Home again - with pictures!

It's always great getting back home and working my way back into the "home" routine. Last Friday I was just thinking that it was kind of a boring day when someone pulled up in front of my house, blocking my driveway. As I watched, the woman jumped out and started walking up my driveway taking pictures. Being the curious person I am, I opened the front door and asked what she was doing. Being the lovely person she was, she proceeded to tell me what I could do with my question and mouth off to me. As she was getting back in the car she finally mentioned what she was taking pictures of... a huge fireball behind my house. I still don't understand why she didn't ring the doorbell and warn us!

My first concern was getting my van out of the garage but once that was done, I needed to rescue some of my display stuff since it's all stored in that garage addition. Luckily a couple of neighbors were able to help since Dick was getting the hose (which was still in winter storage) set up and hosing down the garage. His doing that kept the damage down on my garage (see the "melted" picture). Unfortunately, my one neighbor wasn't so lucky as the fire completely destroyed his garage as you can see in the picture.

The good news? No one was hurt! And I'm now looking forward to those boring days once again!

Still no pictures

My favorite blogs have lots of pictures. I just can't seem to remember to take pictures when things are happening that I might blog about later! Like my show this past weekend in Bonita Springs. I planned on blogging about each day but no pictures. So no blog...

But it's now a little later and I have some pictures! One is the view from my hotel room at Bonita Springs and the other is my friend Michele in her great new hat! I'm trying...

Set up day!

I had planned on pictures of set up day but the weather took care of that. Heavy rains and big winds changed all our plans. So we started the day with coffee on the porch overlooking the lake with rain pouring down around us. Then instead of setting up in the middle of the day, we ate a lovely lunch overlooking another body of water. Grouper tacos and chowder at the Fish House in Bonita Springs.

Finally started set up at about 4:30 and got the bulk of it done, under dry but threatening skies. Will go back at 6 in the morning and finish up. Then back to the hotel to shower and have breakfast. This is the advantage to staying right next to the show. Very much worth the money spent!

Really looking forward to the show tomorrow. Love the way it's run and the people are all just so nice. It may be because they're all former mid-westerner's!

Second day on the road

Well, after 16 hours on the road yesterday, it was only about 8 1/2 today. But today I hit heavy, heavy rain in Florida. Standing water on the highway, foggy, heavy rain and dippy drivers without their lights on. Luckily Dick was at home watching the radar for me so he was able to reassure me that I really would drive out of it. Couldn't be soon enough for me!

Sat around our lovely hotel lobby with a glass of wine and friends Michele, Travis and David discussing shows and what's going on with everyone. This is the important part of doing shows for me. All the great friendships I've made with all these wonderful people. To be able to just sit around for a little while and catch up. Love it!

Tomorrow is set-up day and it's supposed to rain all day. BUT...the weather is supposed to be beautiful all weekend! Tomorrow I'll post some set-up pictures. Off to sleep now...

Traveling

So this is the unglamorous part of doing art fairs. I had to get up at 4 am to be on the road by 4:30 am to be able to quit driving shortly after dark. So after being on the road for 16 hours, we're finally safely holed up in a "lovely" hotel in Macon Georgia. In fact in the very same room we've stayed in before. How strange is that?

This has been a day of non-exciting events. I've discovered RainX window washing fluid. Lovely stuff. Saw a beautiful rainbow somewhere in Tennessee. Saw an act of togetherness that I'm taking as a warm fuzzy. A tandem FedEx truck had tipped over and just beyond it were 5 other tandem FedEx trucks sitting by the side of the road with their flashers on. It didn't look serious other than the truck on it's side so I'm not being flip. I just took it as a great show of support!

Love the coleslaw at Chick-fil-a which we don't have up north so that's where we had dinner. Surprisingly good dinner! I may never sleep again with all the coffee I drank today to make sure I was awake and perky but I need to find out since morning will come quickly and it's another long day on the road tomorrow. To be continued...

On the road again

This weekend is the Bonita Springs National Art Festival and I'll be there. And I'll have some totally new work...if I get it done in time! I figure I have about 6 hours left in the studio and yes, that's what I should be doing now.

It's both fun and traumatic taking totally new work to a show and putting it out for the world to inspect and say yeah or nay. You hope people like it. You hope someone actually buys it since that's the true test. I'm doing some pieces that are more sterling than the 22k gold, just for the cost factor and even though it's fun to have a change, I do miss the richness and softness of the 22k. I'll post pictures once something is done.

The big drive is ahead of me. Looks like rain the entire way down which will make it even longer but once there, Michele and I will have some fun! We're both doing the show so it's work as well as play but it'll be great to have some time together.

On the road again....

The Garage Sale Art Fair

It's over. We work all year to put on the best art fair for our fellow artists that we can and then in a flash, it's over for the year. So what do we do next? Start planning next year's event before we're even done with this years cleanup.

The list of things to change, review and add to the show is already long. I'm asking friends for their opinions and ideas and that's where a lot of the really good ones come from. Sometimes it's the things that seem so obvious like needing a street address of where the show is located on the postcard. Huh? How did we miss this???

It feels like this huge responsibility that we have to get buyers into the show for our artists. Every year we try new advertising venues while keeping things like the television ads that seem to work really well for us. Who knows what's the best right now so we'll keep trying new things.

Next year is our 15th anniversary event so we want to come up with some extra fun things to do. Not sure what they'll be yet but I do know that we'll do everything we can to make it a success for everyone!