Ready, Set, Go!

Thought I would pop in and say hello while I take a quick breather! I am just about done with everything for the show tomorrow. The only things left on my list are for Irv and me to watch the credit card payment tutorials so I make sure we do that right tomorrow. I have to put the pillows into great big bags to transport them and inventory the cards and photos I am taking. That's it...out side of doing a little laundry and figuring out what I'm going to wear. It's going down into the 30's tonight which means it is going to be pretty chilly for set up, but then it will be about 60 later on the the day. Guess I will do layers.

Here is my stuff all packed up and ready to go.

Here are bags of every sizes, shape and color that people saved for me. Hopefully they will all be gone by the end of the day tomorrow! :) I still have to organize them a bit as you can tell.


I have pillows hanging everywhere right now. I don't want to put them into the big bags until I have to so they stay nice and the bags they are in don't end up looking beat up.


I used a couple of suitcases for miscellaneous stuff. I am taking everything I could possibly need...that way I won't need it. If I don't take it....for sure I will! I figure with the wheels, on the suitcases I can just pull them to my spot. Irv has a big wheeled cart that we will use for the big stuff.

You should have seen me trying to box up over 30 cake stands. I used a ton of bath towels and just wrapped them up and put them in bins and boxes. What a project. I sure hope a ton of them sell so I don't have to wrap them up and bring them all home with me!

Ok...my break is over. Have an awesome weekend everyone and I'll be back on Monday!

My Nightmare

It's a darn good thing that the craft show is this Sunday...because I actually had a dream...or should I say nightmare about it last night.

Right before I went to bed last night, my son, Michael and I were texting about the show. We were talking about what is considered a "good" show. Someone had once said that at a good show, you will sell about 25% of your inventory. Now I'm sure that varies widely from show to show, but if I were to do that....I would be one majorly happy little crafter! :)

I rarely remember my dreams. I'm not sure why, but I don't. I woke up this morning though with this funny feeling about me. I lay there for a minute trying to figure out why and then it hit me.

I dreamed that the craft show was in this old two-story house. There were a lot of crafters on the main level, but I wasn't on the main level. Oh no....I was the last person to sign up, so I was upstairs. When you got upstairs, there was one larger room and there was one crafter with a table set up there...but that wasn't where I was. Where was I? Oh, I was around the corner in this tiny little room all by myself!!

I had one table...not a nice big table, just one square card table! It didn't even have a table cloth on it! In fact, I don't really remember exactly what I was selling except for this plastic either glass case or maybe it was a very small purse. All I know is it was black plastic and it kind of snapped shut. I remember telling Irv that maybe I should take it off the table since I didn't make it.

Apparently I was having a raffle too....I had a clip board with a sign up sheet on it. You want to know what I was giving away?

A pair of jeans!!! HAHAHA!!

I told Irv about my dream this morning and all he said was..."You need some help!"

Come on Sunday.....

Smile...

Since I embarrassed Irv the other day with the story about the giant green pepper, I thought I would embarrass myself today.

When I was pregnant with Matthew, I gained...oh, about 45 pounds! I was pretty thin back then, so 45 pounds made me look like the Goodyear Blimp! One day we were all sitting in the living room and I got up to open the front door. The door would occasionally stick, so I gave a good yank on the door knob, and it came off right in my hand!

I went flying backwards, door knob still in hand and I bounced across the living room floor on my butt! You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Everyone had this shocked look on their faces, but no one moved or said a word. Then they just couldn't hold it in any longer and started laughing, and as they were laughing hysterically, managed a little, "Are you okay?"

I was fine...just my pride was hurt, but I imagine the site of this whale of a woman, bouncing across the floor on her butt with a door knob in her hand must have been quite a site!

On The Weather Watch

Are you a weather watcher? When I have an outdoor activity scheduled, like the craft show on Sunday, I become obsessed with the weather. The minute the 10-Day Forecast comes out, I am all over it on weather.com. Then as soon as we are down to 7 days until the activity, I can check every channel's weather person to see what they all think.

With the craft show only four days away, half my day is spent weather watching. Just kidding, but I am watching.

I'm not sure why I torture myself like that, because the forecast changes daily and sometimes more than once a day. You might check in the morning and they say that day is going to be party cloudy with a chance of rain and 64 degrees. Then you check in later and it's going to be sunny and 58.

I certainly have no control over the weather, so why do I feel the need to check it a hundred times a day? The weather is going to be what it's going to be. Can you believe that every night this week when I have watched the 9:00 p.m. news, I have written down what they said the weather would be for Sunday? How pathetic is that?

Right now for Sunday they are saying 63 degrees and mostly sunny. I'll take it. Just don't get me started on how I am when there are severe storms in the forecast!

The Case of the GIANT Green Pepper

Did you ever play a funny joke on someone or have one played on you?

I remember when I was about 9 or 10, my dad and I had tropical fish. We had a small tank on the bottom shelf for expectant mommies and their new babies once they arrived. One day we had a storm and the electricity went out. I was so worried about the baby fish because the heater went out and the water would get cold and I thought they would all die. My dad, the big jokester said, "Quick, go in your room and get your desk lamp. You can shine it on the tank to give them some heat!"

Well, of course I ran into my room, unplugged the lamp, ran back into the living room and just as I was about to plug the lamp in, I realized I had been tricked. I cried of course, because I cried for everything. My dad, on the other hand couldn't stop laughing.

