Spring Festival Thank You's - Washington Ethical Society

Huge thank you goes out to to many volunteers and staff that made Spring Festival such a wonderful day! Check out the beautiful set designed and created by Kati Towle with the help from Beth Lower, Nancy Marucci, Amanda Poppei, Marchella, and Joanna Verchinski, and Melissa Sinclair.

If you look closely you can see that the set is made from transforming reusable/recycled materials – Yes, we incorporated the theme of the month. Rocks were made from newspapers. Lily pads and lilies and grass was used from large construction sheets of paper that Kati had laying around for years that never got used or stored properly. Butterflies and frogs were cut out by students in the Theme Exploration’s classes using donated food boxes. Flowers were using up materials Nancy had on hand. Even the costumes were reused – caterpillar/butterfly from a previous festival, the frog was a borrowed costume. The pond paper was the only decorative items bought and used just for this festival.

Here is a note from Amanda:

The best thing about my job–okay, one of the best things–is the chance to dream something up and then watch as it actually happens…always because other people believed in the dream and made it happen. Sometimes the dreams are big: justice, equality, anti-racism work. Sometimes the dreams are small, and silly, and still important. A couple months ago someone in the chorus found a song called Metamorphosis, and a Spring Festival was born. Thank you George Buzzell for saying yes to donning a full-body frog suit, to Varun Gauri for dressing up like a caterpillar, to Nancy Marucci and Kati Towle for making our hall beautiful, to the chorus and Bailey Whiteman for the beautiful music, to the families who brought their perfect babies to be dedicated, to Tom Hutton for making sure everything went smoothly and Robyn Willeford Kravitz for getting it all set up, and to Elise Gould and especially Melissa McCall Sinclair for narrating our story and helping the vision come to life. Oh and Lauren Strange and Heather Vincent of the Mimosa Ministry and George and Bryan Pashigian of the room transformation team! And Tony K Nam and others for the flower arch creation, and just to everyone who made the morning so beautiful. Please, WES, never change from the place who, when your Clergy writes and asks “do you want to dress up like a frog and hop around on stage?” you say YES. #WESsaysYES

We hope your memories of the joyous babies at the naming ceremony, the chance to chat with friends, and the metamorphosis that happens each spring will stay with you and bring a smile to your face.