Score Card: Abbie -0 -vs- Mother Nature - 1

Well the Handmade Faire was Saturday. It rained, and was extremely windy - not just a little rainy, it was like, build an ark rainy, hell....build an ark with a sail for the wind. There were enough crafty people there, I'm sure we could have come up with an ark.

I ended up having 95 vendors, including myself. 48 of which ended up having to pack up early - myself included. Thankfully, inside the tent had 48 vendors, which - even that in and of itself is a big show for this area. The indoor vendors seemed to do pretty well, a few I talked to said they did very well. My husband was counting shoppers, from 10-1:30, he counted about 1400. After 1:30 he couldn't count anymore because that's when I started to break down my booth, and he was no longer in a good place to count. I'm estimating about 1700-2000 people, total. Quite possibly 2000 people, since hubby's counting was happening between manning my booth, helping me keep my vendors tents from flying away, and watching our toddler. The goodie bags we made disappeared in less than a half hour, and we were giving them one per group, not per person.

I feel like I have unfinished business now! I worked my butt off for the last few months promoting this, advertising, finding vendors, organizing things, figuring out the best placement for all my vendors so they would compliment each other correctly.....and, Mother Nature literally rained on my parade. I just wish all my hard work could have come to fruition.

I suppose I am happy that despite the weather we got nearly 2000 shoppers. My vendors were amazing, and I heard some glowing reviews, but.....I still can't help but feel like it should have been better! I worked for better! I'm just disappointed.

My house is a wreck from the pre Handmade Faire cram. There's pieces of paper, and just general crap all over the place. I've made some headway with it but it's still just crappy. Neil is in a terrible mood, screaming and uncommunicative, and destructive with his toys. He's never destructive with his toys, I'm not sure what it's all about but it's making me crazy. I feel restless, but exhausted at the same time. I can't just sit still. I'm feeling like I *should* be cleaning, but I want to be creating, but then....I have this blockage where I don't let myself create in a messy house. I'm just feeling like an idiot. Somebody smack me.

Though, I will say that after the Handmade Faire, I went to my best friend Crissy's house for a Halloween Party - some old friends & some new friends were there, and we had a blast. I am never one to turn down a shot of Jagger or Southern Comfort (Soco, or, as Sean calls it - "neil's third parent") haha.

Here's some pics of the good times on Saturday, I did meet some awesome people, and I got some amazing stuff - including a handmade hat from Jon, I love it! I havne't stopped wearing it yet!

Here's Jonathan - I bought my awesome hat from him!

A shot of the crowd:

My amazing hubby, manning my booth for me:

and another shot - Heart Felt Baby

I am currently stalking her etsy shop, waiting for her to list more arm warmers, she sold out at the show before I could buy a pair! I wanted these striped ones she had! Ah!