I have been meaning to post ever since Nov 13th (the day after the barn sale closed) but I was just so overwhelmed with the response to the show, that language kinda failed me. I just haven't been able to find the right expression to describe how I feel. Volcanically successful? Insanely successful? Exceeded my wildest dreams successful? In any case, I realized that all I needed to say about the show was "WOW!" and "Thanks so much for coming!"
I am beyond grateful to all the people who were willing to come to someone's house to check out a new little business. And people did come. And they bought many things with delighted looks on their faces. They hung out and ate the samples from our fantastic caterer, Amy Palmer and brought their friends back to show, They enjoyed the environment and appreciated all the work that went into putting the show on. So thanks so much!
I think my favorite part about the show was being able to sell things for budding artists that have no other venue. My reluctant but fabulously talented photographer, Carol Edgell, sold everything. So exciting! My Twigs (the show is called Branches, so I refer to my youth artists as Twigs) also did extremely well. All three of them sold almost everything. I was particularly pleased that the 12 year old who made the hair bows and plans on donating everything she makes to Heifer International (http://www.heifer.com/) gave me 24 bows and sold all but three. She will be able to make an $88 donation. Not too shabby!
Overall, the show's artists donated close to $250, enough to buy a water buffalo in Thailand or the Phillipines. That's super exciting, as that was the little mental goal I had set for the donation level for this show. And who wouldn't want to buy a water buffalo, given the chance?
I know this post is getting kinda long and you want to see the pictures, but I have to give a HUGE shout out to the one person who made the show possible, my admin assistant, Liisa Erickson. This girl worked her tail off behind the scenes. She's a recent college grad who is currently substitute teaching for Fairfax County Schools. She came over once a week for a while and kept me from freaking out- I mean came and did all the data entry and designed all the merchandise tags and did anything else I asked her to, without complaining no matter how boring or onerous the task was. Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to hire someone and just have them come in and do the job right, every single time, no matter what the job is? Liisa's future employer, if you are reading this YOU WANT THIS GIRL TO WORK FOR YOU. Anyway, there is no way I would have been successful pulling things together without her. And she cashiered both days as well. Liisa, you are my hero, girl! Thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand times, thank you.
And thank you all for coming. For believing in me and my friends. For being curious and asking questions and being excited about our little creations. It really is a scary thing to make something and put it out there at the mercy of the world. So your smiles and warm compliments did us all a mountain of good. And yes......we WILL be doing this again next year. But I won't think about that until March.
And last, but not least, I'd like to thank Zoe for being our unoffical mascot.
