Ready. Set. Walk. ...okay, that's enough walking. Let's celebrate!

This past Saturday was the 3rd Annual Seattle Brain Cancer Walk, of which I'm an organizer. "I'm an organizer" is really no shock to any friends or family reading this. Still, it's good I found a place to funnel that energy.

It was a lot of fun and a big success. The walk started three years ago when Kim Hogle a 25 year old was fed up with brain cancer. She knew several folks who had it and decided she wanted to raise, $100,000. Kim wasn't sure how but she just decided it. Fast forward and they raised $120,000 that year. $275,000 last year and $400,000 this year. Well done Kim!

I was up at 4:30am to catch a ride to help set-up. No one mentioned that part when I signed-up for the committee or who knows what would have happened!! Still, I was so excited it didn't even matter.

We all gathered around 8:00am. Then there were opening ceremonies and then at 9:00 we walked about 1 1/2 miles around Seattle Center. There were muscians and mimes along the way. When we made it back to the starting point, that ended the "walking" partion of the walk. We turned to eating bagels and honoring all the Survivors.

Just like that 6-months of planning is in the bag. Worthy of Hope went to continue the celebration with brunch on the top of the Space Needle.

I was completely, and totally exhausted when it was done. The walk isn't so much about walking, although that is quite the show of solidarity, but it's more about the gathering of 2,000 people who support their loved one's. There are bands and artist everywhere. It's really a wonderful day.

Here's a picture of this year's patients and survivors and all their supporters who were here on walk day.



Several of us from the committee put together the Patient and Survivor Tent, which was a place for patients and survivors to get a little TLC on their special day. We had great decorations -- big bea-U-tiful vases of flowers, giveaways -- like baseball games, football, symphony, dinner...everything, and chair massages. What's not to love?








Then there was the Worthy of Hope Team, in memory of John Norsworthy. I was a self-declared co-captain with my pal Karen. We had a great time and far-and-away the best team t-shirts. We were a small-but-mighty team, with just 8 of us raising over $7,500! Three of our team members flew in from out of state. How's that for dedication!!?!! We're already thinking big for next year. Karen's team was fabulous. They were the funnest teammates a person could hope for. Our local jeweler gave us all blingy bracelets (the types you might give to little kids) to help doll up our outfits. That was really fun. We had a celebratory brunch on top of the Space Needle. What an adventure!!






There was Team HDR which one of the HDR office put together.




If you want to see more picture, check out Aaron's Facebook page or let me know and I'll send you a Snapfish link.

STUDIO UPDATE:
You may have though that the studio was complete at the New Years (remember how we spent the holiday hauling in stuff from the storage pods...happy new year, 2010). ?? Well, turns out we still need to paint the new siding in order to protect it. Aaron's done a great job. Here it is in progress. It either says, "crazy old lady with cats lives here" or "genius artist at work". I'm going with the latter.



FLOWERS:
In spite of 262 days of no sun in a row, our garden is trying its damned hardest to bloom.

First up is a "pineapple lily" we've tried these in the ground with limited luck, but this one in a container is doing great.


Next, this is a container that mom gave us for the wedding. We've moved it in front of the studio so it's a really focal point when we come and go. In fact, someone was over last night and asked where we had gotten it. I'm not sure this is the perfect use for it, but I think it looks really cool...in a chia pet kind of way.



And finally, this is the start of a "chocolate garden". A gift my friend Karen gave me. It's totally crazy. Chocolate lettuce. Chocolate basil. Chocolate flowers. We love it and just need to find a good spot for it to thrive.

Visit to Minn-e-SO-tah!

It's been a whirlwind, but Aaron and I made it back to MN about a week ago. It was a little different without dad. Still, it was a good trip and I'm really glad we were able to go. I've been wearing one of dad's flannel shirts ever since.

We spent a lot of time with grandma. We helped plant her beautiful garden and had brunch with her and invited company to join us. I think she liked it. It was pretty fun, I have to say! The food was TA-asty!





Possibly the highlight was seeing Michael play ball. He did a good job and it was fun to be there until the rain set in. Then we went for dinner together at a great 50's place. Super fun!


We came home and have been non-stop since. Aaron's art opening was last week and we had a great time. This weekend is the big brain cancer walk. Then, I think it quiets down a little.

As a bonus...summer is coming back to Seattle. After 262 cloudy days in a row (technically, days under 75 degrees) we're beside ourselves!

Memorial Day Pizza Party Posting

Last night we had our second annual Memorial Day Weekend Dinner and Game Night. (whew say that three times fast). This year we had planned to make pizza on the grill and when dad said, "find a pizza recipe and stick with it" we were not about to change the menu.

These pictures don't do it justice. Our little house was packed full. Toppings being chopped and diced on every imaginable square inch of the kitchen. Laughing and shouting and a lengthy debate about what toppings on what pizzas and which pizza get grilled and which get baked. Anner and Emma took on the grilling experiment (with good success!). Grace and Aaron baked the pizzas (which turned out just like dad's). I gave them a primer on "dad's way" of making pizza, including the cheese on top and they followed it perfectly. No one got out of the evening without getting some flour on themselves. And ice cream and homemade crisp for dessert. It was just what the doctor ordered.


Pizza on the grill...turning out!


Emma pulling the final pizza off of the grill. She's a natural and can comeback to help any time!


One pizza almost done and one pizza about to go in.


