Cougars on Cruisers

If you've read my blog for the past few years, you might have noticed that every August I attend a fundraising event for my kids school called "Cougars on Cruisers".

 It's one of my favorite nights of the year...I think I have gone for the past 5 years. This year I was on the planning committee for the event.

I posted a photo of it on Instagram the other week and some people commented that they wanted me to blog about it and to hear details about the event since they are looking for fundraising ideas for their kids school. 

Cruisers are VERY popular in our town. I'm not sure if it's a California thing, but we all have beach cruiser bikes (Let me know if cruisers are popular where you live...I'm so curious!!!)

Every Spring, our school has a School Auction where we raise about $100,000 for our kids school Education Fund which pays for things like the arts, technology, smaller class sizes, etc. 

We have an online auction as well as a Silent Auction & Live Auction. 

Some of the items you can "buy" are parties like Cougars on Cruisers. 

It's basically a Mom's night out where we go on a Scavenger Hunt from different houses or places in our town and we ride our cruisers from place to place.

Cougars are the mascot of our kids Elementary School and we all ride our cruisers (bikes) around town for this event, which is why it's called Cougars on Cruisers :)

So, you could name yours something like "Chicks on Cruisers" or "Babes on Bikes" LOL.

Mom's at our school buy a ticket to Cougars on Cruisers for $60 and all of that money goes to the Education Fund. We usually have about 35-40 women who buy a ticket, so it raises over $2000 for our school.

This year 10 of us planned this event (we don't buy our ticket to it, but each of us spent $100 out of our pockets to put the event on. 

We bought food, drinks, decorations, team gear & prizes.

One year it was an Amazing Race theme, but that got a little too competitive. 

I loved that year, but the planning team said was logistically really hard to plan.

Here is a breakdown of how the night went if you want to plan something like this.

Everyone met at my house for appetizers & drinks.

We told all the girls to wear BLACK clothing.

When they arrived, they got to pick out a tumbler to keep.

 They said "Cougars on Cruisers"

For the first 30 minutes, we waited for everyone to arrive and the ladies chatted & had appetizers.

For appetizers we did 7 layer dip, veggies & hummus, caprese skewers.

 Once everyone arrived, we gathered everyone & told them that when we said  "Go!" they need to pick one of the black boxes on my table. Inside the black box was a wrist sweat band and they color they got indicated what team they were on. In 4 corners of my yard I had 4 balloons and they needed to go to the balloon that matched their wristband (pink, aqua, lime or yellow)

 They had 5 minutes to come up with a team name and a team cheer.

The 10 of us who were on the planning committee were the judges.

In a brown bag, I had 1 of each color wrist band and to decide which team would go, I randomly pulled a wrist band out of the brown bag.

 After each team performed, we announced the winners of that competition.

The 1st place team got 40 points, 2nd place 30 points, 3rd place 20 points & 4th place 10 points.

We decided it would be funny to give them points in Monopoly money and they had to make sure they didn't lose it. At the end of the night, whoever had the most points(money) was the winner. That way us judges didn't have to keep track of points. LOL!

After the team cheers our next competition was Pictionary. Each team had 1 minute to get as many drawings as they could.  Only 1 team went at a time & we made our own Pictionary cards, so the things they had to draw were people, places & things in our town, school & Bay Area

 After Pictionary we gave out more money/points to the teams depending on how they did and then it was time for our next stop. Ready to ride!

 The next stop was another house which was less than 1/2 mile from my house.

 At this stop, there were jello shots:

And vodka infused gummy bears (oh my!)

 We also had more appetizers/snacks, one of them being popcorn:

At this stop, the competition was a Lip Sync Battle. The teams had about 15 minutes to choose a song for Lip Sync. We gave them a list of 40 songs to choose from.

The Lip Sync Battle was hysterical, we had tons of props for the teams, feather boas, glitter microphones, masks, hats, etc.

Sadly I have no photos from the performances, just video...which I'm not posting, to protect the innocent ;)

We announced the winners, handed out more money and then headed to our 3rd stop!

 At the 3rd stop we went to a gym (that one of the families at our school owns) and we had Pizza.

 And then we played Dodgeball!

 Planning committee pyramid...we were the black team & had black wrist bands. We didn't do any of the other competitions, but we did play Dodgeball!

 This was the last official stop, we had desserts after Dodgeball and then had the teams gather up their monopoly money to see what team won. Each person on the winning team got a giftcard to a local juice bar in our town. 

After this stop, we were in our downtown so some people went home, but most of us went out to a wine bar. 

We usually do this event the first Saturday after school starts. It's a great way to kick off the school year and for ladies to get to know new people at the start of the school year.  

Our town is pretty small, so even though we were on bikes, each stop was only about 1/2 mile from the next, so we didn't have to bike too far.

This was my first year being a part of the planning committee and I think I had more fun planning it than in years past when I was a group member. 

Looking forward to planning it again next year! 

I would LOVE to hear what events you do at your schools. 

Always looking for fun new ideas. 

Other parties we have "bought" from our school before are a Chili Cook Off, Bocee Ball Tourney, Adult Dodge Ball Tournament & Wine Tasting . An idea Kevin & I might host this year is Brews & Bags....BBQ & a Corn Hole Tournament with some local breweries donating beer.

Cougars on Cruisers is by far my favorite event!