Harvest Ball weekend

So many things have been happening, and I'm going to try desperately to catch up on everything. Let's see, back when I was updating on a semi-regular basis I left off with promising to tell you all about the Harvest Ball. I've tried once to post about this and it became very long and drawn out. This is my second try.
The Harvest Ball was back in November, on Veteran's day weekend. That day I flew from Orlando, Florida to the Moline, Illinois. From there I drove to Dubuque, Iowa to pick up my friend Katie. We are a couple of shoppers so we made a quick detour to one of my favorite western wear stores.
From there we drove to Kathy's just outside of Madison, WI. I was picking up a sewing machine from her to bring with to lend to yet another friend. After a quick chat about dresses and battles we were off to meet Amanda and swing by a Joann's. We missed Amanda's exit so she was on her own to catch up with us at Joann's. After running through Joann's and being utterly annoyed by their lack of selection we were off to meet up with the rest of the gang for the ceili dance.
There was tons of confusion about where we were meeting, and how to get there but we made it through Milwaukee's ghetto without anything bad happening, and ended up running in to the Irish Cultural Heritage Center, just as the instructions ended.
It was a flurry of hugs and giggles. After all the dancing and talking to the wonderful band, Frogwater, we all headed to our hotel in Racine. We had several cars in our party, and each one of them managed to get lost on the way!
The next morning we were desperate for good coffee. The concierge told us we were only 4 blocks from a Starbucks. After walking close to a mile we stumbled upon a dunken donuts. It was a lovely fall afternoon, the temperature far above normal. So the long walk didn't really matter except some of us still needed to finish our gowns that we were going to be wearing in just a few hours!
I had finished mine the year before, but this year I had added more trim to it. However, the white voile I had made for my sister wasn't yet hemmed. Katie also needed help with some finishing touches on her pink and purple plaid lawn. Amanda needed her sheer white overskirt pinned up. Killer had her own group of girls she had brought down from Appleton, and several h and everyone took a wrong turn somewhere along the way!of them had tweaks they needed done. She, herself needed to use Kathy's machine to stitch the eyelets on her ballgown. Everyone was dressed and their hair done up. We had somewhere around 15 girls in our party by the time we were all done. We got to the ball a bit late as usual. The time there was a blur, I don't remember too much from the actual ball, but it was fun! Afterward we all went out for a late meal and crashed! I'm going to do a seperate post of some photos from the weekend because this one is already so long!