If you’ve always wanted to spend a week-long vacation in Palm Springs, a donation to the annual St. Anthony’s Harvest Festival could be your ticket to finally making it happen. And, if you’re lucky, the junket could cost you a mere buck.

Eight days and seven nights in Palm Springs is the grand prize of the harvest festival this year. Ticket donations for the drawing are $1 apiece, or six for $5 and 12 for $10. Tickets will be available both days of the weekend family extravaganza set for Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 15-16.

There are other big-ticket items for other lucky festival visitors which will be drawn on both days of the celebration. These include a bicycle, all kinds of gift cards, certificates for local restaurants, and a $500 gift card from Steve’s Chevrolet-Buick in Oakdale for Saturday’s drawing; and another bike, more gift cards, an iPad2, and a $500 gift certificate from Hafer’s Home Furniture in Manteca for the Sunday drawing.

For the grand prize, the drawing will be held at 8 p.m. at the closing of the festival on Sunday. Winning ticket holders need not be present to win.

Tickets for the drawing can be purchased in advance at the church office, which is the building on the west side of the church on East North Street, during regular business hours.

About two-dozen food and game booths with offerings for the whole family, plus live and silent auctions are making a comeback. The game books include the perennially popular Ping Pong Toss, Grab-a-Duck, Horse Race, Putting Green, Milk Can Toss, and Nickel Pitch. The food booths run the ethnic gamut, from the Filipino lumpia (eggroll), Mexican tacos and tamales, and Portuguese linguica.

The Bookworm booth has proven itself to be a popular destination for festival goers, so it’s also making a comeback. For the young ones, there will be a bounce house. And strictly for the adults, a beer garden.

The silent auction will be held inside the gym both days. On Sunday, immediately after the 10:30 a.m. outdoor concelebrate and bilingual Mass on the festival grounds, will be the ever-popular live auction that includes livestock, hay, wine, quality handmade items, plus homemade Portuguese sweet bread. While the live auction, at one time, actually brought live animals to the festival grounds, that is no longer the case. Pictures and/or videos of the donated animals up for auction are now the norm rather than the exception in the interest of safety and liability.

This year’s festival theme, “Ever Young in Christ,” mirrors the theme of the Diocese of Stockton as it celebrates 50 years as a diocese this year.

The two-day harvest festival is open to the public. Admission is free.

Festival hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 16. Sunday will begin with the outdoor Mass which will be held on the festival grounds at 10:30 a.m. followed by the start of the day’s events.

For more information, call the church office at (209) 823-7197.