The day began early for work on Roseville's float today.

My daughter Ashley and I began our shift as volunteers at 8 a.m. Our first assignment was to cut thousands of dried mums into teeny, tiny pieces. These pieces were later to be mixed with a bit of glue and pasted on various parts of the float.

We finished our first batch in no time at all. But upon turning our box full of millions of pieces of crushed flowers we were informed there were thousands more to be cut!

As the day wore on, the activity and excitment was growing as we discovered the floats must all be complete by 11 p.m. Dec. 30. That's when the judging takes place and after that, the floats begin to get in line for the parade. It is quite a process.

But, no worries, everything appears to be under control. We even had volunteers walking thoughout the float with water bottle misters, spraying the flowers to keep them as fresh as possible. I guess no one anticipated the Pasadena weather to be in the mid 70s this time of year.

After a quick lunch we were back to work, this time on the right hand side of the float where we precariously worked on a small ledge area placing individual pieces of fern on the float. In between the areas of fern would go the colorful Gerber daisys and roses.

We learned that with float decorating it's best to work from the top down so as not to destroy the lower portion with foot traffic. And speaking of traffic, we learned to look before you move. There are volunteers everywhere: on scafolding above, inside the train area, perched in the most uncomfortable places imaginable, just to get the entire float covered with flowers!

At the end of the day, it was rewarding to see how much we had accomplished and to watch our float turn into a flower wonderland.

Can't wait for tomorrow!