Middleton Good Neightbor Fest - Recap

MiddlMiddleton is my hometown, which means the Good Neighbor Fest (GNF) is my hometown fair, which also means there is a lot of GNF sentimentality attached to the festival.

When I think of Middleton Good Neighbor I think of the food first.

Mini donuts, kettle corn, funnel cakes and cheese curds; (although the cheese curds weren’t as good this year as they have been in past years – sorry Kiwanis).   After a weekend at the GNF, one needs a full body cavity flush and a green salad.

I think many other people think of the food first and art & craft show second.

And therein lies the problem.

It’s also the last fair of the season, smack dab at “back to school time”.  Another problem.

So let’s get down to brass tacks and dissect the goodness and lack of goodness of this particular art fair, keeping in mind that it pains me to say anything other than great things about the GNF.

The Good

1. The food. In addition to wide variety of grease laden items already mentioned, you can also get cream puffs, chicken and/or steak sammys, burgers, brats, pulled pork, pizza, pretzel, pie, ice cream, fries, fish, chicken dinners , cotton candy, caramel apples, soda and beer. Whew. I mean for small town fair, the spread is pretty good.
2. It’s close to home. Bonus.
3. The weather! GORGEOUS! Picture perfect 78 degrees blue skies and sunshine. A far cry from the Mt Horeb Steam Bath in mid July.
4. Firemans Park. It’s a park...not a parking lot. There are trees. There is grass. There are also an enormous amount of daddy long-leg spiders,  but we seemed to co-exist peacefully,  although I do feel really bad about unknowingly smushing one under my sales book. Live and learn.

The Not so Good

1. Firemans Park. Park = good. Hauling your crap into the park = not good. There is no easy load-in/load out. Basically, it’s a free for all. Technically artists are not supposed to park on North Ave, the very small block of road that butts up against the park… but no one pays attention to that rule, including me. I got lucky and parked on North Ave Sunday morning,  so load out was slightly less horrible. It’s every man for himself when it comes to packing up and heading out. And I’m all about me when it comes to getting the hell outta there and home as much as the next guy.
2. Communication with the Show Coordinators. I think art show coordination is a hazing ritutal. Some young eager beaver blindly accepts responsibility and then falls down the rabbit hole. In my experience manning the GNF artshow gmail account was pretty low on someone’s priority list.
3. The buyers. There were lots of people but not lots of buyers. I think this stems from two things:

• The general stock market rollercoaster of late doesn’t actually inspire confidence. Lack of confidence = lack of spending. Economics 101.
• Back to School. Most families are tapped out from back to school supplies, book fees, tuition and otherwise being nickel and dimed to death by their local school district. Factor in August being a big vacation month and people are tapped out.

At the end of the day I did respectable but not great. Not great is hard to parlay into excitement about doing this show next year. I’m on the fence. On the plus side I made a few contacts about other shows and got a hot tip on a better way to process credit cards. (I’m currently using a knuckle buster. That name is no lie.)

I figure the sour taste of this years GNF art show will fade and by May of 2012 I’ll be full of fresh hope and optimism. Time will tell.

Culture

Once a year I attend American Players Theater (APT) with my girlfriends in an attempt to get cultured.

I am not against culture, but plays just aren’t my thing. That probably explains why I only attend one per year. I’m more of a musical kind of gal. If folks aren’t intermittently breaking into song and prancing about in costumes with sparkles you’re going to lose me.

The whole event is very nice. It really is. There is picnicking beforehand with an ample amount of wine, snacks and snarky banter. This is my favorite part of the whole affair. I’d be only too happy to sit in the woods in Spring Green and drink wine all night. But then a bell chimes indicating the play is going to start and we trudge “up the hill” as they say, to be cultured by Shakespeare.

There are a couple of flaws with the whole culture in the woods Shakespearean plan. First, I’ve usually had a few glasses of wine, am happily buzzed and would like to continue to go on being happily buzzed. I’m a booze bag that way.

But one can’t continue to throw down red wine whilst watching Shakespeare. That’s frowned upon by the management. Spirit crushers.

The other flaw is, I generally only comprehend about every third word of the play. That’s pretty good if the play is on the lighter side of Shakespeare such as an “As you like it” or a “Taming of the Shrew”. If you’re going to force me to endure a “Hamlet” then the words to understating ratio is going to drop like a stone.

