I really need to get back to working on the business website one of these days. I’d love to have it up & running before the end of the end, and hopefully, in time for Christmas/Yule shopping. I’ve been thinking about signing up for one of those places that offers secure online storage, so I can keep the website files on there in case either of my computers eats it. I’d rather not lose everything this time around. I’ve put a lot of work into the website already & would hate for it to be a waste of my time.

I would love for it to start paying for itself one of these days, although I use the booth proceeds to buy more stock & finance the rest of it with my own job, so that very little comes out of the household budget, since this is my own dream & I feel better about it when I’m working on making it happen on my own. I’m really excited about the way things worked out with the booth this year & will be making an order soon, so I can replace the things we sold out of & get a few other things, like bumperstickers & such. I’m excited to get started on stocking net year’s booth & ready to plan for Apple Fest!

I made a few handmade journals to sell at faire & only ended up having two by the time July rolled around, but they both sold pretty quickly, so I plan to make several more for next year, mainly because I really like making them & m a notebook/blank book addict myself & I like to feed that in other people. I’m evil that way. I also need to paint more signs, I sold out of everything I had leftover from last year and get more cool bandannas, too. There are a lot of things I need to get, honestly, and plan to make my first order for next year soon. I need to have Troy deposit the money we earned this year so I can do that.

One thing that I meant to buy at faire & forgot to was this awesome pine sap salve that a friend of ours was selling. I used it on a spot of ringworm & it was gone by morning, I want to see how it works as an acne treatment & maybe on cold sores, too. It smells great, too, so that’s an added bonus & isn’t sticky like you’d expect it to be. I definitely need at least two little tubs of it!

I really hope that Troy & I can get started on the craft room next weekend, so that I can use it again, and maybe get the walls & roofs to our booths done way before faire & some other things, too. I want to fix a space to store all of my stock so I can find everything easily & find my supplies & all of that. It’s just chaos now & I can’t deal with it anymore.

Things are gradually getting back to normal around here, we’ve recovered from Faire & it didn’t take me a full week (or more) this year. We went to our annual movie with Dave (we saw Half-Blood Prince, of course) and took him back to Las Vegas to fly back home on Sunday. We went & closed out the season yesterday by processing all of the deposits that needed returning & starting to decide who definitely doesn’t get invited back next year.

We’re starting to plan for the New Harmony Apple Fest in October & trying to decide what we want to sell & if we really want to participate atall. We can’t really sell our normal line of products, for the most part, because New Harmony is a small, mostly LDS community & we wouldn’t make any money at all. I do plan to paint some more signs, especially since they pretty much sold out this year & they sell well no matter where we are, really.

I think the one thing I really hate about Faire is that when it’s over, it feels like Summer is over already. I feel like I ought to be putting away my summer clothes & digging my warmer stuff out. I see families out shopping for school clothes & supplies already, so I know it isn’t just me, even though school doesn’t start for a month or so yet.

Back when we were teaching the kids at home, we didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing, but we did have to buy the next year’s curriculum supplies, paper, pencils, art supplies and update our classroom furniture if we needed to & all of that. We saved a little money some years, mostly we didn’t. We didn’t homeschool with the hopes of saving money, anyway, we did it to meet the needs of our kids at the time & they overcame the issues & went back to public school for high school. It seems surreal now, to not care when school starts or ends anymore, after so many years of living our lives around that calendar.

Anyway, it’s our rainy season now, it’s cooler & cloudy, which adds to the feeling. I just want to snuggle up in my bed with a cup of tea & my book.

Faire was a lot of fun this year, and yes, a lot of work, too, as it always is. We started out being very frustrated on Monday, because we didn’t have everything we needed to build our stage & no one was around to give us money to get those things, but we worked around that & got as much done as we could & then we went to the joust that a fellow member of the board of directors was responsible for. We got our dinner & admission for free, and the dinner was pretty good. I was pretty bored by the joust & just ready to get back to work, honestly.

Tuesday was a typical, busy day, filled mostly by checking vendors in & showing them where & how to set up, setting up our booth & encampment & finishing the stage. Dawn & I didn’t get a chance to start setting up our booth until evening, which was actually fine, since it was way too windy to do it any earlier. We barely had time to grab our products & stash the boxes in the booth before she had to leave to get ready for work, so I worked on getting it all put out for display when I got there the next day & Dawn pitched in as soon as she got there.

We had some really cool vendors this year, although I’d have liked more, at least everyone tried to keep within the Renaissance theme & we didn’t have anyone selling sunglasses or golf training aids this time around. I real didn’t buy much, just a fairy t-shirt to benefit the Southwest Wildlife Foundation & a cool pair of silver earrings. I guess I’m at the point that I already own everything I could buy at faire, unless it’s pretty amazing. We didn’t have any garb vendors this year, and since I’m losing weight I wouldn’t have bought any anyway & have no plans to until I reach my goal.

The booth did well everyday except for Saturday & it was slow for everyone, so I am pleased that we changed our direction with what we were selling & am already excited & planning for next year. I’d love to have some new displays & tables all ready to go, so I’ll need to get started right now on all of that.

Our opening day was yesterday & we had a really great day for a Wednesday. We haven’t sold any oils yet, unfortunately, but we have sold perfumes & a bunch of other things. I have been surprised at the interest in the booth & the people who come by & talk about what cool things we have in there. I’m guessing we made the right choice in changing our stock.

We did get a few minutes to wander around & look at the other booths, thanks to Jen & Jodee and while we don’t have tons of booths this year due to the crumbling economy, what we have are very good & are carrying everything from heart pendant jewelry to swords & pipes. It’s been fun to see the merchants come in & set up & get to know them (those that we hadn’t met before) & see our old friends, too.

I’m getting ready to head out for another day & hopefully the weather will be as lovely as it was yesterday, with a nice breeze & not too much heat. I just thought I’d better update, so people didn’t think I’d died or anything!!

It feels like it’s been non-stop craziness all week long, so far. Yes, it’s the last week before faire, and yes, it’s usually very busy, but we generally have four other people helping us get things finished. This year, it feels more like everyone else quit & left us to finish putting a faire on. We’re pretty much in charge of picking up donations for the pie-eating contests & cakewalk, every morning before 9, so we did that at 8, Troy had to go record commercials for the radio at 10:30, he had to write & deliver the ads for the two LED marquees here in town & I had four phone calls dealing with last minute changes to the map & stuff for the program. That was just today.

I’d like a little time to get my own stuff done, honestly. Thankfully, all of our inventory except for soap is ready to go, or I’d be screwed. When I was trying to decide what the best home based business for me was a few years ago, I hadn’t counted on trying to put on a faire with just Troy & I, I assumed I’d had time to get stuff for my booth finished before faire actually started. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing faire & I love my business, I just think I might have planned differently if I had known some things back in January is all.

Anyway, Dawn & I have to go to Las Vegas tomorrow night to pick up Dave, so we’ll be walking in the morning so we don’t miss another day this week. We aren’t going tonight because it’s pouring down rain right now & thundering. I didn’t relish getting cold & wet tonight, so we called it off. I plan to go through my loaner garb tonight & get things separated by sizes to take over to my friend’s house for people to go through. I should probably cut soap & package it while I’m at it, too.