Craft Fair Weekend

On Friday, Oct. 15th, mom & I had a craft fair weekend. Every year North West Arkansas goes craft fair crazy. And so do me and my mother. War Eagle is our favorite, then we head to Bella Vista, Springdale, and Pinnacle Hills in no particular order. This post is gonna be picture heavy. Strap in. Here we go.

War Eagle is by far the most popular one and generally has the biggest crowds. Mom and I usually get up early and head there first because there's only one road in and one road out so if you don't get ahead of 90% of everyone else then you get to spend like an hour in your car waiting in line to get to park. There is even more congestion due to the fact that the craft fair is spread out on both sides of the river and the only way to cross it is a single car bridge. So they have to alternate car traffic from both directions and accommodate pedestrian traffic too. War Eagle Mills and Farm is a beautiful place, even without the craft fair. Check out more about it here.

When we arrived, we came in from the east and immediately crossed the bridge to park on the west side. Trust me, that is the best strategy. Even though we were early and were way ahead of the crowd, there were quite a few people ahead of us. Here's the parking lot at the moment of arrival:


Here's what we first saw after parking and walking towards the action:



This next photo is blurry, sorry about that, but it shows what it is like inside one of the huge craft tents. This is just one side of the tent, each tent has two sides just like this. And on the west side of the river there are 4 of these tents.


After going through everything on the west side, we get in line to cross the bridge and head over towards the mill:


There's already quite a crowd on this side:


Here's a pic of the mill and the east side of the bridge:


On this side, the crafters just have single tent booths setup. It's more open and thins the crowd out a bit:


It's a lot of walking and shopping, so Mom (orange shirt) offered to buy us each a fresh squeezed lemonade:


After we had seen all there was to see, we crossed the bridge again and headed for the car. A couple hours had passed and the crowd size had grown like 10x. Remember the line to cross the bridge a few photos ago? Here's the same line, going the same direction, now that we're leaving:


In fact, the line to the bridge is all the way back to the first tents we went into:


Now you see why we get there early. We managed to avoid having to wait like that. After we left War Eagle, we went to the Bella Vista craft fair which is so much smaller I can't even describe how much smaller it is. I didn't take any pictures there. It's just a few tents in a field in the middle of nowhere. While in Bella Vista, we stopped and had lunch at Dairy Queen.

Next stop was Springdale, AR for the Holiday Inn Convention Center craft fair. I had been waiting to get to this one since... well, since last year actually. Because the only real purchase I make during craft season comes from this location. And I don't even have to go in the front door. This is the craft fair where I find Carey Huckaby every year. He's a spray paint artist from Austin, Texas and he creates spray paint paintings and sells them right outside the main entrance. I could stand and watch him all day. This is the 3rd year I've seen him and it's the 3rd year I've purchased one of his paintings.

Here he is painting the one I bought this year. His work is so popular you have to jump in and buy the painting before it's done because otherwise someone else will have bought it before you get a chance to. Once I saw him put down the yellow & orange, I paid for this one. My other two did not have these colors so I knew it'd be one to add to my collection.







More pictures of Carey at work on different paintings can be found on my Flickr page.

And to see pictures of the past two paintings I have purchased from Carey, check this old blog post.

Why I Hate My Cat

Takara (tuh-car-uh) is technically Scott's cat because he decided he wanted a kitty and he brought her home. But because we are roommates and the kitty lives equally with both of us, I consider her to be mine too. And I hate her. Not really, but really. Mostly because she's so pretty and petite and playful and I just wanna hug her and pet her and squeeze her and call her George and she doesn't like me at all. It' so frustrating. Part of it is because since I'm the unofficial woman of the house and do all the cleaning, I am the one that has to yell at her when I find her walking across kitchen counters or up on the table. So she's actually a bit scared of me.

She's a pretty timid cat anyway, does not like company coming over at all, and any sudden movements will make her turn tail and run. She doesn't like to be held and will scramble to jump down instantly. She will lay on my lap occasionally, but as soon as Scott appears on the scene she runs to him immediately. When I walk by and find her curled up somewhere and looking cute, I bend down to pet her precious head and she bolts. If she is passing through the living room and I coincidentally start to get up out of my chair, she bolts. If I am coming out of my bedroom in the morning and she happens to be in the hallway, she bolts.

Her relationship with Scott, on the other hand, is awesome. She follows him around like a puppy dog. He can pick her up and hold her in one hand or squeeze her against his chest in a tight hug and she's content either way. No matter where she's at in the house, the minute she hears his voice she comes running for him. She has a game she plays with him where every time he sits down in his recliner and reaches for the handle on the side of the chair to recline, she attacks his hand. It's seriously a game of hers. You can totally tell she does it on purpose. Sometimes she will hide behind the couch and jump out to get him when he reclines. Sometimes she will come dashing out of the kitchen to catch him. But she always gets him. Then while he is reclined she loves to lay at his feet on the recliner. And when she feels playful instead of sleepy she spends the entire time dashing wildly around the room but always jumping across his lap on every round. I mean the cat loves him like nothing I've ever seen. And I don't get it. He yells at her sometimes, why isn't she scared of him like she is me? I feed her sometimes, why doesn't she love me like she does him? That's why I always joke about hating her... because I'm so frustrated that I don't get any affection from her. She's a brat.

