We get the best fortunes when we're at a show!! We can hardly wait to see what this might mean for 2011! I'm going to make winning the lotto my new long-term goal. Don't tell my boss...
Aaron and I are back from the ACC St. Paul Show. It was a blast!!! We applied many of the lessons we learned in Atlanta. We met a lot of people and did more networking. We only have good things to say and are hopeful we can do it again next year.
For now, it's back to work (for both us) and trying to get the house back in order. Let's face it, we put pretty much everything on hold for the shows and it was totally worth it. It's going to be weird to refocus and not obsess about "the show" every day and weekend.
We're going to start today by going to a plant sale. Here are some pictures from St. Paul:
The St. Paul River Centre (very nice building / Anner liked it)
.JPG)
Aaron and Anner in their booth. This was the first time ever we had a real booth. We spent some time walking around looking at other booths to get ideas for how we can improve it for next time. Given the short prep time we had for this show, I think we did great and now we have a lot of new ideas for next time.
Every ACC show has a juror that goes around and gives "Award of Excellence". I go on the tour (along with an entire two other people) to see who the winners are. It was very exciting as the tour took of directly to our booth. I'm thinking, "Get out!!! Aaron's gonna win..." and just short of our booth they stop at our neighbor's booth and give him an Award of Excellence. Well, that's good. He has great stuff, so I snap a few pictures.
Then the juror guy says, "The next award is right next door." And I'm back to hoping it's my honey, but as luck would have it, the winner was our neighbor across the hallway. She was our neighbor in Atlanta too and we really like her and her hand woven scarves so we couldn't be happier.
We also had a lot of visitors which always gives us a little energy boost. It was great to see everyone! The biggest energy boost probably came from Heidi and her boys, a.k.a. Aaron's new assistants. First, her boys are just completely adorable at ages 5 and 7.
We think they are extra-cute because they always speak in full sentences. For example if you ask if they want a piece of candy, they don't say, "yeah". They say, "Yes. I would like a piece of candy, thank you." It's adorable. So when Aaron asked if they would like to help him, naturally they said, "Yes, we could like to help you today."
So up on the stool they went and as would-be customers walked by the boys would start their "hard sell", which I'll say drew a lot of attention from everyone in the vicinity.
"Good morning, ma'am. There's a book right there (gesture dramatically towards Aaron's portfolio). You may look through it and if you see something you like you may purchase it. Aaron makes all of these things and it take hours for him to make. These earring here (point to a pair of black earrings) would match your jacket perfectly (large gesture towards the lady's back coat).
They are quite polished but still leave a little room for improvement. One lady asked how much a pendant costs. The 7 year old looked at the tag, read it, and said, "Two dollars and seventy cents." And that's when Aaron had to swoop in with a little on the job training. He asked his assistant to re-read the tag and the assistant saw his mistake. He corrected himself, "Two thousand and seventy dollars." Okay, third time was the charm when he figured out Aaron's handwriting was "two hundred and seventy dollars". Sadly, no sale this time, but it was the funnest part of the show.
And finally, I got to spend a little time with my pal Heidi. I still think we were separated at birth. Luckily we both went to Antarctica and found each other.
