Fresh Weekend Update

Sorry – I have been busier than ever these past few weeks and my schedule isn’t letting up. I have had something to do every night of the week since the Thanksgiving holidays and I am tired of running around!!

This past weekend was no exception but it was mostly taken up with Fresh Photography activities so my update will focus on that… The details are in the extended entry but I can give you a shorter summary here:

A lot of work was done to get ready – and manual labor at that. Thursday and Friday were late nights for me (3 AM & 4 AM respectively) and there were some stressful times but nothing was too difficult.

The festival itself I think went well although I had wished we had sold more or at least had had more traffic (the festival in general had lower traffic than expected). The weather was brisk but nothing my jean jacket, scarf and Santa hat couldn’t keep away.

I managed to sell half a dozen prints and a couple of cards. One of my prints was even bought in the frame itself. I feel compelled to tell you that all of my sales were to people I knew but hey, it’s a start and they are customers too!! Christine did about as well.

We have some ideas on how to improve the booth for next month – yes, we will be back on January 6th – but overall loved our blue, wicker and white theme that matches our logo.

Thanks to everyone’s support and for all of you who visited and/or bought our prints. For those of you not in Houston, I remind you that you can buy prints through our website as well. Not all images are up there yet but you can go this set in Flickr to see what images I am offering then drop me a line if you see something you like. The prints make wonderful Christmas gifts for that hard to buy person on your list!! We accept PayPal, checks, credit cards…

MORE PHOTOS HERE…

OK, for the one or two of you interested in reading more detail…

Thursday night: Kenny and I stayed up till 3 AM cutting foam board (see this entry for details on why). We cut at around 18 sheets out of a box of 25 and we cut 5x7s, 8×10’s and 11x14s. The kitchen counters had stacks of cut foamboard – over 150 of them.

Friday: I took the day off work so slept in a little to try to recover from the night before. Then I grabbed lunch, bought some last minute supplies and waited for Christine to come over. I can’t remember what we did when she came over but we did not start actually matting prints till past 5 PM!! By this point her wonderful husband had come over as well to help out. He was put on foamboard duty since there were still more sheets to be cut!

Kenny joined us at 8:30 PM and all four of us worked together till 4 AM!! We matted and bagged around 250 prints of various sizes. The boys cut the foamboard and after awhile started to assemble the mats for us, we actually framed the photo in the mat, bagged it, labeled it and threw in a bio card, then they went back to the guys to be sealed. We had two long tables in
my kitchen and a nice assembly line set up!

Needless to say by 2 AM we were all going a little batty… At 3 AM I was still frantically printing more labels and at 3:30 AM I was trying to remember all the little things to pack… Still, by the time we headed to bed at 4 AM (Christine & Mike were staying over with their Bijon Chloe), we had the wicker bins ready and full of prints, the large plastic bin was full of supplies (table covers, signage, lamp, electrical cords, holiday decorations, etc.) and various other bags of stuff for the booth were ready and waiting for us by the garage door.

Saturday: We woke up very groggy around 7 AM and hurriedly got ready to head out. We were out the door by 8 AM and at the market at 8:20, standing in the spot where our booth would be. Set up was fairly easy (despite having a tent canopy that came in a bajillion pieces) and even though I would continue to re-arrange things, the booth was more or less set up by the time the festival officially started at 10 AM.

The weather was chilly but not unbearable. We had relatively steady traffic. Not too overwhelming but the booth wasn’t dead either. Several local Flickerites stopped by and several friends of mine did as well. We got good feedback from various veteran festival goers and were told the booth looked good overall. That was encouraging.

The temperature started to drop significantly around 5 PM as the sun fell and by 6 PM I was ready to get outta there, I was so exhausted and cold. We broke down the booth pretty easily, packed our cars and headed home!

Sunday: I slept in then checked in with Hanna who had gone into labor the day before and was thrilled to know she had had her baby. I dropped by later that afternoon to meet Emma in person. Then I went to salsa training that evening and before I knew the weekend was over! Ack!