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

Halloween Craft-a-thon

I am glad my day off moved to today as I am exhausted. We had a great time on Saturday and most of the ladies joined in and dressed up. Witches seemed to be the order of the day as we had lots of those. Probably because the hit musical 'Wicked' has only recently finished performing here. We also had an evil nurse, a dead school girl, a new mum complete with devil baby, and a crazy wig.

My wings were too uncomfortable so I took them off and ended up looking a little gothic :-)  I didn't have any purple eye shadow so I used some purple Smooch instead.  It worked fine but took quite a while to dry.  Thankfully it washed off easily!  I have attached a few photos below for you.  Lunch was a huge hit with the ladies as always, and so were the homemade cookies.

Now to clear my desk and party with my pretty paper!

Chipper

ME!

Our wall at the end of the evening.  I have more photos to add.

Sneak peak ...

I thought I would share with you all a few sneak peaks of our classroom decorated for our Halloween party. A customer who is coming to the craft-a-thon kindly lent us her decorations. My only contributions were the streamers, balloons and everything on the table.  Two of our DT along with a customer came along and helped decorate.  It looks great!

Enter if you dare!

Our DT wall.  The decorations were all cut on the Eclips.

The hallway to the toilets.  The classroom is the door on the right.

The entry.  The food table will be on the wall to the left.  The classroom is through the double doors.

The left side of the classroom

The table packs.  I printed off everyones names.

We dressed up our dummy in The Thinkers old ghost costume.  The Princess made the sign.

The right side of the classroom

They even decorated the ladies!

I took the photos with my new iPhone 4s!  Pretty good for the default camera.  We have a holiday here tomorrow so we are all looking forward to the day off and baking cookies!  Then the 12hr Craft-a-thon on Saturday.  

Enjoy your weekend,

Chipper

Halloween Craft-a-thon

At the shop we are having a 12hr Halloweek Craft-a-thon!  I really want everyone to have lots of fun and it isn't really just about dressing up as only about half of the 24 people attending will dress up.  We are planning on using the dummy from my previous post as a scarecrow that will hold this sign that I made today at the entry.  I have made a few more things for the attendees that I thought I would share.

When each person arrives they will find a welcome pack at their place at the table.  It includes info for the day and some competitions.  There will also be a small pumpkin 'pick-me-up-pack' for those sugar lows during the day.  They are just pumpkin boxes with a few sweets in them.

We have both cardmakers and scrapbookers (and a few that do both!) coming to our craft-a-thon.  In their welcome pack they will find a BINGO card for each craft.  The idea is that they can cross off each box as they do them, but they can only use ONE box per project.  The first person to complete any 5 in a row wins! So there will be a winner for each craft.  Here are the BINGO cards that I made (I hope you can see them as they did not like being turned into a photo).

We have all sorts of other mini competitions planned and a few of us are decorating the room on Wednesday.  It is going to look so good!  One of the other games is a guessing game.  I got the idea of the net somewhere but it is great to help people new to crafting learn the names of some of the tools of the trade.  We are putting 12 random craft items into paper bags.  Each bag is then labeled 1 thru 12.  Everyone can feel the bags and try to work out what is in each without peeking.  I wonder if anyone will work out all 12?  I still haven't even decided what 12 items to use!

So lots to get done around here by Saturday morning.  The LOML even cooks them all a hot lunch!  We cheat for dinner though and get in pizza.  And I have promised them all that I will bake them Black Eyed Susans for morning tea.  There are some wonderful ladies coming and I am sure we will all have a great time.

Chipper