RagsReborn's SURPRISE show announcement!

I'm happy to announce a SURPRISE craft show!!
       Are you ready for it??!?!?!

I won't have my regular booth layout, though. (;_;) Some sad news... my "double decker couch" inspired shelf wore itself out. It lasted me 7 shows, which is quite the feat since it was completely homemade with cardboard, Velcro, cloth and craft glue. The Velcro started coming off last year, so for the past two shows, I've used yarn to tie the pieces together. The cardboard pieces started bowing in and warping more and more due to use; then in the middle of my show at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds, the shelf just started falling apart! Wes and I were able to salvage it enough to finish out the show but it's time to let go.

My old display shelf. I cried on the inside as I walked it to the dumpster.

I'm currently working on new blue prints... with a new table... a collapsible table that Jessa so graciously gave to me!! I got some good ideas from some of my friends & fellow vendors so it's time to get to work.
       It'll involve more cardboard--because it's the sturdiest and lightest material I can transport on my own. I'm thinking of building bleacher-like boxes to put my pillows in and on. I'll also be making them different sizes so they can nest inside each other for transportation and give my display some different heights. We'll see how this goes. You should come check out the craft fair at the Wilmont Place Baptist Church. Be the first to see my new booth layout!!

An aside...
       This is what I really want for my booth display. A wooden folding shelf! It would look great with my antique trunk, don't you think? This is on my "for the future" wish list... many years down the line since I don't have money for something like this right now and even if I did, it probably wouldn't fit in my backseat. But, take a good look and keep this in mind. If you know of where to buy some cheap but durable and, most importantly, light weight wood and/or someone who would be willing to build this for me, let me know!

Anyway, back to my big show announcement... I'll be at Wilmont Place Baptist Church for their Craft & Vendor Fair this Saturday, April 2nd. Hooray  \(^_^)/ It's a small show at a local church in south Oklahoma City. I'll be there from 9am to 5pm. (Yup, aaalllllllll day!) I didn't intend on doing three shows in April but I haven't done a show since the Creative Craft Festival in Norman earlier this month and that has been way too long! 

       ***NOTE: This show is not a "pure" craft show; it is mostly a vendor fair, meaning there will not be a lot of handmade items. Instead, it will have a lot of direct sales consultants so if you're short on your Scentsy, Jamberry or Pink Zebra products, come on out. I still prefer handmade craft shows but I also support shows that allow vendors and have actually purchased a few of their products myself. 

       *gasp!* Why the sudden change of heart??? Well, I used to hate on direct sales when they go to craft shows (because, ahem... Pampered Chef is not a craft) but, lately, I've met a lot of the ladies who sell these products and they are all very kind and hard working. They take pride in their business & products and have befriended me as a fellow businesswoman. I still don't agree with their sharky sales pitches but I have learned a thing or two about sales & marketing from them. If you use any direct sales products, I would recommend coming out to a vendor fair to purchase your products in person instead of shopping online or from catalogs. If you would like a Paparazzi or Carey Pet & Home Care consultant, please let me know. I can recommend some wonderful ladies to you!

Funny story...
       One of the craft show coordinators, Karen, came to the Cleveland County Fairgrounds a few weeks ago to browse for talent & recruit vendors for her show at the church in April. She came to my booth and introduced herself.
     
Well, actually, the conversation went like this...
K: Hello, I know you!
E: Oh? Are you a vendor?
K: No but we've been talking. I'm with Wilmont Place.
E: Yes! Of course! I'll be at your show coming up soon!

We talked about RagsReborn, the craft show, the church and their mission trip. Her daughter is a missionary and will be the primary show coordinator but Karen has done craft shows for years and decided to lend a hand. She is a crafting veteran! 

I suppose this is what Wilmont Place OKC looks like. It was the first image that came up on my Google search. LOL

I've decided that my favorite shows are ones at local churches. I'm not particularly religious but the atmosphere of church craft shows is amazing. Everyone is so so supportive & kind and you can feel the positive energy all day.
       I'm actually really excited to be a part of this particular craft show because its purpose is to raise money for their Nicaragua Mission Trip later this year. I went on a mission trip to Mexico several years ago with the St. Thomas More college group. We worked with a local church by interacting with the children (aka playing and goofing off all day) and doing some light construction. It was a really good faith journey & humbling experience. It was probably the most I prayed and opened up about my personal experience with the church. (I know that sounds really cheesy and I'm sure everyone says this about their missionary experience but its true.) Anyway, since I had such a good time on my mission trip, I'm more than happy to aid Wilmont Place's missionaries attain their financial goals so they can also walk in Christ's footsteps by spreading love and aid to Nicaragua. Please come out to the show this Saturday. All of the vendor booth rent goes to their missionary fund and all proceeds from breakfast and lunch also goes toward the fund. If crafts aren't your thing, at least come out to grab a meal.