I know I am a huge cultural disappointment to my friend who graciously coordinates this event each year. Let’s be honest, I watch an unhealthy amount of reality TV and cooking shows. I don’t exactly fit the profile for “has a deep love of the classics”. I choose my books by the ever important criteria of smut content. I definitely gravitate towards books that fall into the “good beach read” category and walk right on by the Jane Austin and Shakespeare at the local library.

Overall I successfully comprehended most of The Taming of Shrew although I would be lying if I said it was my all time favorite play. I appreciate it the experience for what it is. It forces me outside my cultural comfort zone, I get to chat with my besties, drink some good wine and enjoy a nice summer night.

That’s a good dose of culture for this year I think.

A Summer Fashion Bullseye

Shopping for casual summer fashion is right up there with several of my other most detested shopping tasks: 

1. Shopping for jeans
2. Shopping for bras
3. Shopping for swimwear

I’m a problem child when it comes to summer fashion. I don’t wear shorts. I don’t own one pair. Not one. Shorts look dumb on me. I am thick through the middle with chicken legs. Not a good look for shorts. Ever. At my most desperate I won’t wear shots. Ever. Just to be clear. Not ever.

And I am busty, or to put it another way. I got a big rack. Big racks don’t work in cami’s with shelf bras or halter tops or strapless dresses. And I have a bit of a tummy. Some call it the “menopooch”. One of my besties calls it “the fopa” (pronounced foo-pah),  which translates into the “fat over pussy area”. Yeah it’s lewd, but it’s also shockingly accurate.

So basically I need summer fashion that is a v-neck/scoop neck, can accommodate a bra with reinforced steel girders, floats away from the tummy a little and is stylish without breaking the bank. And I want to be able to wash it and line dry. Dry cleaning is unacceptable. Basically I want it all.

I decided I wanted some dresses to fill the gap in my casual summer wardrobe. I work art shows. I sit at a lot of baseball games. I want to look fun, stylish and effortlessly casual when it 95 degrees out. And so I began my summer dress hunt.

I tried Athleta.com which is an arm of the Gap conglomerate of stores. Very cute stuff. I get their catalog. Clearly I failed to notice all models are 5’11, with 2% body fat and amazing yoga bodies. Bitches. Still I had hope and ordered 3 dresses but nothing fit quite right. And at $59-$89 a pop, the dress should make me look amazing. Not so much with the amazing.

I also tried Soma.com (lingerie arm of Chicos). Very cute stuff. I get their catalog. The models are a little less perfect. I ordered three dresses and struck out swinging. Back they went.

I also tried a few local places and came up empty. I felt defeated, unloved and a summer shopping failure.

And then…I went to Target…not to shop for dresses but for some other random thing, but I stumbled into their women’s department. And there they were…rayon blend dresses with a v-neck, twist knot front with an empire waist that gently floats away from the tummy without looking like a mumu. Score! Well – until I realized it’s July in Wisconsin and everything is thoroughly picked over so my size wasn’t available.

But then I remembered the internet.

Cue angels singing.

Even though it’s July, Target.com had plenty of dresses in my size and color preference.

I wept for joy.

For $60 I bought three totally cute sundresses. For those of you following along at home, that’s $20 per fabulously effortless, wash and wear dress. So happy. And because I must be having a string of amazing luck, I also stumbled across an uber cute Karen Kane designer dress, on the yellow dot sale rack, in my size (woot!) at the mall. Yellow dot is code for “so cheap you can’t afford not to buy it”.

So $100 got me 4 dresses which nets out to $25 a dress.

I know! 100% utterly fabulous!

Mt Horeb Art & Craft Fair – A followup

Editors Note: Major props to a couple of my besties who helped me work this show. Pedicures for all.

This is a good show. I would do it again. Let’s cut to the chase…

The Pros

• It’s close to home. Like 15 minutes away. Score.
• My booth was 3 spaces off the corner of Main and Third Street which mean I could pull my car RIGHT IN FRONT of my booth for BOTH loading and unloading. This may be lost on the average reader but not having to haul heavy stuff for any distance is amazeballs. Especially since it was beyond hot. I’ll get to that later.
• My booth was also like ½ block from the artists center which meant an air conditioned building and real potties. No port-a-potties. Praise Jesus!
• People spent. It helps that my price point even with my recent price increase is still pretty reasonable, but I was consistently busy, despite the heat. An influx of cash helped me feel less hot. Just sayin’. And there was no balking at my adjusted price points. Hurray.

