Made by hand art & craft show

Today I visited my sister-in-law - she participated in the 'Made by hand' art & craft show in Mississauga, ON at the International Centre.

Having my chatty and shopping-friendly child with me transformed the visit into a true adventure. Almost every booth was greeted with a 'oooh, can we get this?! pleeeaaaase! pretty please with a cherry on top?!'. It's lovely to see the boy's enthusiasm and sometimes I give in, the pleasure on his face is priceless.

I have developed a system to survive these journeys of ours: first we make sure we have a budget (cash only, cards don't come out unless there is an absolutely unbelievable deal - so far never happened!), then we go around the whole area ones and make a mental (or written) list of what would we like to get... and only after that we go directly to the few booths we 'need' to buy stuff from. The system works on 2 levels: first it teaches him to plan his shopping list, and (maybe more important) gets him tired if the show is big enough so by the end he will cut that shopping list in two by himself just to see himself out of there. But hey, can't complain, at least he's there with me for hours and hours.

What's probably more lovely than seeing him having fun buying is the pure goodness of his heart: he buys some things for him, but he always (seriously, always) buys at least one item for everyone else in the family: he manages to find something for grandma, daddy, and mommy; and most of the time he'll add gifts for his current best friends. Plus he's getting better at fooling even me - he asked a lot for a little painted rock and he got it... just to get home and give it to me: 'I wanted it for you, mommy!'

We met some wonderful people and I would like to mention a couple:

• Christine Marie Ford - she graciously spent tons of time with my son, showing him various leather-bound notebooks and making him a wonderful deal; her quilted work was quite amazing!
• Michelene Sutherland - my son really really wanted to have one of her monsters and I was trying to reason with him that he has so many plushes he could start a store (great idea, if I think twice!). You could see he's disappointed, but he never made a show in public so he accepted it. Michelene watched us going away and he called after us - offering him one of the BeSpoke monsters. I didn't really heard what she said - the idea was that because of something she won't be able to sell it so could he have it and take good care of the monster? It simply warmed my heart - she was so kind and very diplomatic. Thank you, Michelene, Monster is sleeping with his new master :)

All in all the day was quite wonderful (although very very long). I even found a big bag of lavender - just what I was looking for :)

And if you're curious about my sister-in-law's crafts - you can check them here!

One more reason to be happy today: we are getting an extra hour of sleep! yee-haaa!