quick flower arrangement

I love fresh flowers for the center of my kitchen table, but sometimes it just can't happen.  I don't use too many silks flowers in my house but I do love dried flowers at least until they start to dry out and shed.  I bought the cox combs at a local pumpkin patch, hung them upside down to let them dry.  I added some faux berries, eucalyptus and a pretty silver pitcher then set the whole thing on a damask napkin.  The whole arrangement took about 10 minutes, mostly because I hid the cutters from myself again.

scarf attack

When the wind starts blowing and the air gets colder I go into scarf making mode.  These are couple I've made recently.

The base of this scarf is a chain about 60" long slip stitched together to form a ring.  I then cut pieces of yarn 6-8" long and half hitched them approximately every 2".  I bought the yarn at the Idea Store for a dollar and used most of the skein.  It took about two hours to make, most of that was cutting and attaching the yarn to the chain.

This scarf almost looks like a feather boa and my cats think it is their new bed.  For the base of this scarf I made a chain from grey tee shirt yarn and attached the pieces a little closer together than the scarf above.  Easy.  The yarn is called eyelash and I bought a black and sliver skein to mix together.  I have plenty of yarn left to make at least two more scarves, I think I spent $6-7 for the yarn.

party on

Most of our family spent the last several days celebrating Dads 90th birthday.  We greatly missed those who couldn't come and hope to see them soon.  When you put 23 people in a small space for four days you might expect some general crabbiness and arguing.  All in all we were mostly well behaved, the great grand kids were angels and the grand kids and kids were perfect as usual, those of you that know us can stop laughing now.  We talked, solved all the problems of the world, shopped, junked and hung out at the science center in Ft Wayne.  There the big kids were as enthralled as the little ones. You haven't laughed enough until you have seen your 60 something husband and  almost 40 something sons go down a two story slide and come out the other end.  I decided I was much too old to punish myself that way. We ate our way through several pizzas, fast food, Mama's home cooking and took possession of the Biaggis wine room on Saturday night.  I love that four generations can laugh, play together, swap stories and memories so well.
The pictures are pretty dark and my computer geek isn't here to fix them yet, but enjoy.

the birthday guy, Mom and Katelyn

Rick and Cristine

Nathan, Barb, Jaydin and Chase

Rich, Brandi, Katelyn

Ron, Sara, Brendan, Kaylie

Matt, Hollie, Tyler, Braden

Paula, Brenie

My angels

Five Kings

Show time again

Vintage Cottage Beauty will be at the St Charles church in Charleston on Saturday November 9.  This is our last scheduled show for the season and we will be offering some great close out prices.  After the show we concentrate on filling special orders and making gift baskets.  At least we aren't so crazy then and can enjoy the Christmas season.

I get by with a little help from my friends

Since I have been obsessed with the preparation and attending shows, I did't have a clue about what to write  this week.  So I decided I would let you know a few things that go on behind the scenes at Vintage Cottage Beauty.
Our family and friends, who were our first guinea pigs when we started making natural beauty products, are why we have a business today.  They loved our products so much they wanted to give us money for them and insisted we start a business.   They have sampled, critiqued and told us how they felt good or bad about what we make.  They have taken pictures, made suggestions, made product with us, bagged, tagged and packaged.  They have driven miles with us searching for ideas and going to shows.  They have fed us, schlepped food and drinks and worked our booth so we could have a break.
When it came down to crunch time for the last few shows I put out the word that I could use some help.  That's all I needed to do.  I had friends come and help with all the work that goes into preparing for a big craft show.  We had two big shows back to back with only a few days in between to make replacement products.  Our husbands pitched in with label and business card making, packaging, missing meals,and helping set up and tear down.  There would be no VCB without a little help from our friends and family.

Our booth at the Assembly Hall.  I don't like the blue back drop it looks cheap, but the space was wonderful

My partner Kathy, she is calm and organized, I don't know how she puts up with me.

Kathy calls herself our chief guinea pig, she almost never misses a show and is always bringing us food and booth sitting.  We named the pink grapefruit soap after her. because she is lively and sweet.

Nina is also a  guinea pigs booth sits and has given us many great product and show ideas.  She did craft shows for years and is a wealth of great information.  We named our lemon sage soap for her because she is wise and bright.

happy birthday

I don't usually post on Sundays but this is a very special Sunday.  Today is my father, Richard Kings' 90th birthday.  I have been so blessed in my life to have been given the family I have.  I have a great brother and sister and the best parents anyone could possibly have.
My father was strict, he expected us to mind and to do our best in anything we tried.  He served for decades in the Navy, first in WW2 and later moving his family all over the world, where ever the Navy sent him.  A few tours of duty saw him on a ship most of the time and his family thousands of miles away.  I'm sure that had to be tough. He has never stopped learning, graduating from college in his 80's and just recently purchasing and mastering his new Kindle. Although times were hard sometimes, we never went without any of the essentials.  As we got older if we wanted something bad enough we had to work for it.  We were taught to love God, keep our faith, do what we were told with out argument(something I often failed), respect our elders, work hard, keep learning and to always cherish our family. I would have to say my mother is the heart of our family but my father is definitely the glue. Not every one gets to celebrate birthdays with their 90 year old father, so let's party on.  Love you Dad!

Adaptability

Every business expo and craft show we set up VCB for is a little different.  We have to be flexible to the size of the space as well as the amount of product we will bring.  Space is always crowded and sometimes the planners don't take things like walk space between the booths, or needs like demonstration of your product into consideration.
Here are a couple of our space layouts we have used recently.

One vendor butted up against the other.  This kind of arrangement is difficult for us to work since we stand and let customers smell or try our products.  We need to be able to get to each side of the booth and behind the tables frequently.  On the up side this was at  a hotel and they provided the  tables, chairs and table coverings.

We use a lot of lifts and levels to show off our products, they add much more display space

Outside show on a windy, rainy day.  We had a great amount of space but the weather was a big variable.

I love the small bakers rack on the table, that and the stacking shelves really show our products off.  We always use black table covers and add color with the purple and lavender bandannas.  We put our product names and prices in frames, I cover the signs with clear contact paper so we don't have to worry about glass breaking.

This show we were doing with another friend so the large bakers rack  and a clothes rack made a great display for her knit and crochet products.
The last show we did, somehow the spacing got messed up.  We had paid for an  8X8 space but they had put too many vendors in  the row .  We were in the middle and ended up with only 5 foot of customer accessible space and played bump butts with the vendors on each side all weekend.  We tried to be as polite and accommodating as possible with as much good grace as possible but they knew we were not pleased. If we had been bitchy, angry and gone around complaining all weekend we probably would not be asked back.   It was still a successful show and I guess in the end that's what matters most.