Brenda, Mar 1 - June 30 Afton Villa in St. Francisville is open for tours. Mar 5 - April 17 Zemurray Gardens in Loranger is open for tours. Mar 19 - 20 Northshore Spring Garden Show and Plant Sale in Folsom, LA March 19 - 20 Spring Garden Show at LSU's Parker Coliseum. I am getting this out of the Country Roads magazine. They are really good at listing upcoming events. There is an arts & crafts festival at Oak Alley on March 12. That's about all it lists in the garden department, though. I know that there will be a plant sale at the New Orleans Botanical Garden (I THINK) the first weekend of April.

Jewelry seems to have over-run the craft shows. As well as the order it ready made and sit and sell booths. Good handmade crafts are getting fewer all the time. My friend has been making bowl mitts and has been doing very well. Couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was when she showed me. It is simply a square design, made with 100% cotton and microwaveable batting, like used for potato bags, She puts 4 darts about half up between corners making the square form a cup. The bigger the square the bigger the bowl can be that fits. Simply put it under the bowl before putting it in the microwave and it has it's own pot holder wrapped around it to get it out of the micro and can be left on to protect the surface you sit the hot bowl on. It is a very clever idea and since she has started demonstrating so to speak at her shows her sales has really picked up. just sitting on the table a person doesn't know what it is. I think she sells them for about $5 to $8 depending on the size. Hope this idea helps. I can try to post a pic if anyone is interested in seeing it.

Thanks for the feedback! SLOW, I should mention I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everything out here is expensive, and $100 is about the bottom rate for a show that gets any kind of attendance at all. The larger, busier festivals charge upwards of $600, and some want a % of your sales! I am planning on sharing a booth with a friend on one of the fairs. I'm just wondering how much inventory I should try to put together. Anyone know whether maybe 100 pendants is enough? Should I try for 200? I've got no idea what kind of volume people typically try to show up with. Of course, my husband was in the sports collectibles business for a number of years. He reminded me it depends on the show. Some can clean you out, others you're sitting there all day wishing you could sell 5.

I liked Christmas as a child, but once I became an adult, it was more stressful than anything else, and my mother took it too seriously. She felt compelled to have everyone together for Christmas, and this became more difficult when the family got larger and had other places to go. I left home at 18, and so after that, I returned as a guest. I have no holiday traditions of my own, although I used to celebrate the summer solstice when I lived in Venice, as that was a good time to have a party there. When I did visit my parents for Christmas and/or Thanksgiving, I would do much of the cooking, partly because my mother did not like to do it and partly because I was better at it, and my nieces especially appreciated it. I found exchanging gifts to be more stressful than enjoyable, and so I did not like that as an adult. We sometimes played board games, and I did enjoy that. As a child, we alternated having Christmas at my parents' house and at my maternal grandparents' house. My mother was an only child, and so her parents were always with us at holidays. My father had two older brothers and an older sister, and we never celebrated any holidays with them. His sister had moved to New Mexico, and we almost never saw her at all. His two brothers had married two sisters, and so they were very close to each other but not to us. Since their children were double first cousins, they were much like one family (and closer to each other in ages). My father's family was not big on Christmas, partly because his sister had converted to Jehovah's Witness (because of her husband), and she had converted my grandmother. I believe that JWs do not celebrate Christmas, as I remember, but my grandmother was not the typical JW. In fact, being inventive (with a couple of patents under her belt), she had created her own version of the religion, probably from her imagination, which was far from conventional. No one knew where she got her ideas, but she did enjoy going out and witnessing. However, when the other JWs found out what she was telling others, they tried to get her to stop witnessing, but to no avail. I was told not to listen to my grandmother because she was "off her rocker," but I found her stories entertaining and imaginative. My grandmother owned the waterworks in town because my grandfather (who died before I was born) and his father had dug a bunch of artesian wells, and so the people in town pretty much had to put up with her, even though they thought she was a bit crazy. She never forced people to pay their water bills, and so my father had to do that for her. She thought water should be free. Anyway, my father's side of the family did not celebrate Christmas in a conventional way.