Life on the farm

I thought long and hard about what I should name this post. At first I thought I should say something like ‘The weather in Hawai is great!’  because you would think that I’ve been on some wonderful exotic vacation the past days wouldn’t you? Well if that’s what you were thinking, it was wrong!

So I decided to title it ‘Just what have I been doing this week?’ OK, maybe not the most original, but it’s pretty appropriate.

OK, so what have I been doing? Well I was in a TWO day vendor show this past Friday and Saturday and even though I had all the soap made and was ready to be packaged up  – it was the packaging that took me forever to do.

Have you ever looked at a pretty big task and thought to yourself, well this is going to take a long time. And then to find out that is really did take a long time?

Well I wanted the soap to all cure before I wrapped it, and since I had absolutely no idea on how much to bring, I ended up spending many, many, hours both in the daylight and through the night this week working on getting ready for this show. For me it was one of those times when you truly believe that you could take on any task if you pulled this off.  I mean go big or go home right? So like I said I spent a couple of literally sleepless nights hanging out in our kitchen wrapping, stamping, & putting on a decorative tape to each of these bars. And was it worth it? You bet! First of all just to prove to myself that I could actually get this all done was a personal accomplishment in itself! But as the weekend unfolded it was also good decision financially. 

Well once I had all the soap wrapped, I literally had about an hour before I had to leave for the first day of the show. I jumped into the shower and told myself a couple of times, and maybe even out loud come to think of it, that I wasn’t tired and it’ll be fun. Since I’m pretty much a Newbie in these shows, my plan was to fake that I knew what I was doing. 

So I packed the truck with all my soap and some other things that were needed, and Daryl came with me to help set up an area rug that I wanted to place in my booth. Now I don’t know why I thought a rug would look good, but it was coming with me anyway. I think it was one of those times when no one is allowed to ask questions. But Daryl was such a good guy, he helped me get the rug in place and then off he went. I had about 2 hours before the show to get everything ready so I was sure hoping that I could get it done. 

For my main soap display I used a chicken coop. Yup a chicken coop!  And even though I knew it was a little unconventional, I guess I didn’t care. If this was truly my gig, well then this is how I wanted to roll with it.

Well I had everything done way before the customers were let in (they had to stand in line} so I just kinda hung out. So I tried to look busy and waited nervously. Then it was almost time and I thought to myself, Holy Smokes I better hit the bathroom. I was alone for the day and I wouldn’t be able to leave my booth now for 7 hours. Well since I gave up Diet Coke (found out that this might have be a mistake for the long hours of wrapping soap this past week) I drink a lot of water! So I quickly went and got back just in time for the gate to open. 

Wow! It was crazy. There were tons of people all smiling and looking pretty serious at the same time. As the day went on, I had a lot of compliments on my old chicken coop and my display. Well I thought, even if I don’t sell much today I knew that I probably had a pretty cleaver idea after all. It turned out that I didn’t have to worry if I was going to sell anything because I had two great days of sales. Who would have thought? With the weather perfect and the rain held out until after the show both day, and with a couple of different bands playing in the hog lot during the day (just too funny!) it was a perfect couple of days to have this on their farm. 

Now my original thought was that once I got home on Friday night I was going to make some bath fizzies to sell on Saturday. I had all the materials shipped to me and I was prepared. The only problem was that my body wasn’t.  My hand were cramped up from wrapping so much soap the night before and honestly I was tired. So needless to say no bath fizzies got make that night. 

Well when I got home Friday night and I decided to just take a quick nap on the couch. My nap ended up with me sleeping all through the night. But when the alarm went off I was ready for the second day of my adventure. 

The second day I had my niece helping me and I don’t know how she felt, but I had a great time with her being there. I was able to step away from the table to tell some potential customers about the soap while she did the money transactions and packaged the soap up for the buying Customers. She was a Rock Star! 

There was some of the vendors talking that there might be another show this fall and that made me think to myself if I would do this again. I came up to the conclusion that if I got asked I would say that I really had to think about it and I would let them know. Now if I wasn’t working full time or on so many different committees it would be different. But I’m sure you know everything takes so much time and that you have to be a little greedy to pick what your’e going to support and not support. 

So all of a sudden here came the organizer. We were making small talk and then she asked if I would want to do it again in the fall. Well I had practicing my speech and it was just starting to come out of my mouth. And guess what I said? I said something like this instead: ‘sure I would love to come back for two days in the fall’. OK, I  may be getting at making soap but I sure stink at staying with the original plan. But honestly it’ll be fun and now that I’m not such a Rookie at this I think I’ll do just fine.