Craft Show

Well, we survived the craft show with our marriage and presumed partnership intact.

Our (my) first little snafu involved my prints. I made a sincere effort to find a local, green printer, but by the time the first one finally got back to me on how much the prints would cost (!!!!!!), and I said, no, I had no time to find another, since they all wanted several days lead time and my paintings weren't even all done yet. I really didn't want to use Walmart (we don't even shop there!), but since we had used them before (by mail), and the prints didn't look half bad, I figured they would do in a pinch until I found somewhere better. I got all my jpeg scans cropped to perfection and sent them off on Thursday night to pick up Friday after work. There was no time to go at lunch, because we had to traipse over to the craft show to drop all our big stuff of so that the morning would be hopefully less stressful.

Since I had an event to attend at 6, I went straight to their photo counter after work and picked up my prints. I was mortified. They looked awful. Everything was pink, even the pure white on my digital piece, so there was no arguing over monitor color differences and the like. In addition, they were cropped to oblivion. The border I had added to one print to help accommodate the overlap on the frame was chopped off on one side and only barely remaining on the other. I called my husband and told him they were unusable.

Keep the Drive Alive

This week, it has been really difficult for me to keep going on everything. School has got me down, work is really busy, and I wanted to put more pieces in the craft fair than I have time for!

I started this one last night. I saw a quote on Pinterest and tracked it down to its source, a gentleman by the name of Kobi Yamada who wrote a book called She. I might have to order it! A couple of bloggers have posted the entire text, but I think the book would make a really sweet gift.

My husband has heard his share of whining, but hopefully I'm over it now. I have this one almost complete; it only needs the author's name to be cut out and the whole thing to be glued down. Then I am starting one on the Mark Twain quote about going out on a limb.

Our preparations for the business side of the craft show are coming along as well. We have a credit card reader and I bought a file box to store our things. We should be able to nail down plans for a display in the next day or two, then Friday we will get set up! It's coming along, but we have been so worried about having lots of pieces that we haven't given a ton of thought to the logistics side of things. It'll work out - it always does!

Getting Ready

This past week I have finished several projects, including my compass piece. I love this one because it is a dream in a painting - or several. I used vintage maps of Greece, Australia, and Italy, which all top my list of places to see.

My husband finally finished a couple of his pieces. The problem with his work is that cutting the stencils takes so long that you can be 90% done with everything and still have little to show for it. He got out the spray paint and finished a couple so we were pretty excited!

This week I plan to start looking at the logistics of the booth: taking money, how we'll display, creating a "who we are" sheet, etc. Also possibly business cards. I already got a couple of items listed in my shop, so there was a little progress. I'm not super happy with my scans, but we purchased Photoshop over the weekend, so maybe I can tweak the colors to better represent what they look like in person.

Quinoa Salad with Veggies and Black Beans

In the spirit of dream-following, I am eschewing my studies for a brief moment and doing something I actually enjoy. That stuff has to be done before bedtime, regardless, so off we go!

I have been seeing quinoa salads all over Pinterest, so I decided it was high time I tried one. Quinoa (keen-wah, yeah my husband and I totally called it kwin-oh-a for like a year), if you didn't already know, is a very nutritious pseudo-grain that is as versatile as rice and can be prepared in a variety of ways. It has a subtle flavor that lends itself well to all types of cuisines. We've used it before in veggie patties that kept us going during No Meat May (it was the meatiest thing I had all month, in terms of texture, which made me happy).

Which leads us to yesterday's creation. I didn't have any of the ingredients that the Pinteresting people wanted me to have, so I came up with something new. It's not creamy, it's not rich, but it is delicious and tasty and good for you!