SERENA, Ill. — With the goal of providing scholarships to FFA members, the Serena FFA Alumni hosted their second annual toy and craft show.

“All the money we make helps the kids,” said organizer Linda Tordai. Her son, Andrew, is a sophomore at Serena High School. She said her husband was a member as a high school student, too.

Tordai said she and the other two committee members, Sharon Wiley and Gary Cody, went to several toy and craft shows to determine what works, and spread the word about their event.

“We did our homework as far as putting this show together, and we will start again immediately handing out fliers for next year’s show,” she said. “We wanted to make it a family event. We had 100 more people come through the doors this year and we had more than 80 sponsors.”

She said they had to turn away crafters because they ran out of space.

“We have another gym we could open up,” Tordai noted. “We don’t want to open up the classrooms, but we may add the other gym next year.”

Along with filling two gymnasiums with crafters and toy vendors from all over the Midwest, the group also conducted a pedal tractor pull for the kids, raffled 86 prizes donated by the vendors and crafters and sold 73 homemade pies at $10 each.

“Parents, alumni and neighbors all donate pies. They were sold by noon. Last year it took a little longer, but I don’t think people understood that they were homemade pies. This year, people picked out their pie before they shopped,” Tordai said.

The show also included some fun displays for which the alumni don’t charge. “It just adds to our show. We may have to move them to the cafeteria next year.”

Tordai said the show is always the first weekend in March, allowing vendors to keep it on their calendar from year to year.

A couple of Mendota FFA members don’t live on farms – so they created their own in miniature.

High school sophomore Tyler Doughty and college freshman John Jenkins have worked for months on the miniature display that includes hundreds of cattle, cars, trucks, buildings of all kinds and much more.

Doughty said the two have displayed at a variety of toy shows around northern Illinois, including in Serena, Mendota, Sublette and Seneca. “Hopefully we’ll get to take it to Dyersville (Iowa),” he said.

Some of his ideas have come from riding with his father, who runs a custom spreading and spraying business.

Jenkins actually started the project with another friend, Paul Becker, and Doughty just asked to help. Becker has moved on to other interests. “We keep buying more stuff and expanding the display,” Jenkins said.

He is a freshman at Joliet Junior College, majoring in ag systems technology. He plans to transfer to Iowa State University. “We can’t have a real-life farm, so we decided to create our own,” he explained.