Very Vintage Holiday Float in the Silver Bells Parade 2024
WE DID IT! We built a parade float in less than 6 weeks! A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who helped with volunteered time, items, donations, moral support, etc! We could not have done it without Okemos Coffee Shop, Risk’s Apiary and Honey House, or Paint Your Poison. Check out our complete list of sponsors and donors here: Parade Float Info
If you need to catch up before reading our final post, you can see weeks 1-5 of our build process here: [Week 1] [Week 2] [Week 3] [Week 4] [Week 5]
This is the finished product during daylight hours! Here is a wide shot for scale. It took so long to build, but when we showed up everyone’s float was way bigger than ours… but not as beautiful 😉
Here are some pics of our weird artist selves in front of the float. Can you tell what our favorite color is? Pictured below: Tod Parkhill, Adrienne Gelardi, and Liz Wandtke. Shout out to Angela Risk of the Okemos Coffee Shop for taking many of these pics (especially the close up details like the second pic below–she has a way nicer camera than any of us).
More shots during the day. Last here is the only shot we took of the back because it was a total afterthought. We knew no one would be looking at the back so we really slapped it together when we ran out of time. It still looks good for such a fast build, tho!
A few more detail shots. Love the first one here that Angela took. R.I.P. to the baubles that we lost driving to the parade. We learned a lot about this and are better prepared for next time.
Below, a shot of our majestic reindeer with a sparkling butthole. Did you know we named it butthole? He has a butthole gilded with rose gold foil. Santa had a solid stare at that pooper for the whole show! WOW! I bet no one will read this so I have no qualms with including Butthole the reindeer’s name. Sorry it wasn’t Rudolph 😀
Here are some shots of our float all lit up! We had a battery scare right before the parade but everything stayed lit up beautifully thanks to Angela’s badass battery generator. We were very eco-friendly. I think we were one of the only floats with a 100% battery powered set up. This includes the solar generated electricity that was used for the underbody lights. Yes, our van has solar panels! Other floats were able to sit around with their lights on for hours before the parade, but we had to wait til the very last minute to put ours on!
It was such an amazing experience meeting new people during the float build and also seeing the smiles on kid’s faces when we drove the final product in the Silver Bells parade! The float is also going to be featured in the Williamston Winter Wonderland Light Parade on Dec 7th. Details here: Williamston Light Parade FB Event
What’s next? It will be building our 5th annual Catmas tree, of course! 5 years ago we decided our cats were too bratty for us to have a real Christmas tree, so we started creating one out of cardboard that they can play on! We do a new design every year, so check back on my blog to see our new design or follow me on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook! @artofadrienne
