You may be wondering how our craft fair experience went this past weekend.
Or maybe you could care less.
Ha!
But you landed on this post somehow so I shall tell you.
On the day of the craft fair, I had one more pillow to sew, flower pins to make, I needed to go to the bank for change money, had to pick up some materials from my friend’s house and spray the growth chart rulers with a sealant, all while juggling the two kiddos. My friend also had quite the list herself.
When my husband got home (30 minutes late due to bad traffic) I packed up the truck and raced out of the house. I didn’t have much time to get to the fair to set up before people started to arrive, so I was planning on zipping on over there.
So when I pulled out onto the main road from our house and saw this, my heartbeat may have started to pick up quite a bit.
Bumper to bumper traffic. I was at a dead stop!!!
It happened to be “Mom’s Weekend” here in my town, which means all the students’ moms come in for activities around town, and this also means it is packed.
I finally made it to the fair and started to bring in my stuff and went back to the car to grab the last bag containing the homemade cookies, and this is when I realized they were missing. They weren’t anywhere! I then noticed that I left the hatch to the truck open and the horror set in.
The cookies that I had spent so much time making and beautifully packaging were now splattered on the road somewhere getting run over and over and over.
I frantically hopped back in the truck, slammed it in reverse and left a smoke trail (not really) in the parking lot as I high-tailed it out of there to re-trace my steps.
Because of the heavy traffic, I couldn’t even turn out of the craft fair parking lot and this is when I called my husband in a panic, asking him if I left the cookies at home. When he said no, I started doing my well-what-the-hell-should-I-do-now stutter of words as he tried to calmly tell me to retrace my steps.
Once off the phone I paused a moment and wondered if there was ANY chance I had already brought them in when I initially went inside to check the place out. I decided I had better check and see before I backtrack, thus making our booth late.
And right there inside on our table, was the bag of cookies.
I was relieved. I was upset with myself for putting myself and my husband through that unnecessary panic attack. I was embarrassed at myself. I felt stupid. But again, relieved.
My friend then arrived and we set up our booth, but we had yet to price our items. This is something we had been putting off for a long time as we both are SO indecisive.
We now had 10 minutes until the doors opened so our conversation went something like this…
“What should this pillow be priced?
“Uhhhhh, I don’t know?”
“How about $22?”
“But think about all the time it took to make it. Plus the cost of materials….”
“Okay, how about $25?”
“Is that too high for this fair, though?”
“I don’t know?”
“So what should we do?”
“How about 22?”
“Okay.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“Hmmm…”
Well then people started walking through the door, so we kicked it into high gear and just started writing down numbers.
By the end of the night we were almost keeled over with starvation, not planning ahead and bringing food. The only thing that got us through were the little candies other booths had set out on their tables. Thanks again for sharing! The next day was a little more lax and we were smart enough to nourish ourselves properly throughout the day.
My Hubby also brought the kids by for a little visit which was very sweet, and Gwyn made herself quite comfortable.
The fair didn’t end up getting the traffic flow that we had hoped, but for the amount of traffic we did see, we concluded we did pretty decent.
We sold out on the growth chart boards! Sold about half the pillows, about half the chalkboards, and all but four cookies (starting with nearly 60!)
We probably could have done a little better on selling other items but we were both the worst sales-people in that place.For instance, someone was looking at buying a chalkboard and was on the fence due to not knowing if it would fit in a desired area. In no way did we try to push the item and I think we even said something like,
“Yeah, it’d be a shame to get it there and not fit. You should measure it first to be sure. Plus you want to make sure it goes with the other items in your home, too.”
Hmm, not the best technique.
Overall, it was a fun experience and I think I may continue this craft fair “thing” in the future. So, stay tuned!
Happy Monday! 🙂