Here's a REALLY old picture of the St. Thomas More missionaries.

Said no one ever...

This blog will be full of someecards. I love these so I am borrowing them for my blog.  

They aren't mine & I don't take credit for any of their wit.

Last month, I called in sick to work due to menstrual cramps.
       I haven't done this since high school (where I stayed home almost every month because I was too much of a wuss to deal with the pain and, let's be honest, I hated high school and had absolutely no desire to be there so any excuse to stay home was a good one.)
       In my adulthood, I never wanted to call in sick for my 'womanly problems'. I always thought... "It is embarrassing. It is a sign of weakness. It makes me a woman." No one thinks endometriosis is a big deal. "It's not a real disease", they say, "it's just a weak woman complaining about her pain." We get chastised. "Oh it must be her time of the month," people whisper snarkily, "she can't even handle her own body."
       So each month, I would take a strong dose of pain medication, wear dark and comfortable pants, say a little prayer that I wouldn't faint from the pain and head on out to work. Each month it was excruciating. It got worse and worse, especially over the past few years. I started having to bring extra pain medication just to have on hand at my desk. I started bringing an extra set of clothes. Finally, I decided it wasn't worth it. Employees call in all the time...and on February 4th, 2016, it was my time!

Getting to stay in bed that day was the best thing to ever happen to me. LOL Yes, I was still in terrible pain but it was wonderful to get to rest instead of suffering through the workday.
       My place of employment is aware of my health issues and my boss was very understanding. Upon my return to work, I thanked my boss profusely and doubled my efforts to make up for lost time. No one called me out for being weak, I wasn't expected to feel guilty for staying home and no one demoted me for not being able to be at work; everything was just all in my head. I won't be abusing this knowledge to call in on a regular monthly basis, but I do feel as if a huge burden has been lifted from me. I now know that if I ever am in too much pain, I can take a sick day. It's a light bulb that just turned on: Endometrosis is a valid reason for a sick day. I was in pain that day. I was sick.

I don't know if anyone else has ever feared using a sick day for menstrual cramps. 

I don't know if anyone else is ashamed of their ill functioning reproductive system. 

But if you are and need some enlightenment, here it is. 

       Please read my blog and know that you are not alone. Also know that you shouldn't put your body through the stress of having to be at work when you really should be at home caring for yourself. 

Speaking of caring for yourself... I have one short rant before I let you go. I drive by this billboard every day on my way home from work. I understand its message regarding caregivers but it still makes me angry.

I remember how my mother cared for me when I was a child and I plan to return the favor. I also plan to care for my step-father and husband in the same way. No problem. 

       The problem is that I will never have a child. How I see it is, this billboard is telling me that I will never be cared for in my old age because I cannot fulfill my initial role as a mother. How disappointing! Fortunately, I have already planned for this and it doesn't come as much of a shock. I'm smart so I've been carefully putting away money for retirement and I monitor my health very closely to avoid any major complications as I age. I am aware that I am an only child with very few friends so my last years will be difficult. My mother, step-father & husband are all older than I am so I expect them all to go first. But I am fully ready to take care of myself when that time comes. With all that set aside, this billboard still does offend me. I have a hard enough burden to bear with my infertility, I don't need a billboard reminding me that I will have to suffer through ailing age on my own. 

        And, why should my female role be one of a mother? Why can't this woman in the billboard primarily be a politician or athlete or business woman? Why is her "role" one of a parent? There are plenty of women who either cannot have children or choose not to have children. Are we all going to die alone in one childless arena designed for childless females?

       And what about those mothers whose children succumb to disease or fight & die in wars? They took care of their children but due to whatever ill circumstances, their children will not be able to care for them in the future. Did the AARP think about the possibility of offending those women as well?

       Gawd, I can't wait until this campaign ends so they can remove that billboard. I would much rather see something telling me to enjoy Coca-Cola each day. Breathe, Erica, breathe... the AARP is just trying to help... it's not trying to offend you. Okay...I'm off my soapbox. Let's calm it down and wind it down...

       This last picture isn't empowering and probably doesn't go with the rest of this blog entry but I thought it was hilarious. I literally laughed out loud when I saw it. And when we're suffering from an angry uterus, a laugh is much needed.

How to use up raw pecans & chocolate candies...

