What is Holiday Fair?

My mom and dad are deep in the throes of finishing their ornaments for Holiday Fair. The Fair is at the old Palmetto Expo center, and is always the first weekend in December. This year it's the 4th through the 6th. This is their 31st year with a booth. My mom's friend Joy found a way to make the ornaments, so they started making them and selling them together at the booth. Joy moved to Murfreesboro, TN years ago, and still would try and come to the fair for several years after that, but with kids growing up and her daughter Abby's birthday always during the Fair, it became harder and harder for her to come, so now mom does it solo.

Mom and Dad used to make all sorts of things with the ornaments, too, specifically the Sucker Trees! Dad would cut the trees in the garage and Mom would make the ornaments and bake them into lollipop sticks. You could then have a "topper", like a turkey for Thanksgiving, and have pumpkins and pilgrims to spread around between all the suckers on the tree. They also did tables, plaques and frames, and tons of other stuff. Now Mom just sticks to the ornaments, which are all personalized upon order. Some years, on the first day of the Fair, there are people around the table 3 or 4 deep holding their orders for personalization and payment. And there have even been years mom has sold out by Friday and doesn't even bother returning for the 3rd day of the Fair!

In college I started making dog bone ornaments to make some extra holiday money, and this year I have taken on making the 2008s. Mom starts sometime in July making and baking the ornaments, and makes anywhere from 300-500! It is amazing what she thinks to do, and yes, our tree growing up was covered in them. We still help decorate the tree and hang the ones mom made in 1978! I am so proud of how industrious my mom is, and am thankful that she seemed to pass it down to me. I grew up with her getting good ideas from all kinds of places and showing me and saying "we can do that! we can make that!"

With it being such a family tradition for us, I wanted to share what our house looked like from July to December growing up, and how hard mom works and how talented she is. 

The dining room. Mom has an extra room this year to spread out the ornaments, so this is just a fraction of them. And the week before the Fair, Dad is counting and tagging everything, so this table is covered!

Shelves in the "studio", a room which was a huge selling point on the house when mom and dad bought it 20 years ago.

New this year, hunting Santas, complete with blaze orange!

Kate is in there somewhere. These are mom's miniatures that she glues into and onto most of the ornaments. She has hundreds of thousands, and they know her at least by face if not by name at the 3 main craft stores in town!