Craft Fair

I am still alive. I promise! Things have gotten to be so overwhelming, but in a really good way. My first year of teaching is almost over, and I feel it has all gone down as a total success! I love what I am doing, and I could not be happier! I am wondering what to do over the summer though. I plan on teaching lessons Tues-Thursday so I have weekends free to travel and work at my summer home. But I really do not have much planned! Now the real reason i am posting tonight is because I finally have energy to talk about the craft fair I (The band program) hosted. We need money bad, to repair the drum line and buy a new sousaphone. This craft fair really helped us. We were able to bring in around $2,000 with vendor booth sales, concessions, and the raffle table. As soon as I get measurements down, I will start ordering repair parts for our drumline! Here are some pictures from the fair, taken by my mummy dearest. This is the main cafeteria. We were planning on having it in the gym, which has more space, but the school was setting up for their huge auction which was the week after the craft fair, so we had to change things around a bit.

Down the main breezeway, the Lee's Bee's ladies were amazing! They kept my mood up the entire day, even when I felt I could just fall asleep on my feet!

Our wonderful art teacher made the banners for the band raffle and the concession stand. I would have loved to keep the banner around, but during tear down, my students had other plans...

Our wonderful, excited students who were working the concession stand. I made sure we had students around the entire time. This event was put on for them, and they helped vendors move their items into and out of the building, went around asking if they wanted anything from the concession stand, and took care of the raffle and concession stand. They did a great job!

This is my booth. Not much. Don't judge! I was not really all that worried about sales, as I was more worried about the fair in general. I was able to bring in around $80 though, which helped me a ton with rent! My booth was a hodgepodge of items, knitted things, sewn things, stitch markers, earrings, handspun yarn... you name it!

These are just some cute booths along the way!

Our band raffle table. One thing I learned, no cell phones allowed behind the raffle table. Many of my kids would not interact with the people coming inside, and then they would not sell the tickets!

This is one of my seniors. She was literally my right hand woman the entire fair. She assigned students to sellers, and worked her butt off! I was so proud, and I know I could not have done it without her help.

Along the way, I was looking at booths and struck up a conversation with one of the vendors. It ended up with where I went to high school, and with that, we figured out she was my middle school science teacher! She was in her first year of teaching when I was her student, and now we have done a full circle! She took some amazing photography and sketches, I just cannot believe it! You don't know how talented your teachers are until you ask! BTW totally pimping her shop! http://www.etsy.com/shop/CarrieCarlson?ref=seller_info Please check it out! I am floored that she was one of my vendors. I remember her being my favorite teacher outside of the fine arts department. I disected worms with her! Science club was awesome, and I was just so excited to see her again!

My band actually created about a half hours worth of music for the vendors as well! (Side note, I now know that I need to have music playing the entire time, because it got pretty boring in there!) Thats me covering the bass drum part on the left! :P

My wonderful students calling out the raffle prizes.

and lastly, a view of the cafeteria and the wonderful vendors!

All in all, we had about 38 vendors, which is great for the first year. I sent out surveys at the end of the fair and about 90% were positive. The things that I need to change for next year- No rain, more music, different types of food in the concession stand (we had hot dogs, pop corn, and bake sale goods),one hour shorter, and use the gym instead of the cafeteria I think we can manage! Heres a big thank you to all the amazing vendors! And I hope to see you again next year!