Wow it’s Monday already and I’m pooped from a very long weekend. While I missed seeing my dear friends and customers Sunday at the Walnut Creek Farmers Market, I did get to reconnect with family and fellow vendors at the Mountain Mandarin Festival in Auburn. The event run’s three days, Friday, Saturday & Sunday so it makes for a long weekend!
My plan was to drive up Thursday afternoon, Get my booth set up and head over to the in-laws. Naturally there was a wrench thrown in my plans that kept me from keeping my schedule. Our clothes washer stopped working so I had to wait till the service guy got to our house and fixed the machine and I really needed to do my laundry! Then my super fantastic label printer decided to have a meltdown and it took me two hours to get that sorted out.
I didn’t get on the road until 9:oo PM Thursday and it’s about a two and a half hour drive, the nice thing though is there was no traffic to fight my way through. Always got to focus on the positive things right?
Friday, opening day at the Mandarin Festival was quiet as usual as most people are still at work so it’s mostly just the retired folks taking advantage of the smaller crowds and us vendors visiting with each other and shopping/trading for goods at each other’s booths! That’s fun; I scored a few more holiday gifts for family and friends!
This year I was in a different building then I normally am and it’s all the way at the other end of the fairgrounds. So I was worried that I my regular customers whom come to see me would think I wasn't there this year. I was very relieved Saturday when I had four customers find me in my new location and tell me how glad they were to see me! There are these two wonderful customers who come to see me every year and they just crack me up. They had their Absolute Mandarin drinks in hand and they loaded up on their favorite candles! They told me how they set aside some “candle money” each year to make their purchase at my booth!
The other fun thing about the new location of my booth is that I had some really cool neighbors; they were lots of fun and made the weakened fly by. It’s even nicer when you really connect with people and have made a friendship that will last! One of the challenging things about doing these events is county fire officials will not allow you to have open flames in your booth. And they are especially strict on this if you’re indoors. Typically the fire marshal makes their rounds before the show opens and reminds me not to light candles (yes, yes I know I won’t Mr./Miss fire marshal). I found out that due to budget cuts the fire marshal would not be there to impose these regulations. So I light up the Egg Nog candle and that really helped sales!
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