed at increasing entries into those divisons that had gone unentered. The program I started is called "Crafternoon" and it is a completely free program hosted once a month that is open to anyone who is interested in entering items in floral hall. So far we have had 4 successful Crafternoons. The first month we made an Easter themed wreath and we had 13 participants who left with completed projects. The second month we learned how to needlefelt and we had 15 participants who left with completed needle felting projects. The third month I partnered with the Mercer County Horticulture Agent who taught floral arranging, we cut wildflowers and had two local cut flower farms donate flowers and we learned to make a small bouquet. We had 16 participants who left with their very own bouquet of flowers. The fourth month we learned how to do punch needle which is a form of rug hooking. We had 13 participants who learned how to punch needle and left with a completed project. 

This program is ongoing as I have plans in the coming months to teach sewing, painting, jewelry making and ceramics. I will update with how many items are entered in floral hall as a result of this program.