Pecan cookies with chocolate caramel center.

I am now an expert at shucking pecans.
       At Thanksgiving, Wes went over to his grandparents' house and he and his grandpa picked pecans. I wasn't there but I imagine they picked pecans for appropriately seven hours and eighteen minutes while discussing the complete works of Krisnamurti. Wes returned with a large paper grocery sack FILLED with raw pecans (still shelled). I like pecans. I was excited. Raw nuts are expensive and we just got about 5-6 pounds for free! But I've never shucked nuts before in my life. I wasn't aware how difficult those little suckers would be to open. The excitement ended when I picked up a nutcracker for the first time. LOL
       Over the course of the next three months, Wes & I took shifts shucking them. We'd do a few handfuls at a time. Shuck nuts, hurt fingers, enjoy healthy snack, repeat. When we whittled down the amount in the paper grocery sack and had few enough left, we placed what was left in a Pyrex for storage. The time came for me to need to transport cupcakes to my Arbonne + RagsReborn party. The rest of the pecans had to go. Commence mass nutcracker pecan shucking party!

Text courtesy of Lacey.

After a night of labor, I was left with a rather large bowl of pecans. What to do with them? ... 

                                           

The literal fruits of our labor.

Wes' brother gave me a really nice (and large) box of chocolates for Christmas. I brought them to Christmas dinner at my mom's but we didn't get a chance to open them because there were already plenty of desserts. So, Wes & I took the chocolates back home and put them away.
       Fast forward almost two months ... today I remembered that I have a really nice box of unopened chocolate covered sea salt caramels just sitting in my kitchen waiting to be eaten. I had some for breakfast (they were delicious) and decided I wanted to use the rest for baking. I could have had more for breakfast but I didn't for the sake of my teeth and waistline.

There was only supposed to be 24 chocolates in the box but I got 25 when I opened it! Yay, bonus chocolate!

       I really like those peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss in the middle--well, more like on top. I think they're called "Chocolate Thumbprints". I also really like Turtle (aka caramel and nut... not the animal) flavored desserts. A former coworker of mine would always bring "Trailer Trash Turtles" to our company potlucks. They're pretzels with Rolo candies and pecans on top. I've never made either thumbprints or turtles before but I imagine they're both pretty easy. And the two could probably be combined into one master cookie. Using that as my inspiration, I decided to bake some cookies with the Christmas chocolate candies in the center & crushed pecans in the dough. This is my first time baking these* & the recipe is mostly made up, except I used a sugar cookie recipe from a baking cookbook to get the correct proportions (because baking without correct proportions is disastrous). Wish me luck!
       *I will add adjustments to the recipe once I'm done baking...and if it's terrible, I'll just scrap this blog and post pictures of Sadie & Athena instead. LOL

Caramel stuffed cookie recipe:

       Ingredients- 

• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar*, 
• 1/3 cup of brown sugar*,
       *sugar cookies call for 1/2 cup each of brown & granulated sugars but I went with only 1/3 cup because I didn't want them to be too sweet with the candy in the center. The lesser amount of sugar did not affect the cookie texture or baking.
• 1 stick of butter (at room temperature & softened), 
• 1 egg, 
• 1 1/4 cup of flour, 
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 
• chocolate caramel candies (make sure you have one per cookie; not all chocolates are shown in this picture), 
• 1/4 cup of pecan pieces, 
• a dash of nutmeg & a splash of vanilla (both are optional)
        I was able to make 12 cookies from this recipe. The chocolates were pretty large (about 1 x 1 inch squares). The recipe should be able to make one and a half dozen cookies if the chocolate pieces were smaller. 

1. Get a large mixing bowl and cream both sugars & butter. This is easiest to do with an electric mixer.

2. Once creamed, add egg, vanilla & nutmeg and mix together until everything is well blended.

3. In a separate smaller bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda & pecans.

4. Slowly add the flour mixture into the butter mixture. I always use one hand to pour while the other hand is mixing.

5. Wrap completed dough in Saran Wrap and refrigerate for an hour (more or less... I never time these things.) You can preheat the oven while waiting on the dough to chill. Preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

6. After chilling...time to make cookies!! Take a chocolate candy and wrap dough around it. The cookies will be little dough balls with candy in the center. 

7. Place the balls onto a cookie sheet (you can grease the cookie sheet or use parchment paper but I have a Silpat and I LOVE it) and press down onto the balls until the tops are flat. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown.

8. Cool and enjoy!! (but don't cool for too long...these are best eaten warm so you can truly experience the gooey caramel center!)

