EVENTS: VINTAGE BLISS MARKET

This past weekend I had the great privilege of selling my goodies at Westport Plaza's Vintage Bliss Market, what an adventure! I really had a great time, of course omitting a certain storm threats. This was a 2-day event spanning Saturday (June 22nd) and Sunday (June 23rd). I have to give a special shout-out, however, to St. Louis magazine online columnist, Andrea Schmid. She wrote a little excerpt (here) on the event and mentioned my shop! Even more awesome, she and a friend payed my booth a visit to do a little shopping. Sweet girls! Please support and check out all of Andrea's work (here) as well!

Saturday was awesome, I met so many wonderful individuals with equally great products to offer. I had a job interview on location that ran long (good sign? :D) so I had to hustle to set up my tent and entire display as the event had already started! With the help of my dear Richard, we were up and ready to go in about an hour's time. Smooth sailing and selling. It was a blazing hot and humid day so at the end of the 8 hour day, we were ready to go home and pass out in some AC. We took everything to the designated storage facility, except my tent which we lowered and left held down by two huge bricks.

After an emergency email was sent out Saturday evening alerting us that the storm had blown tents all over the Westport complex, Richard and I knew we were in for a real treat Sunday morning. We get to the plaza and immediately run into Emily Lewis (awesome, hard-working woman who orchestrated the entire event!). We follow quietly behind her when finally she shows us the dumpster area of the plaza. I was horrified! There was a big mound of tangles of tents, broken legs, ripped tarps; it was total devastation. My heart immediately sunk knowing that it was impossible for my cheap little EZ-up to have survived. I collapsed against the wall ready to dedicate about 10 minutes to crying and feeling sorry for myself when Richard pulls out this perfectly folding tent from underneath the rubble! My God, I could've went on and cried from the pure miraculousness of it! My tent, the lone survivor.
We take the tent and examine it; it has been bent is several areas and snapped in two parts of the infrastructure. We weren't sure if it could be saved but we tried anyway. My dear vending neighbor offered us tape and anything else we might need to save the tent. We made magic with that damn duct tape! She helped us put it and brought the tent to life! Yes! We sold for a few hours but with the threat of another impending storm, we played it safe and closed down. An weekend of both trial and triumph, a weekend I'm so happy overall to have had. Great times.