New Pattern - Nativity and Advent Celebration

I am so excited to share my newest pattern with you! I have been wanting to do more spiritual patterns and this is the first of many more to come. A good friend was over one night and we were talking about Advent, she completely inspired me to get this one out of my head :) We both love it and I hope you do too!

You can create it with just Mary, Joseph & Baby Jesus or add the optional manger, straw and printout about doing good deeds throughout advent for a soft bed for baby Jesus. A great tradition to start with your children or to use by yourself as a gentle reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.

The pattern is on my website, here as a download (far left column) and over on Patternmart. Enjoy! and the finished set is on my website!

Oh and I will be adding more holiday items this week to my website. I've been working a bit since the last craft show and will have last minute gifts/dolls for sale shortly.

Craft show tomorrow - First Baptist Church

Just a quick post to let you know I will be at First Baptist church, 3235 Linden Street, Bethlehem, PA tomorrow from 9am-4pm. It's their annual Holiday Boutique; I have some new items not listed online yet :)

Heading over to set up in an hour, i'll be sure to share pictures.

Also please check the new items listed on my website - i've been adding all week!

Craft show pictures

Here's a picture of my booth - i have so much stuff?! I think next year I will just buy 2 tables. I want to thank all of my customers who came out on Saturday - what a messy day it ended up being!!! I left at 6:45am and it was just raining.
Snuck away from my booth and peeked out the door at 11am to this:

At 1pm, the lights started flickering (LOTS of power outages still today!); and the director came by and said it was OK to pack up so we all did. And thank goodness for the kindness of a stranger - he helped me get alot of my stuff out through the slushy, snowy, wet parking lot and into my car. I was soaked and cold by the time I got in! And prayed the whole way home because the roads were a mess. Lots of tree branches down, the roads were very slippery.

By the time I got there at about 3pm, it looked like this out our back door:

A Few hours later, this was the view out the front. My daughter's swing was touching the ground within an hour of this picture! We lost at least one tree on our property, just split right in half from the weight of the snow. Yesterday morning, i saw red leaves floating by on top of the snow, what a weird sight :)

Anyway, so this week I will be adding some new things to my website. Here's a peek of 2 bigger things that will be listed by Friday:

Psssst - I did add a bunch of dolls yesterday, go peek if you want to grab them now!

Craft show today

I guess it would have been helpful to post this a few days ago??
Today is the annual Holiday craft show at Northampton Community College, 9-3 in the Sparta Gym. I am against the far right wall, same spot as the Spring show if you came. I set up mostly last night but am heading in shortly to finish a few things, get pictures and go do a little shopping. I never get to browse so I'm hoping to do that this morning :)

OH and if you are coming, be sure to bring your snow brush as it seems we are getting a big storm today! I'll take pictures :)

Back from Letchworth Show

What a great weekend!! I can't say how LUCKY we were with the most beautiful, picture-perfect weather this weekend. The leaves in the park seemed to change colors before our eyes, and the customers were out to shop and have fun. I had good sales, I am still smiling from all the nice comments on my work.

I didn't even finish setting up Saturday morning when I was mobbed with a big crowd (yay!), so I never got good pictures of my booth - I think I have one or two on my phone but not sure how they came out. I will check later and post if I have some.

I wanted to share info on some of the other vendors that were inside the building with me - we are a very interesting group, I saw most of them last year (which was my first year). We are all different as far as what we sell but a nice group of artists to share space with for 3 days!

One guy is an author - Mark Holdren: http://www.spiritwolf.info/AboutTheAuthor.htm. He writes about his adventures in nature (something my dad writes about too) so I enjoyed talking with him.
My neighbors are awesome; they are just so nice - we have alot in common and I have enjoyed their company 2 yrs. now. I am looking into doing some more shows they do in NY - check out this website: http://www.americandollboutique.com/americangirl.html Sandie really has a niche market and she is an excellent example of how to market your business.

There is another interesting author who writes about Ghosts; you walk into the building and he has a big sign "Got Ghosts?" he draws a huge crowd -we get to hear very intersting stories all weekend. http://www.amazon.com/David-J.-Pitkin/e/B001JS1TV6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

This artist won for his category - congrats! http://www.elephantearstudio.com/home.htm He had some neat pottery, one thing called a yarn keeper for when you knit/crochet.

These folks have been doing the show a long time: DePonceau's Aluminum trays and House of Leather.

Well, Gabrielle & I got home late yesterday afternoon - she helped me unload a little bit. Now I have about 14 orders to fill between the show & website. And 4 more craft shows left this season. I will be starting work tomorrow - if you are waiting for me, I promise to work quickly but send lots of love with my dollies :)

THANK you to all of you who visited me. I am still smiling :)

Craft show "crazies"!

Oy! I keep asking myself, do I really want to do that many craft shows/open houses? As I said yes to another today :) I really LOVE being around my customers and meeting new people, working on new projects. I LOVE it, it gets my creative juices flowing. I am just working like crazy and feeling the craft show crazies are taking over ;)


So I wanted to let you know some updates/changes to my schedule for local folks especially:
*Oct 8-10 - Letchworth in Mt. Morris, NY - GREAT 3 day outdoor show, I am inside (whew!) in a shelter.

*Oct 22 - Local home show in Easton, PA - if you want to come, email for more info!
*Oct 29 - Northampton Community College, Bethlehem PA
*Nov 5 - First Baptist Church, Bethlehem PA
* Nov 12 - conrad Weiser HS PA

If you are local and want any details on these shows to come, just email me!

In the meantime, if you don't hear from me for a few days, yes I am in craft-show-crazies!!

Reflection time today

Wow the last few weeks have just been a mess around here with flooding from 2 storms 2 weeks in a row. I've had to relocate my office/work area upstairs - thankfully we didn't have too much damage the 2nd time; first time was worse but we were able to get the water out fast with a pump. So glad my husband was home to deal with alot of that, it would have been so much worse! I was feeling aggravated/annoyed with the whole thing (clean up is a pain, moving our furniture around, drying out the flooring, etc.).

Then, I saw these pictures today and realized how lucky we were the 2nd storm. If you have time to check these out:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/flooding-slideshow_2011-09-08?role=
I have to point out the one of the Gander Mtn. store - on my way to upstate NY I usually stop in Johnson City to eat lunch, there's a babies R us and a few great stores there that we go to, breaking up the trip. Binghamton NY is where I was born and I drive right through it to get to my family. And that is where I am heading in 3 weeks for my big show - Mt. Morris, NY.

There are many more photos I have seen on facebook, so much devastation in northeast PA. My heart breaks for those people who have lost their homes, businesses, family, pets, etc. it's REALLY bad in some areas.

I know today is a day of remembering for those who were lost 10 years ago; Believe me, my heart is heavy remembering exactly where I was when I heard the news. I lived in NJ at the time and I will never forget driving through neighborhoods with yellow ribbons around trees up and down the streets of those who were lost that day.

I am also remembering and praying today for those who are dealing with devastation from the recent weather, please join me for a moment today to send prayers and good thoughts to those dealing with this mess.