Sunday, March 29, 2009

Craftastic craftiness

So... finally done with the school craft fair!! There was some pretty steady traffic, and considering it was our first one, most were all in agreement that it was a success. At my table, I personally sold a set of coasters, a card, a t-shirt and one of my large ceramic tiles with the fleur-de-lis. So, considering it was my first craft show in about 7 years, I was pretty psyched that I sold anything! I have all my new merch up on the Etsy site, so I'm really rolling! Here's my industrious helpers assisting me to move the merch...


Either that, or they are looking at an Elmo sticker book. Can't tell.

My friend Alissa has a great wrap-up on her site, too. Overall, we raised over $1000 for the arts program at the school. More to come on when/how we'll be handing out the big check to the art teacher. I think I personally put in about 70-80 hours of time into the planning, which was a bit insane, and about $12.50 an hour. So my feet were firmly up and planted on the ottoman whilst I sipped a lovely glass of red wine by 5pm yesterday. Had a great conversation with my husband, who I feel has been pretty neglected over the past several weeks, and enjoyed a lazy pajama day today while uploading all my stuff onto Etsy.

And I have to give a big shout out to my well-behaved kids. I had all these nightmares of entertaining a 3 year old and 7 year old while trying to run a craft show AND sell my crafts, but our juggler we had booked for the event turned out to be my babysitter on the fly. The kids were so well behaved, and they had a great time. Even they were exhausted with their feet up by the end of the day.

Overall, I was really pleased with myself on trying to do something positive for the arts program at the school. Now, onto the next phase of things... like, figuring out what to do next. More to come on that.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

You Can Call Me Owen

Andrew says "Call me Owen" at Wild Goose Creative.

Today we went to the neatest little workshop at Wild Goose. It was taught by Amy Turn Sharp of Doobleh-Vay, and we learned a lot! The theme was how to teach our kids through art, and we made gooey slime, wrote a poem and learned interesting ways of teaching through art on a daily basis. Of my two sons, Andrew is definitely the more artistically inclined (or at least interested, I should say -- I can't get CJ to even color with crayons), so I figured this would be much more up his alley. He had a great time, and since he doesn't get much interaction with other kids since he's not in school or daycare yet, he seemed to enjoy being around the kids, too.

So why the reference to "Owen"? Because we got a nifty smock for free with the name "Owen" on it and it became Andrew's nickname for the day.

I was a little light on the picture taking, as I only had the point and shoot, and was more interested in immersing ourselves in the class rather than shuttering away. I love finding little nuggets of cool things in this city gold mine.

Behold Owen the Wizard.