What we do for love

Made the trek from the Austin area to the Houston area (approximately 3.5 hour drive) for the second weekend in a row. Last weekend I set up a booth for Crimson Threads and had my friend Jamie, my mom, my sister and my niece, Claire, help me sell product. This weekend I had the pleasure of chaparoning Claire at a cheer competition in Houston.

The whole ordeal brought me back to my days as a cheerleader. Yep, I was one of those a gazillion years ago. We went to a few competitions and even made it as far as national competition and performed on ESPN at Disney World.

Claire's generation has evolved quite a bit from my days in short skirts. Claire's group was the only one in the Jr. Pom Pom division. There were a ton of Hip-Hop or Street groups and then there was the more traditional cheerleading with lots of flips and girls popping up over other girls shoulders.

The event schedule showed groups competing as early at 7 am this morning until way past 9 pm. Whew! I was happy to know we only had to spend a few hours of our day amidst what felt like a million people and most of those millions in pony tails and lots of glitter.

It was fun though and I also have such a hoot spending time with Claire.

Today's Life in the Fast Lane

My dear friend Jamie moved from the Dallas area to our beautiful Austin in July of this year, but she wasn't able to move all of her things and chose to store some of her belongings in a storage unit near her old home. Today we trekked up to her storage facility to bring a few things back down to Austin including a 10x10 tent that we use for craft shows.

I'm the lucky keeper of the tent because I have a craft show that I will be attending the first weekend of December - Angleton's 20th Annual Christmas on the Square.

It's been over a year since I attended my last craft fair as Crimson Threads, which is my online side business. In fact the last show was the same Christmas show back in 2005. In 2006 and apparently in 2007, I was much more focused on directing all of my working energy to becoming the best HR Manager I could for Bulldog Solutions. My niece, Claire, was so sad that we didn't do the Christmas show last year. She's my number one sales girl.

In 2004, at the age of 9, Claire sold around $950 worth of products from 10 am - 9 pm. In 2005, she sold just a little shy of that, but both times I was absolutely amazed at her sales skills at such a young age.

Okay, I have to admit, she's a cute strawberry blonde thing and I have this sweet little apron for her to wear and the main product she hocks for me are Northridge Gardens Lotions in a Bar. The women that attend the craft for simply can't pass her up, when she's standing their with lotions in her hand asking them to try the different fragrances.
I'm anxious to see what happens in a few weeks at the show.

I suspect that Jamie's and my trip wasn't in vain and we made the most of our time in Big D. Just before we started the rearranging of her storage unit and packing up, we thought it best to grab a bite for lunch and stopped at one of our favorite places - Blue Mesa Grill in Frisco, yummy Southwestern cuisine. And the sign out front reads, "Catering Anywhere Anytime". Somehow I think that might not be the case, but if they're serious, I'll take some sweet potato chips, an Adobe pie, the Mesa Sampler, and Passion Fruit Tea please.