An Affair of the Heart

This past Friday I went for the first time to a craft show called "An Affair of the Heart". This is a twice annual show that takes place locally in July and November. I've never been to a craft show before, so I wasn't sure what it would be like, but I was willing to check it out. For some reason I thought that the items for sale wouldn't really appeal to me, but man was I wrong!

I met with my mother-in-law Sue at 8:30am and we drove over to check out a store called Garden Ridge first. I'd never been to (or heard of) Garden Ridge, but it was close by and Sue wanted to show me their inexpensive kitchen items (to top off what we need and don't receive from our registry). We both wanted to take a look at their Christmas stuff also. This was a good call! It's nice to know that if I need more Christmas ornaments I can get 50 for $10.

I was on the lookout for stocking stuffers for Jonathan, but I didn't see anything appropriate. I did however purchase our stockings! After hunting for a while, I found the perfect ones at Garden Ridge. They're really cute, they match and they have a similar style to the stocking I had as a child. I can always buy quilted monogrammed stockings from Pottery Barn later when we actually have a fireplace. Then it was time to grab a caramel macchiato from QuikTrip (I am a Starbucks fiend but I REALLY needed my coffee that day!) before heading over to River Spirit Expo for the craft show. It was a chilly 33 degree day but thankfully it was warm inside.

Saying hi to the Golden Driller outside the Expo

We met up with my new cousins Lauren and Mallory and my new aunt Donna around 10:30am and a dear family friend (and Jonathan's old boss when he worked security) who was working security that day got us all in for free. I felt like such a VIP being escorted in and it saved me $7. We decided to start at the back and work our way up. We saw a TON of cute things! Baby clothes, furniture, home decor, Christmas decorations. By 12:30pm we'd probably only made it 1/3 of the way round. We decided to break for lunch and got our hands stamped to come back later. We went back to the car and drove over to McAlester's Deli for lunch.

I had a super delicious chicken noodle soup with saltines, followed by a 4 cheese grilled cheese sandwich. I was full and it was so good. I also bumped in to Jon's babysitter while we were there. Lauren had to head back after lunch as her husband picked up an extra shift at work and she needed to watch her 2 boys. So we said goodbye to her and made our way back to the show. It had started to rain at this point - freezing rain. Yuck.

We headed back inside, found the spot we made it to before lunch and picked up where we left off. I saw so many cute things but my priority was stocking stuffers for Jon and Christmas decorations.

This was one of my favorite booths!

By 3:30pm, everyone was done and we parted ways with Donna and Mallory. I wanted to stay a little longer with Sue to loop back around now that I'd seen everything, and go pick up what I really wanted. I didn't take a picture of everything I bought, but my loot included: a winter snowman sign that read "Frosty Greetings", a Christmas sign that had "Merry Christmas" on one side and "For Unto Us a Child is Born" on the other, a standalone plaque that said "Tis the Season", a Christmas wreath for our door, and a map of the US made out of license plates from each state. Here it is hanging up on our wall:

I'd wanted a map of the US for a while, but this is by far my favorite!

By this point it was 4:30pm and we were done. We headed to the car, only to find that thanks to the freezing rain, the windshield and wing mirrors were solid blocks of ice. The wing mirrors even had icicles hanging down from them! The car temp was now saying 30, 3 degrees cooler than it was that morning. We drove home and saw 3 or 4 wrecks with police cars, ambulances and even a fire truck. I was pleased to finally be home!

Despite the weather, I had a really fun day. It was great to have the new experience of a craft show, to spend time with my new family, and to get some really good buys.