I am absolutely exhausted!! Running for two days straight will do that to you. We baked and baked and baked, and brewed and brewed and brewed. Then baked some more. And this wasn't even the busiest show we've done. The Art Festival had beautiful weather this weekend, it couldn't have been a more gorgeous weekend. I hope you got out to enjoy it, even if you didn't make it downtown.
I wanted to give you a "behind the scenes" idea of what goes on at these things. Trust me when I say you have to experience a show behind the counter to truly understand, but I will do my best to give you an idea. I started Saturday morning at 5AM. The vendors come out early Saturday to start setting up their booths. A lot of these vendors live in travel trailers and tour the country doing these shows. So believe me when I say they have it down to a science. Anyway . . . they also get up very early!! I started at the shop just as early to get coffees brewing and cookies baking. My amazing Aunt Cathy is truly wonderful, and is by my side at all of these shows, and I couldn't do it without her. We have gotten this down to an art, and we rock working these together!! Once a couple pots of coffee are brewed and the first trays of cookies are coming out of the oven, Aunt Cathy is arriving and our set up begins.
We set up tables out in front of the store so people can stop outside while they're shopping all the booths, or shop inside. We have a table of various coffees, and another table for cookies. Then I fill up my daughter's Red Flyer wagon with pots of coffee, cups, and all the fixin's, and head out to see the vendors. Yes, I feel like I'm five again pulling my little wagon, but hey, it works. The vendors have so much work to do setting up, they can't take the time to leave to find a good cup of coffee. So the good coffee comes to them. I make several rounds up and down the streets giving life and energy to the artists. Once everyone's had their first caffeine jolt of the day, I head back to the shop. We fill the tables out front, prepare a tray of warm cookies cut up for samples, and wait for the onslaught.
Usually by about noon, we are baking cookies as fast as we can and selling them while they are still almost too hot to take off the trays. And let me tell you, not one person has complained when we've said "these are really hot, so I didn't tie up the bag yet!" And when the sample tray comes out the door, I cannot even tell you how many friends I have!! It's like seagulls at the beach. I've always wondered how they know when some little kid drops half a sandwich and they all come out of nowhere. Same thing with people at a street fair. They just KNOW when the sample tray comes out, and they appear out of nowhere. I'm telling you - we could not even get more cookies on the tray because people would not wait long enough for us to fill all the flavors before they were digging right in! At this point I do have to get something off my chest, and I feel like this is a safe place to do it. It's called samples for a reason, folks. This is not intended to be your primary meal of the day, and it is just not polite to stand and eat off a sample tray until you're feeling Thanksgiving-ish full!! Ok, thank you, I feel better now having got that out.
By 5:00, we are whipped. The show is over for the day, and so are we. By this point we are so tired, that anything and everything is funny, so we do get some really good laughs in. We clean it all up, put everything away, and head home to crash. I'm not kidding you, the aroma of cookies is seeping out of my pores by this point. Sunday morning we get to sleep in a little, since the booths are already set up and the artists don't arrive quite as early. But our start at 8:30 this morning was frowned upon by several people complaining that we were so late - yipes!! And then you can just go back up to the top and read again, because we do the same thing all over again. These shows are so fun, and I absolutely love doing them. I get to meet so many great people, hear wonderful stories of people who received our cookie bouquets, or sent one of our bouquets, and I love getting to hear the end of the story!! And I especially love hearing all the "Mmmmm's" and the "Oh my gosh - come here, you've got to try this one, it's amazing!!"
So to all of you that came out this weekend - thank you for another wonderful weekend! And don't worry, it's ok if you over-indulged in the sample tray, I completely understand. They're just that good.
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