July Craft-a-thon

Way back in June (it feels like such a long time ago) we planned a 12hr Craft-a-thon at the shop for the 7th of July.  I really wanted to theme it and do something different so we had a "Stars & Stripes Craft-a-thon" so that I could have lots of fun with the theme.  However, as anti-American sentiment can rear its ugly head here from time to time, we only loosely Americanised it.  I didn't even hang up my flag.

I wanted to share some of my favourite loves with some of my favourite customers.  It was our quietest Craft-a-thon ever but most of my friends were there and we had a great time.  In a way I am glad that it was quieter than normal (only half full) as The LOML had only come out of hospital a few days before and I had to do all the prep myself.

The Princess helped me with the decorations as she finished school a day before the boys.  She cut stars on the Eclips and made the toppers for the candy bags.  Here are the decorations we whipped up together while at the shop ... 

There are streamers everywhere coming down from the centre of the ceiling.

In the week before the Craft-a-thon we baked cookies for the ladies (and some extra to take to the hospital!).  None of them had ever had a Snickerdoodle before ... my all time favourite!  We also made peanut butter cookies.  Both were a huge hit and we had them for afternoon tea.

My cousin in NY kindly went grocery shopping for me and sent me a HUGE box fully of my favs.  I shared some with the ladies in their candy bag.  They had red vines, tootsie rolls, hot tamales, and Hershey's chocolate minis.  It might not seem like much but the box cost more than twice the cost of the candy in postage!

For lunch I made them a "Pot Luck".  Now I know that normally that means that everyone brings a dish to share but I wanted to make things that they probably hadn't had before.  As there wasn't the normal number of people I had to cut back on the choices but we had chilli, corn bread, my Grandma's potato salad, and sweet potato crunch.  It was a huge hit!!!  None of them had even had corn bread before!  I shall have to remember to photograph the sweet potato crunch and share the recipe on here.  It is a family favourite and soooooo yummy.  They were all fighting over the last bit.

But my biggest surprise of the night was supper.  I made a pumpkin pie (which they had never tried either!) and I made a s'more bar!!!!!!  I had seen it on Pinterest and I so wanted to make one.  My cousin also included some graham crackers in the box as you can't get them over here and there isn't anything quite like them.  And so we toasted marshmallows and made s'mores in the store.  Here I am setting up the bar ...

 We had such a great time making s'mores.  Only one or two of them (there were 12 there all up) even knew what a s'more was so I made the first one and 'educated' them all.  I think they are all addicted now!!!  A few of them want to have one at their next party!  I still can't believe we lit flames in a paper craft shop!

Oh, what fun it was and it really helped to have a happy event at the end of those two weeks.  I hope that those of you celebrating the 4th of July had a wonderful day, albeit a bit late :-)

Chipper