ART SALE IN OUR YARD, Or Indoors Away from the Bees, Or Maybe on the Front Porch, But Only if We Can Run Inside If We See a Bee

By Da Mama

This summer we have attended several art fairs, including Art Fair on the Square (Madison) and Art in the Park (Lake Geneva). Bella especially enjoys looking at the art in various booths. She favors ceramics, jewelry, and furniture - the brighter and shiner the better. She always has money in her pocket to spend, but never quite enough. She will ask, "Mommy, how much is this (purple and pink flowered) mirror?" "Fifty." "I have fifty right here!!!" "No, honey, fifty dollars, not fifty cents." Obviously, Bella concluded, this art fair business is a great money making scheme, so yesterday she decided to have her own.

She worked hard all morning on art pieces to sell. She warmed up her creative muse with a dot drawing of me:

This particular piece was immediately claimed by the model and is not, I repeat, not for sale.

The artist then made several beaded bracelets and colored a picture from a coloring book. Satisfied with her inventory, she next worked on marketing. She an 8.5 x 11 inch sign on the front of our house:

End of marketing strategy.

The artist thought the best location for the sale would be near the street. She and Iris made a killing on a gaterade-n-popcorn sale in that location earlier this summer. But the bees are a problem. A serious problem. The kind of problem that makes two little girls run frantically from the car to the porch as though the front of our house is in the middle of a war zone. Every time. So she couldn't be that far from the house. She thought of being inside the house and tried that for a little while, watching from the front window for people to drive by and spot her HUGE sign. But that also did not work. She comprised on location and ended up on the front porch. She brought out a wooden display bench and a princess cash register and a 10-key machine for adding up sales. She recruited a sales assistant. She made price tags. She put on a dress. She and her assistant shouted to random passersby, "Sale! Art Sale! Sale! Art Sale at 317!" She had very little luck for so long that she almost gave up. She hit a low point when a wasp flew by and sent her screaming into the house.

As I was leaving to go to the store, she whispered, "Mommy, why isn't anyone buying my art?" My mind thought, "Because you had a poor marketing plan, and not enough inventory, and no one wants to buy another little kid's stuff." But my mommy heart thought, "Oh, my sweet little girl, if I could save you from every pain in the world including this one caused by all the moronic, mean, cheapskates who drove by without stopping (sorry if this includes any of you, our friendly neighbors), I would, oh, I would."

The best I could do in that regard was to come back from the store, pretend to be a passing stranger, and write her a check for $5.00 for one of the bracelets.

Later in the evening, she hugged me out of the blue and said, "Thanks for buying my artwork, mommy." Worth all 500 pennies.