I am writing to y’all with a mixture of emotions. I am glad, thankful, amazed, and dumbfounded. Yes, all those feelings at once. How can that be? Well, let me start a the beginning.
As many of you know we had a booth at Oak Alley this past weekend for their spring arts and crafts festival. (For those who want to know more about the plantation .... https://www.facebook.com/oakalleyplantation.)
We had spent a couple of weeks getting ready for the two day show, our first two day show! As the weekend approached we watched the weather closely, as we always do leading up to a show. We had originally planned to set up on Friday but had a change of plans. Very poor weather was predicted for Friday night .... wind and rain. Way too much for us to feel comfortable setting up on Friday afternoon. We decided to wait and leave early on Saturday morning to set up and prepare for the day of shopping.
We arrived at the beautiful plantation around 7:00 AM and were disappointed to find out we could not park in the vendor parking because it was too wet. Once we got to the grounds ... boy were we in for a surprise! Talk about WET and MUDDY!! Oh, NO! We ended up with a big sloppy mess. On Saturday shoppers were abandoning shoes to go barefoot. Yes, mud squishing between their toes and all. Oh, we determined that holding your arms out like bird wings and tiptoeing does not help your feet stay cleaner, nor does it keep you from sinking in the mud! It just makes you look silly! LOL
We quickly learned that we just had to work with what we had and what we had was mud. BUT we also had the most important fashion item you can have in that situation .... rubber boots! We were wishing we had a booth up front selling rubber boots because we could have made a killin’. Seriously. Many shoppers would have given their eye teeth for rubber boots!
To Oak Alley’s credit, they had their grounds crew out spreading mulch throughout the walk ways. They worked from 6:00 AM - 11:00 PM on Saturday spreading mulch. They got back on the job spreading mulch on Sunday at 6:00 AM. They worked like dogs the whole day. We greatly appreciated their hard work and expressed our thanks that day on numerous occasions.
Of course there were some “Negative Nellies”--there are always a few in every crowd--who wanted to vent to everyone in earshot, expressing their displeasure and disdain concerning the grounds. I am dumbfounded that they thought their negativity would get the mulch out any quicker. :( We did our best to ignore their negativity and stay positive for our sakes mostly, and for those around us. We decided it was what it was and we were not in control of the weather nor getting the grounds in a better state.
We know Oak Alley did not want the grounds muddy any more than the rest of us. I am sure they wanted everyone to have a pleasant experience. The few people I got to meet from the Oak Alley plantation were polite, friendly and helpful even in the middle of a trying situation.
We had an awesome time. We made some new friends, go to see some “new” friends from Frisco Fest at the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville, Louisiana, had some great food. Oh, I forgot to mention the food booths. The food was so good. And this is coming from the pickiest eater in our family. I had the crab cake on a bun with the sauce. It was so delicious I had it on both Saturday and Sunday! The Oak Alley pralines are divine! Dh had some sausage from the booth with the German food and said it was very good. He had the fried fish combo on Sunday and said it was delicious. Dd, the girl that she is, stuck with a burger and fries. The burger was more than she could eat!
Loading up after this show took about 3 times longer than normal due to havign to park so far away. We were so tired lst night we were almost sick. This morning when I turned on my radio I was so relieved .... Lifesongs radio in New Orleans (www.lifesongs.com) was having praise and prayer request day. It was so uplifting to hear some positivity going on ... not being positive just to be positive but because God is at work in our lives!! Yeah! He is in control, and thank God it’s not ME in control! LOL
Our plans are to go back to Oak Alley. We hope to see you there in the fall! We are praying and hoping for better weather but only God is in control of that!
I spent some time today gathering supples I need to work on more coasters. I have a big order to fill for a local gift shop. Plus I need to replenish for Southdown Marketplace in a couple of weeks. I had to get tiles, ribbon, felt pads, ink and much more. Oh, the goodies I have to play with now!! :)
I am looking forward to meeting and visiting with our customers and our neighboring vendors at Southdown. I hope to see you there on Saturday, April 12. https://www.facebook.com/SouthdownMuseum
God Bless,
Cindy
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