These cookies turned out so well!! So so yummy!! Especially for being the first time I ever made them. I have impressed myself. LOL If I had to tweak the recipe, I'd use smaller pieces of chocolate candy and maybe only one type of sugar. And that's only because they turned out a little sweet for my taste.

RagsReborn's first charity auction.

I had an absolute blast at my first Quarter Mania auction!! I will be participating in the next Quarter Mania (they happen quarterly & the show organizers are currently looking at available dates for the next one) and I highly encourage you to come. All proceeds benefit a different charity each time. 

Before I start, I want  to let you know that if you are looking for a home in Oklahoma, you should totally check out the city of Mustang. The houses are nice--aka new, large and in a quickly developing suburb, the people are beyond friendly and their community center is the nicest thing I have ever seen. 

       In the middle of town, there stands the Mustang Town Center. It is a ginormous complex that includes a library, fitness center, park, and multiple banquet halls. The auction was held in The Great Room (one of their larger banquet halls that had a kitchen). I've never been to Mustang, let alone the Town Center, so I parked on the entirely wrong side of the building. I must have looked bewildered because the first person I happened upon offered to help (she, unfortunately, didn't know where the auction was, either). I then wandered into the fitness center and the girl at the front desk gave me very detailed directions to The Great Room. She offered to walk me so I wouldn't get lost but her supervisor wasn't around to grant her permission and she couldn't leave her post. I found the room with no problem and checked in. The women running the auction were incredibly friendly and helpful. I dropped off my quarters & chose my table to set up my items for sale.

       Then came the task of hauling all my items in. As I was walking to my car, I saw two teenagers wearing shirts that announced they were "staff." I asked if they could help me carry in my trunk of pillows and they had no objection!! (I'm always stunned when I come across nice teenagers.) They were very polite and informed me that there was a much closer parking lot where I could move my car to unload the rest of my items. I parked right by the doors and managed the rest of the unloading on my own. Like I said before, Mustangians (or whatever they call themselves) are beyond friendly.

I set up right in front of the west window at sunset. Not smart.

Okay...back to the auction. This was my first Quarter Mania and didn't know what to expect. Luckily, I set up between two veterans. I was in between Brandy, who sold Pink Zebra and children's book author, Carly Cartmill. (Shout out to these lovely ladies!!) Doors opened at 5:30pm and patrons flooded in. All of our auction items were set up on a long table for viewing. Patrons could purchase paddles and quarters. There were so many in attendance that we ran out of paddles and the show organizers asked for people to sell their paddles back if they had bought multiples. There wasn't much time for shopping but vendors had tables along the walls just in case shoppers wandered by.

Pink Zebra to my right and Carly Cartmill to my left. She was promoting her latest book, Stuffed.

Patrons browsed & shopped, ate yummy Frito chili pie and mingled until about 7pm when the auction started. Here's how it worked:
1. The MC announced an item--which vendor the item is from, a brief description and how many quarters it cost to bid. Ex. OU themed tote and pillow gift set from RagsReborn. Two quarters to bid.
2. A volunteer (vendors were volunteers for the night) would grab the item and walk around showing it to all the tables.
3. Then the bidding would start. Each item cost either 1, 2 or 3 quarters per paddle to bid. If you wanted to be entered, you would drop your quarters into a little Tupperware that runners (that was my job) would pass out and collect. If an item cost 1 quarter and you bid 1 quarter, you got to raise one of your paddles, 2 quarters for two paddles, etc.
4. Once bidding ends and all the quarters are collected and all the paddles are raised in the air, the MC draws a number from the hopper.
5. If the number corresponds to the number written on your paddle, you win!

The OU basket was my highest grossing item.

It was simple & fun and everyone participated. It was crazy! I was on my feet all night running around everywhere collecting quarters and depositing them to the bank. What a riot! Everyone was in high spirits and items were flying off the table. After the first hour, we had a 10 minute intermission. I used that time to have a quick bite and make a few sales. I was able to network and meet some new friends.

Then the second half of the auction started and it was just as busy as the first. At the end of the night, I had a bag full of quarters and eight pillow sales! (That doesn't sound impressive but there was barely any time to for making sales, so I believe that was an accomplishment.) And more importantly, I passed out all of my Spring Craft Show schedule flyers & a lot of business cards. I talked to almost everyone in the room and gained some interest in custom orders. I even got invited to be a vendor at an event next weekend! I had to decline since I am participating in D.U.C.K Week.

I posted short videos of the auction on my Facebook and Instagram pages. I'm really glad I was a part of this and I am already signed up for the next one. I hope I see you there!