Get this - when he goes to bed at night and shuts his bedroom door, Takara will sit outside his room and cry for him. Even though I'm looking at her down the hall from the living room and frantically patting my lap while calling her, she pays no attention to me and cries for him. In the mornings I get up and go to work a few hours before Scott and I will either find her already sitting in front of his door crying, or me walking around wakes her up and after I get out of the shower I find her sitting in front of his door crying. And we've had her for over a year. Ridiculous.

The picture above is just one more reason I hate her. Tonight she decided that being at Scott's feet wasn't good enough and she's spent all evening looking cute and curled up by his side. He's trying to use his laptop and keeps moving her because she's in the way, but she just comes right back. Meanwhile, I'm across the room in my chair relentlessly begging her to come sit on my lap. Stupid cat.

My Brother, The Creep

Last night, at around 10:00 pm, someone knocked on my front door. I was in my bedroom playing video games on the computer and watching MTV2 on the TV. I was vaguely aware that I had heard Scott walking down the hallway sometime in the last 30 minutes or so, but I was pretty sure I heard him say he was going to bed. So I ignored the knock, whoever it is can just go away. I'm not interested. About a minute later, the doorbell rings. I glance at my watch again... yep, it's 10:03. I'm not answering the door for some stranger this late at night. I lean around the corner of my doorway and look at Scott's bedroom door. His door is shut, the lights appear to be off. He's definitely in bed. But he hasn't been there very long, maybe he's still awake. So I give him a loud whisper "Scott, someone's at the door". No answer. Oh well, back to ignoring the stranger at the door.

Another minute passes, more knocking and another ring on the doorbell. I tiptoe quietly down the hall, careful not to make any noise. I sneak up to the door and peek through the peephole. Our porch light isn't on, so all I can see is a shadowy figure. I stare through the peephole for several minutes. I'll admit I was a little freaked out. Especially when this shadowy figure rattled the doorknob. I didn't want to turn on the porch light because I didn't want anyone to know I was standing there, so I just continued staring. The figure turned around and I could see some sort of writing or image on his back. This made me think "what if it's a police officer who needs to tell us something".

By this time it's been almost 10 minutes since the first knock on the door. I reach over, flip on the porch light and crack the door open slightly so I can see who's there. Imagine my confusion to find Scott standing on the porch looking slightly aggrevated. "What the crap is going on?" I ask as he pushes his way inside. Apparently when he laid down to go to sleep there was a very loud frog right outside next to his wall or window, so he had grabbed a flashlight and went outside around the house to scare it away. Locking himself out in the process. It was hilarious. Here I was afraid to open the door and the shadowy figure I was being creeped out by was my own brother. He's lucky I finally braved up and opened the door. He might have had to sleep with that frog otherwise.

Relatively Funny

This past weekend I attended a Tupperware party with my two sisters. Just by mere coincidence we ended up sitting beside each other in order of our ages. I'm the oldest, Wendy is second and Melissa is the baby. During the demonstration, the hostess showed us how you can actually bake a cake in the microwave with the new Tupperware bowls. She made a chocolate cake with cherry pie filling mixed in. After it had cooled she began cutting it and serving it so we could all see how moist and yummy it was even though it had been microwaved.

When she started to hand me a piece, I politely declined by saying "No thank you, I don't like cherries." She tried to hand it to Wendy who said "No thank you, I don't like chocolate." So she moved down toward Melissa and held out the piece of cake, to which Melissa said "I am so sorry, but I don't like chocolate or cherries." At which point we all died laughing. It would have been funny enough if we hadn't been all lined up in a row, but to hear it back to back like that was hysterical.

My sisters and I look nothing alike. If you saw a picture of us all together you wouldn't guess we were even from the same family. But spend a bit of time in a room with us and there's no denying it. We are definitely related.

It's A Boy!

My youngest sister is pregnant with her first child and yesterday during an ultrasound she finally learned the sex of the baby. It's a boy! I didn't really care either way. I couldn't be more excited if it were a whole litter of kittens. I just love babies and I can't wait for my new little nephew to get here. I've already named him JD. Isn't that cute? Of course his mom & dad haven't named him yet, but I'm sure they will grow to like the name I have decided on. And now that we know it's a boy, I can stop buying yellow blankets and white onesies and get down to some serious shopping for the little tike. OMG! Now I can go buy baby shoes. He is totally getting a pair of newborn Nike's.

Melissa had good timing because I've been working at my "super awesome" job where I earn a good paycheck for the past 2 years. The 2 nieces and 3 nephews I already have were born during my years of working at a "crappy sucky" job where I barely made enough money to feed myself. So I wasn't able to buy as much when the babies were born. But I've already got a huge storage container setup in the closet of the spare bedroom so that I can start buying items slowly and saving them all up for the baby shower we will be having. JD isn't due until late December (Christmas baby!) so I've got plenty of time to buy some cute little outfits.