I'm really not a very funny person, but I did play a good trick on Irv years ago, and we still laugh about it today...or at least I do.

Irv started gardening years ago. Everything always grew well except for his green peppers. They were always a bit on the small side. He was always so proud when he picked the fresh veggies and brought them in the house....except for the darn green peppers.

One day when he wasn't home, I got a HUGE green pepper at the store. I used fishing line and tied the HUGE green pepper to one of Irv's plants in the garden. He got home from work and checked his garden as he always did and came running into the house, "Kath, come outside! You have to see this! Holy shit!"

I had to hold back my laughter as he dragged me out the door to see the GIANT green pepper that had been "hiding" under the leaves of the plant. He couldn't believe he had missed it. I tried to act stunned at the awesome green pepper but burst out laughing. Then I actually felt bad as I confessed.

I still laugh about it today when I think about it! I'm sure Irv will not be laughing when he reads this. I will say, that Irv grows very nice green peppers these days, and I enjoy them in every salad I make all summer long. :)

How about you? Got any funnies to share?

Counting Down...

My posts are going to be short and sweet this week as we enter the home stretch for my first craft show! Irv and I drove out to Woodstock yesterday to scope out my spot. It's really very nice for having been on the waiting list. The town square is so pretty with cobblestone streets, cute shops and the park right in the middle with a big gazebo. My spot is right across the sidewalk from the gazebo.

I called one of the organizers to ask a couple of questions and found out that people start entering the "staging area" oh, around 2:00 a.m. I had a feeling it was going to be like that. Can you imagine how nuts it must be when you try to get 350 crafters and their vehicles (probably 2 each) into 4 little town blocks? I don't know what time we are going to go sit, but it won't be 2:00 a.m. for sure.

Irv did an awesome job on the hanging dowel rods for my pillows. It's so nice to have a husband that is handy AND supports your efforts. He also made some great hanging foam board displays for my photos and cards.

When I asked the coordinator how busy the park area got during the show...the word "congested" came up. I was more looking for the words "crowded with shoppers."...but congested came up when we were talking about the activities that take place in the gazebo all day. Not sure my spot is going to be the best for sales, but it could be a lot of fun!

It's time to stuff more pillows! Have an awesome evening!

Happy Day

Happy Mother's Day to all. I hope it is a wonderful day for everyone! My little boy also turns 26 years old today. That is just so hard for me to believe! I have always said that if Matti had been my first...he would have been my only. :) It isn't that he was a terrible child...just a bit more challenging than the other two.

Irv was so excited when Matt was born, because after two blue eyed blonds, Matti had dark hair and brown eyes like his dad. The dark hair didn't last, but oh those pretty eyes.

Matt has always been smart and adventurous. There were no little boys in our neighborhood his age, so he always tried to tag along with Michael and his friends who were all three years older. A week before he turned four, he told us to take the training wheels off his bike because he couldn't keep up with the big kids when they rode on the dirt trails that ran through the empty lots in our neighborhood. We took them off and after a few really hard falls and a lot of angry tears, off he went as happy as could be!

We use to call Matti, Hector the Collector. He was the boy with the full pockets...and you never knew what you might find in them. He couldn't pass up anything he considered "cool", and it was all cool to Matt.

Matt loved soccer and baseball. He even tried some wrestling and played some basketball. It was fun to watch him doing tricks on his roller blades, and he just couldn't get enough of the great outdoors.

We had a four foot deep above ground pool and he loved it from the first time we put him in it. He would slap on a pair of goggles and jump in, swim to the bottom and bring up anything that had been tossed in.

Matti got his first stitches when he was little in a very delicate male area....he slid on his butt down a hill and met up with a stick that was firmly planted in the ground. The next stitches were in his forehead when he flipped over the handlebars of his bike and landed on his face. Have you ever seen how much a facial cut bleeds? Yikes!

He broke his wrist clean through at soccer practice one year. I was sitting in the car reading and the kids came running to get me. When I got to the field, the coach still had him laying on his belly on the field. The coach raised up Matti's sleeve very gently and there was his wrist at a 45 degree angle, only the angle wasn't at his wrist...it was a couple of inches above it. It was SOOOO gross!!

Matti's love for action and adventure has left him bruised, battered and scarred, but what fun he has and how happy he is!
High school was a little intense. It wasn't that he did anything different than my other two did...he just managed to always get caught! Isn't that right Matti? Short hair, long hair, bleached hair, dread locked hair, pierced ears, eyebrow, lip, tattoos...we've seen it all, but the boy inside never changed.

Matt is very opinionated, just like his mom. He has a difficult time allowing other people to have their own opinion when discussing something he is passionate about. He is right and they are wrong. He is learning though as I have learned...to allow each person to have their opinion...even if their opinion is WRONG!! HAHA!
Matt is an amazing teacher according to the parents of his students. His love of all people and of nature warms my heart. He is caring and compassionate and makes me so very proud. He takes such pride in everything he does and tries to make the world a better place for all. He is passionate about life.

His siblings call him a "tree hugger". He rides his bike to work every day rather than drive his car. He sent me what he called a "lame" card, but the selection was minimal in ones that weren't wrapped in plastic.

One of his very best friends is his beautiful border collie Luna. She accompanies him everywhere he goes, and that includes hiking, camping, rock climbing and snowboarding!

I know you are off climbing that 350 foot "rock" today Matti, but Happy 26th Birthday Baby Boy! I love and miss you so much!