Aaron and Wolfe on oven duty.


Dad making pizzas - 1998

Dad making pizza will be one of the images in my head that will stay there a long, long time. Before dad died he told me to "remember the good times" and pizza dinner is far and away the top of the list of the good times.

Success!! At last.....

After multiple failed attempts, I was finally successful at making grilled pizza. Now, I'm not saying it was the tastiest pizza ever (it wasn't) but it was edible!!! This is a significant improvement over previous attempts over the past year. Last weekend's experiment ended in my curled up in a ball laying around the house in defeat, while Aaron made frozen pizza and spent the rest of the evening scraping dough off the grill (thanks, hubby). Luckily this week went much better.

Next step: Making really tasty pizza! Wish us luck...and we'll keep Red Barron on hand, just in case.

Good dough on the rise:


On to the grill:


Let's Eat!

Happy Mom's Day!!!

Boy do we know how to celebrate!!!
We fill up on homemade poptarts (pretty yummy!) and then put our guest of honor to work...


Debby visited us and helped us spruce up our garden. Speaking of which --- it's really starting to look somewhat like a garden!!! We're SO excited! Feel free to visit anytime.


Wedding Tree - Year 2. Need we say more? The crows didn't actually manage to kill it last fall, as we had fear. Speaking of the crows. They are doing nicely. They're quite a home and losing any fear they ever had of us. They say, 'caaaaaw, caaaaas....'.


Mom gave us this big orange container for our wedding. We love it although we've not found the perfect set of plantings for it yet. While I was at work, Aaron moved it to where the "man door" used to be. It's great visual interest. Right now it resembles a giant chia pet, but we plan to plant something tall in it -- then we'll have it all: thriller, spiller, and filler.

We call this "Fern Alley" an it really has to be attributed to Aaron's artistic eye. Everything here is an official shade lover. This is the best part of our garden... actually it's the side of the house where you really have to walk out of your way to look, but it's great. Someday it'll be a lovely passage way between the front and back yards. Ahhhh...."someday".


This is a "dalieta", Aaron's new favorite flower. They are mini-dahlias and every bit as gorgeous. I hope we can have an entire dalieta garden this year. This is the first one we found... on Mother's Day when we went to not one but TWO nurseries.


There are some "tuberous begonias" that we bought last year. They are perennial and grow really big and beautiful...flowing over the hanging basket. The trick is they like to be dry (which reminds me they are sitting in a rainstorm as I type...)and they don't freeze. In the craziness with the studio remodel they begonias wintered over in the middle of the yard with the occasional flake of snow hitting them. We were distracted and there that sat. I threatened to toss them out this spring but never got around to it. Then one night I came home and Aaron said, "I have a surprise for you!" and there they were...begonias!!! We'll see how they do. I think I'll go save them from the storm.

Focus on your long-term goal.

...Your wish will be granted next year.

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)







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.

You will soon change careers.....

“You will soon change careers”, said the fortune cookie message Aaron opened the second night of the ACC show. Hummm? Does that mean he'll become a full time employee of Aaron Barr Studios -- or -- become an astronaut? Hard to say…

What’s not hard to say is that the ACC show was a massive success!!! We had the best time. Aaron describes it as

“A truly wonderful experience and we learned a TON! We didn't make huge sales, but definitely sold a few and get a real good idea of new things to do for marketing/pricing/other shows/etc. We also talked with many of the other artists there and some of them described the show financially as "a disaster" and "my worst show ever", though some did fine. Definitely hard selling in this economy, but we felt good for having more than made back our booth fee, which is pretty good for a first time seller. And now we have a number of leads to follow up on with galleries, other shows, catalogs, etc. and a lot of stock to be able to provide to them! Our first show is done and now there's still lots to do - funny how that happens!”


Debby was with us almost every minute. Our booth neighbors described her as "hip, with it, how lucky you are to have a supportive mom". We couldn't agree more...especially in this awesome vest!!


Moving into the show. "Ummmm, where's our space????"


This is what the display looked like. Aaron wanted it to be "classic" and "up scale".


More displays.


Aaron and Anner on opening night: "The Gala".


We had a very exciting visit from Aaron's college friend, James. The last time we saw James he had "just met a girl". This time he had "just gotten engaged to the girl". How cool is that?? Literally. They got engaged in the morning and before lunch they came to the show.

I think the excitement energized the area because as fast as they showed us Trish's ring our first pendant buyer did a b-line to our booth and immediately announced, "I love this!!!" and picked up one of Aaron's amazing pendants and bought it. Now THAT was a fun morning for all of us!



Abby visited us not once, but TWICE during the show!! It was really fun to have family stop by. As soon as Abby started pointing at pendants and being excited about them more people gathered to look. We're learning something about sales psychology and having people be excited around your product is like magic. Mitchell asked Aaron a lot of questions about "his process" and tried on a few pendants. He's adorable!

Now it's time to get back to our normal lives and work on all the follow-up items we got from the show. We are hoping we can at least attend the show in St. Paul next month. It might be a great chance to talk with more artists and learn more.

Signs, Signs..Everywhere, Signs

This morning we got up good and early to make Aaron's sign for the show. It looks great. Except for a few price tags (which Aaron's working on this very second) we're ready to go!!! This time tomorrow we'll be set-up and anxiously awaiting. We're both pretty excited.




We'll write when we can!