Spring Pinterest challenge: Heart Prints for a cause

I am excited to finally showcase what we did for our Pinterest Challenge, hosted by Bower Power and Young House Love. I have had this plan in the "works" for about six months.

Creating "heart prints" for the MGMC Annual Benefit featuring the Kentucky Derby benefiting the William R. Bliss Cancer Center.

Each heart represents someone who has been touched by cancer and each individual who attended the event filled out a heart.  We displayed it at the event with these heart strings. My original inspiration was here:

(original source)

We have had a very interesting May. Snow, kids sporting events cancelled, the MGMC Kentucky Derby event and soon Mother's Day.

Today I am very excited to show you all how the Kentucky Derby event went.  Remember last year's event? And remember the gift gathering party we threw here?

The event was this weekend and we raised more than $238,000 for our local Cancer Center. This is a fantastic group of people to work with and I cannot be more proud to be a part of this event and organization.

Sidney, our 10-year-old, and I strung 450 hearts. We laid fishing wire down on our wood floor and started taping each heart to the fishing wire with Scotch Tape. This process went so quick.  It took us about 15 minutes per 150 hearts. #prepareforpictureoverload

I was so excited when I lifted the first board with hearts. The way the hearts twirled was so whimsy and fun, I knew it would be perfect when hung at the event.

I carefully laid all the hearts (remember I had three of these) on our floor at home. I also knew that transporting them would be difficult. That was an understatement!

I put each heart string in a 30 gallon garbage bag. When I arrived at our venue, they were a tangled mess. Have you ever tried to untangle fishing wire?

Guess what? We had to take each heart off and start all over.

Yup, 450 hearts had to be removed and put back on. The re-stringing process took about two hours (which included hanging them from a 20' ceiling).

The end result:

Magical.

Touching.

Inspiring.

For those who have fought Cancer, are still fighting and in loving memory.

Our color theme this year for the event was pink and green.

Here are some of the pink and green centerpieces.

Pink and green birdcages.

Green apples with silver sticks.

Pink hydrangea centerpiece.

Of course, what is the Kentucky Derby without a hat or fascinator contest?

Sorry for the terrible photo, but she MADE this. It was amazing!

My headpiece was not nearly as impressive. At least it matched my outfit. The photo above, is myself and Katie, co-chairs of the event.

And, we can't forget about the horse betting.

Or the raffle prizes.

Here we are ready to get this party started.

Overall, it was a very successful event. I'm ready to start planning for next year!

Did you have a Derby party? What Pinterest project are you working on?