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July 11, 2005

Fun Weekend Recap

This past weekend was a blast. It was exhausting, but well worth it. The wife and I spent the weekend on a jewelry sales trip to Virginia, coupled with some visit time with my Father-in-Law.

On Friday, I left work and made the 40 minute drive home. Once there, we loaded the car. I gave the car a once-over, including an oil change and a topping off of the radiator. That done, we started North. We made the drive to her Dad's house in a little over five hours, and went straight to bed.

On Saturday, we were up at 5am. After a quick shower, we hit the road to Waynesboro, 45 minutes away. Waynesboro has a fantastic park on the river, on the side of a hill. There's a lot of greenspace, where we setup, as well as a performance stage, baseball field, playground and pool. We found our spot and started setting up the jewelry, which took a little over an hour from scratch.

The festival started at ten oclock, but we had customers long before that. There were several other jewelry makers, but everyone made different items and had vastly different displays. Since the wife's jewelry is completely different than everyone else's, we never have any trouble with competition. No offense to anyone, but stringing glass or stones is an easy skill to learn compared to what my wife does, and few are willing to put in the years of effort to get to her level of quality.

Saturday was a productive day, paying for all our expenses for the trip as well as for everything we bought at the show. That was a great feeling, especially knowing that we had a second day to show. According to the other folks showing at the festival, Sunday was an even bigger day than Saturday.

On Saturday evening, we were able to spend some time visiting with the family, talking about politics, bluegrass music, and other stuff. We fell into bed and were asleep almost immediately.

Sunday morning, I took some time to take photos of the flowers in the backyard, as well as the view from the mountaintop. I haven't had the chance to review the shots, but I believe I have some fine work waiting for me, including several beautiful flowers, bees, and a beautiful doe we caught having a snack. After a breakfast of steak and eggs, french toast, canteloupe, and strawberries, we set back out for the show.

Sunday's setup took around 30 minutes, because we had put the wares away the day before, to allow for an easy reset. For the initial setup, everything is packed for storage, but on the second day of a two-day show, we can pack differently. That makes life much easier. Sunday was also quite productive. We sold out of one very popular item completely. One item sold moments before another lady came back to buy it. We had custom orders, and two inquiries about wholesale purchases for shops. We didn't make a fortune, by any means, but we paid for our trip, all expenses, all of our food, all of our purchases from other vendors, and a trip to Wal-Mart. On top of that, we still came back with more money than we left with. We were able to enjoy a wonderful weekend, visit with family, have a lot of fun, and make a profit. That's success.

I picked up a couple mass-produced hematite necklaces at a very low price. The wife will use the pendants from these necklaces as shape templates for her own work. She bought some hair scrunchies that are really nice. I picked up a bat-house, to provide a new home for the bats I'll be excluding from our attic very soon, and I bought two jars of molasses.

Another five+ hours of driving, and I was home at midnight.

There's nothing like having a job you enjoy, and spending your weekends working and having even more fun. Life is good.

Posted by Lockjaw at July 11, 2005 8:05 AM

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