What I Found at the Holiday Bazaar

I remember going to Christmas-y craft fairs with my mom when I was little, and it had been years since I'd been to anything like one of those small town craft fairs. So beautiful. So exciting. So cheesy. So unbelievable what people will try to sell. There's something about going to craft fairs that just makes me want to hug a rosy-cheeked grandma. And maybe hope that she's wearing a holiday scene cross-stitch on her sweater.

Last weekend I went to the the Joyful Noise Holiday Bazaar in Sterling. It was much classier than the craft fairs I remember from growing up. Maybe it was that I didn't have to be selling teasel trees (Yes, that's a thing, and yes I made a bunch of them. Also, they were beautiful.).

There was a kids' craft table at the bazaar, which is where my discovery of the Thanksgiving season was made. They were making placemats-- real simple, with pieces of printer paper deocrated by themed borders. One of the girls helping at the craft table had decorated one with a handprint as a turkey. After that, they popped them in laminating pouches (What?! I've been out of teaching too long!) So, the boys made those, and they were so cute, and so easy that I decided that we would make them for all of our family members for our two different Thanksgiving dinners we will be a part of this year. Then I decided I would make them for my parents and grandparents and mail them to Idaho.

This was perhaps an ambitious goal, but the boys, especially Cal, are so interested in coloring and in doing art, that they have had a blast doing all these. Which is good because we still have a bunch to go. I'm hoping that the placemats will survive this year and live for more Thanksgiving dinners down the road.

Craft fairs and bazaars are fabulous for getting ideas! Maybe some of you can use this idea too.

Calvin's turkey placemat from the bazaar

Hard at work: they're personalizing the backs of the placemats too.

Cal insisted on doing his own handprint on all his turkeys.

Though this looks like suicidal jellyfish on the back of one placemat,
 Cal tells me it's actually George Washington,
Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson,
and Teddy Roosevelt.



We used little spronge brushes to decorate the edges with paint.

Gammy's 9-legged mutant turkey isn't Cal's finest work...but I'm pretty
sure Gammy will love it. And he did it all by himself.

Now I need to go laminate them all...