Several months ago I saw in the T.V. Guide that some afternoon talk shows where dealing with the topic of stay at home Mom's and pill popping. One of the segments was called "Momma's Little Helper." My little helper came in the form of a very well organized, hard working daughter who offered to visit on Sunday and pitch in to help me get ready for the Garlic and Arts Festival. I have been totally focused on getting items made since it would be a bad idea to do a show without enough stock. Most of the items still needed to be inventoried, tagged and priced. After breakfast on Sunday I took an inventory of all the items that would be on the two tables and decided what price I would charge everything. I then separated all the same priced items a put a sticky note on them and added them to the inventory. EVERYTHING had to be repriced to whole dollars since I did not want to deal with making change on every sale. Once all the various and sundry tags were printed, things were now ready for my daughter to come and and take over.
Today is my daughter, Meagan's 25th birthday. It is hard to believe that it was a 1/4 of a century ago that I became a mother. I will take the afternoon off of Saturday and my DH and I will meet Meagan at the Gardner Ale House to celebrate her birthday the way we usually do, at their Oktoberfest. What can I say...family tradition but in the mean time...the push is one to get ready for the Garlic & Arts Festival which is now 9 days away.
Back in August I blogged about the flurry of activity surrounding getting my booth ready for my first outdoor show. During my booth consult with my friend Lydia, who has done tons of these shows,we figured out that my booth will have a 6 foot table along the back and another 6 foot table along the side. My DH built me a 5 foot long box to set on the back of the table so the display would have two levels. I set the tables up this past weekend and arranged what inventory I currently had and then made a list of what I still need to make to fill in the gaps.
I embarked on making another market tote today. My main hope when starting this bag was that it would go more smoothly than the last one I made. I had discovered last week that I had misplaced the directions for making the tote. I measured my personal market tote, wrote down the pieces and sizes and cut it out...no problem. Now it was time to sew it. It had been a few weeks since I had made this tote so I was working from memory. It did not go as well as expected and the seam ripper was in frequent use. Fortunately it came out looking professionally made in spite of all the difficulties. I made some notations on my had written instructions and felt this one would work out better.
Yesterday I made another market bag out of the carrot fabric to replace the one that had sold and realized that what I was working with was Halloween colored fabrics. Why not make a coiled basket or bowl out of what was left? I am always amazed how different the fabrics look once they are wrapped around the rope. This carrot fabric did not let me down in this regard. It changed into something rather different but VERY pleasant. Since the idea was to make a Halloween candy bowl, I used all of the fabrics that I had used in the market bag. I wanted to not do just strips so I alternated the green strips (22" long) with the carrot fabric strips (18" long) and got a very unexpected result. As the fabrics were sewn into the coil, they lined up with themselves giving me a divided bowl - the green on one side and the carrot fabric on the other.
My husband took an extra day off over Labor Day weekend so we headed off to the big city, Boston. No trip to Boston is complete without taking in a game at Fenway. We had tickets to see the Red Sox play the Tigers. On our way down to the game, we stopped by at our daughter's place to meet her new kitten, Caspian. I had not been around a kitten in a while so I had forgotten how much fun they are.
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Several months ago I saw in the T.V. Guide that some afternoon talk shows where dealing with the topic of stay at home Mom's and pill popping. One of the segments was called "Momma's Little Helper." My little helper came in the form of a very well organized, hard working daughter who offered to visit on Sunday and pitch in to help me get ready for the Garlic and Arts Festival. I have been totally focused on getting items made since it would be a bad idea to do a show without enough stock. Most of the items still needed to be inventoried, tagged and priced. After breakfast on Sunday I took an inventory of all the items that would be on the two tables and decided what price I would charge everything. I then separated all the same priced items a put a sticky note on them and added them to the inventory. EVERYTHING had to be repriced to whole dollars since I did not want to deal with making change on every sale. Once all the various and sundry tags were printed, things were now ready for my daughter to come and and take over. 
Today is my daughter, Meagan's 25th birthday. It is hard to believe that it was a 1/4 of a century ago that I became a mother. I will take the afternoon off of Saturday and my DH and I will meet Meagan at the Gardner Ale House to celebrate her birthday the way we usually do, at their Oktoberfest. What can I say...family tradition but in the mean time...the push is one to get ready for the Garlic & Arts Festival which is now 9 days away. 
Back in August I blogged about the flurry of activity surrounding getting my booth ready for my first outdoor show. During my booth consult 
with my friend Lydia, who has done tons of these shows,we figured out that my booth will have a 6 foot table along the back and another 6 foot table along the side. My DH built me a 5 foot long box to set on the back of the table so the display would have two levels. I set the tables up this past weekend and arranged what inventory I currently had and then made a list of what I still need to make to fill in the gaps.
I embarked on making another market tote today. My main hope when starting this bag was that it would go more smoothly than the last one I made. I had discovered last week that I had misplaced the directions for making the tote. I measured my personal market tote, wrote down the pieces and sizes and cut it out...no problem. Now it was time to sew it. It had been a few weeks since I had made this tote so I was working from memory. It did not go as well as expected and the seam ripper was in frequent use. Fortunately it came out looking professionally made in spite of all the difficulties. I made some notations on my had written instructions and felt this one would work out better. 
Yesterday I made another market bag out of the carrot fabric to replace the 
one that had sold and realized that what I was working with was Halloween colored fabrics. Why not make a coiled basket or bowl out of what was left? I am always amazed how different the fabrics look once they are wrapped around the rope. This carrot fabric did not let me down in this regard. It changed into something rather different but VERY pleasant. Since the idea was to make a Halloween candy bowl, I used all of the fabrics that I had used in the market bag. I wanted to not do just strips so I alternated the green strips (22" long) with the carrot fabric strips (18" long) and got a very unexpected result. As the fabrics were sewn into the coil, they lined up with themselves giving me a divided bowl - the green on one side and the carrot fabric on the other. 
My husband took an extra day off over Labor Day weekend so we headed off to the big city, Boston. 
No trip to Boston is complete without taking in a game at Fenway. We had tickets to see the Red Sox play the Tigers. On our way down to the game, we stopped by at our daughter's place to meet her new kitten, Caspian. I had not been around a kitten in a while so I had forgotten how much fun they are.