Well... Life does go on...

And on, lol.  I thought being back I'd have more time to write.  Not!  I've been so busy facepainting, that I haven't gotten a lot accomplished.  I DID get my book out though...so if you haven't noticed yet, Snow Angels is at Amazon.  The formal book party is next Monday, so you'll hear more about it then.

But anyway....face painting.  Have I mentioned that sometimes it's crazy?  I wonder some days how I got roped into it, and then some days I am SOO thankful that I've been given this talent.
I got myself talked into doing the Morgan County Fair.  It seemed like a decent gig...fairs are usually big deals, right?  I mean, our county fair is big.  But I don't do ours because my niece and nephew do it and I'm not going to compete with them.  :)  They also charge ALOT for their booth fee.  I haven't yet made enough to make that kind of fee worth it.  Apparently she does, so good for her.

But, so it involved the last Saturday of July...(which went okay-ish) and the whole next week.  One of the first faces I did was this little guy... he looked right at the price sheet, and picked out a face, and one for his sister...and then informed me he didn't know it cost money...should he wash it off??  sigh.  I said he was walking advertisement, he needed to hand out my business card...  Lesson learned for me.  First freebee I've done so far.

We went Saturday...and then set up Monday in our official spot.  (have I mentioned that they are a little laid back up there?  sigh.)  And we got some kids...so we went Tuesday.  We kept thinking, okay, we'll see how it goes.  It's got to get better...  Not.  Tuesday was even less and Wednesday we were skunked.  Nada.  UGH.  Thursday we had a couple...Friday was better but not what we had hoped and Saturday was just a little better than the Saturday before.  I mean, really?  I've never had such a bad week before.  It was very humbling.  :(

At least I was told several times that I was the best face painter they had ever seen...and we had several repeaters.  That was nice... All things considered I guess it wasn't a total loss.

One of the funnest ones was a man that was kind of walking by and I told him I could paint something and he said sure.  He wanted the flame bit too, and stuff.  He cracked me up.  We both didn't think the makeup would stay on very long - it was a VERY hot day...but we saw him later in the afternoon, and he still had that face on.  His girlfriend wasn't even looking like she was embarrassed to be with him.  That's a good sign, lol.
I guess these are the experiences that you learn business savvy from. Next year - should we decide to do this fair again, we'll know that coming during the week isn't really worth the gas and effort.  We'll just do the weekends.

 I did have lots of time to practice stuff.  So, I did a scarf one day, on my arm...trying to make it look like I had one tied there.

I thought it turned out pretty good.  Another day I did a fan on my face.
 We were right across from a toy booth that had fans hanging all over it and made me feel that I needed to try it out.
 I really liked how it turned out.  A little girl went by as I was finishing and was totally wigged out.  "She just painted that on her face!!"

 I love when people want unusual things.  One booth across from us sold Tupperware, and I painted one of the lunch bags on her cheek.  She was amazed, lol, and I got a free little container for it.

In addition to all that, we're getting solar.  I'm WAY stoked.  I've wanted solar forever, but you know, it's an arm and a leg and your first born up front.  Now that they have payment programs and stuff, it's way easier!!  So...we got a hold of AnyHour and they came out and sold us on replacing our AC (didn't take much talking, our old one did NOT keep us cool, and it cost sooo much in the summer it wasn't worth it.  We used to run it only during the day when we couldn't stand it, and lived in the basement. At night we'd run our attic fan and hope it cooled us down enough for the next day.)

Well, what's funny is they came to install the first part of the solar panels and another truck pulled up.  This guy came and told us that they'd found out we had gotten the wrong unit for the AC, and were switching it out.  What???  Good Grief.
So - we got a new ac unit, along with a new thermostat.  Imagine that...we had the wrong thermostat as well...  Um, hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come... right??

So - when they get the panels on, I'll take a picture so you can see.  I'm so excited!

Well...that's caught up for now.  Need to get some painting done.  Have an excellent day!!