Autumn Celebration in Dayton

In our area of the Valley the first Saturday in October is filled with so many activities that it's hard for folks to choose which to attend!

Sarah counted at least 8 events going on this past weekend...it's her way of determining how much baking she should bring to farmers' market based on whether customers might go someplace other than the downtown weekly market.

And out of all those events, where were we, you ask...at Dayton Days, of course! The streets are closed to traffic, and tents are set up as far as you can see down two streets. Take a look at this crowd! Bright and early Saturday morning we loaded up all the soap and baskets here at home and traveled to Dayton to claim our assigned spot.

It takes a lot of work to set up tents, tables, and displays...and Tom was our willing and able helper doing everything for us! He was great! Here's our booth ready and waiting for the customers to arrive: Here's Granny with one of her first browsers...a lady she met just recently and who is the owner of The Crow's Nook in Verona. This lady said she came especially to check out Granny's Baskets!  Here's a view below of both Hannah's side for her soap and Granny's side for her baskets. We were located near an alleyway which needed to be kept open for emergencies...a perfect spot for a little extra room for our booth:Granny and Hannah anticipated a good day of sales:Below: Here's Granny all set up on her stool and ready to greet her customers, while Hannah is in the background adjusting her display. My station all day was behind the tables with the money box and calculator:Hannah manned her booth below and answered questions. Notice the lady taking a sniff of one of the soaps? Everyone who came by said they could smell the wonderful aromas wafting down the street before they even got to our booth, and everyone had to give her soaps lots of sniffs! Some of our friends stopped by to see us to buy soap and baskets; these girls were good customers! They came to see us at last year's Dayton Days show, too!Here are the cupcake vendors...the line was really long waiting to buy at 10:00 in the morning! They usually sell out quickly....even with cupcakes that are $29 a dozen! No, Sarah's are not that expensive!But this booth was my favorite and the blackberry pies were delicious: Granny had a good sales day and many folks left with beautiful handmade baskets! But...we brought some baskets home with us, too. They're all unloaded now and put back in the basket shed ready for future orders...Granny ships her baskets all over the country.

Remember the Turning a Failure into a Success post? FYI: The bread basket sold; the tissue basket did not! Life is funny! And while we were busy in Dayton, Jonathan and Sarah were holding down their booth at the downtown farmers' market from 7 until noon. Jonathan took Hannah's place with a smaller inventory than she normally takes to market. He always does a good job when she needs his help: Jonathan even arranged the whole display and organized her soaps. Looks pretty good! Below you'll see a basket of her soaps and a couple of her newest body balm scents...Frosted Woods and Apple Rose: Needless to say, we were all quite tired at the end of the day and glad to get home! But we were very thankful for the sales and especially the beautiful--though hot 85-degree--weather.

The girls have 7 more weeks of farmers' market dates left until the end of the season, finishing up the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Then I think they'll enjoy some much deserved rest over the winter season.

~Deb

Comments

[Toni]

Oh my, setting up a booth and selling your handcrafts is a lot of work. The booth looked great. I'm glad they had lots of customers.
I tried it for only two years until I had a customer base built up, but that was years ago. I only make soap for our family now.

[Tammy C]

Nice pictures of your busy weekend. Tom looks like a good supervisor.Jonathan farmers market.

I was at home catching on laundry on Saturday.We had been in Florida visiting family for a week.

Chris was with the Boy Scouts on Saturday at Powder Springs Day.Town celebrated it's 175th birthday so the event was extra big this year.

[Sherrin]

Beautiful to read! Thank you and well done.

[elizabeth]

I enjoyed reading this post very much,almost made me feel as though I was there!

[elizabeth]

p.s. I just discovered your blog and so glad I did!

[Joyce]

It's great to see the pictures of Dayton Days. Wow. Not an easy day. You did a great job of posting. Thanks!