The cons

• The heat. Hot. Hot. And more hot. Oh and humid too. It was more or less tolerable in the shade but take down was a beast. There is nothing quite like standing on asphalt, in the full sun, in 95 degree weather trying to stuff a 10x10 EZ up tent into an uncooperative bag. Good times.
• Whiny kids. There were a lot of them too. Excessive heat brings out the cranky-pants in kids and adults alike. And lets face it – I was hot and cranky too. Crankyness is contagious when the temperature is midway between a sauna and Turkish bath.

Bottom Line

• Good show. Well organized. Well attended. On the list for next year. Check.

Buy unique. Buy handmade. It’s my new mantra.

Liquid Goodness

Sangria.

It’s my new favorite thing.

It’s also a perfectly refreshing summertime libation. And given the recent heat wave that has, unfortunately, settled into Wisconsin, a must have summertime survival cocktail. We’re not talking mildly hot. I’m talking African veldt hot.

Hot.

Hotter.

Hottest.

Sticky, sweaty, stifling heat. The kind of heat that foreshadows hell, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Sangria is wine with a kick. And it has fruit. So it’s practically healthy.

I will admit, I initially balked at Sangria. It has brandy. Not a lot. Just enough for a little buzz boost. I was skeptical. I have bad brandy history. One erroneous over-indulgence when I was 19, when Ann Felachino snuck my under-aged sorry-self into the Nitty Gritty and fed me unhealthy quantities of brandy old fashioned sweets. It didn’t end well. I was a victim. Needless to say I can barely look at brandy some 20+ years later. Happily the brandy is just a background buzz boost and the wine + fruit is center stage.

My Sangria recipe has undergone a bit of tweaking. Tweaking being defined as “more booze, less mixer”. My first pass at Sangria had 32 ounces of mixer. 32 ounces!. That’s 4 cups mixer to one bottle of wine and 3 Tbls of brandy + fruit. It was a little flat.

I did what any good amateur mixologist would do. I Googled. I read. I made some notes. I tried again. And this is what has evolved into my new favorite summertime big girl fruit punch.

Important note –  Sangria is cold and refreshing and slips right down. Probably a bit too quickly,  so be sure to pace your chemicals (and eat some real food) so you don’t have a nasty hangover.

Stefanie’s Sangria

• 1 Cup of chopped fresh pineapple or apple – you choose, they are both good. You could also use pitted cherries but I found cherry pitting to be more of a hassle then it’s worth.
• 1 lemon and orange – thinly sliced
• ¾ cup of brandy
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 bottle red wine. I used Rioja which is from Spain but a decent Pinot Noir works too…or you can use a Merlot if you like something drier. Both wines used were in the less than $10 range. Sa-weet!
• 2 cups diet white soda

Prepare fruit. Add brandy and OJ and let ruminate for a few hours. Overnight is ok. I mean really, is there anything better than boozey fruit? I think no.

Meanwhile, chill the wine and soda. Then mix the whole mess up. Give it quick stir. Pour into a wine glass over ice.

Sigh contentedly.

 

Summer TV

Summer TV rots. It really does. Of course I maximize my being outside opportunity during the summer, but when it 90+ and humid…there ain’t much I’m doing outside after late morning. I spend PLENTY of time enjoying Mother Nature while watching copious amounts of Little League baseball and hocking assorted tye dyes.


But when it’s a sticky wicket, I mostly want to lay on the floor under the ceiling fan and rot my brain appropriately whilst sipping a vodka lemonade.

Did I mention summer TV rots?

No Survivor. No Glee. No Dancing with the Stars. No Top Chef. No Greys. No Private Practice.

It’s true that I am busting out a lot of tye dyes to make up for my endless sofa surfing over the winter but even when the weekends allotment of shirts has been dyed…there is downtime. Downtime when it’s uber hot and sticky. With no good TV.

My viewing choices have been severely limited to endless Major League Baseball games (cause that’s always on) or The Bachelorette. The Bachelorette makes my IQ plummet. I’m not kidding. With each Bachelorette squeal, giggle and utterance of the phrase “[Insert boy name here] and I have such an amazing connection”. I get stupider and stupider.

See it’s true.

Plummeting IQ, stupider isn’t even a word.

Any more Bachelorette and I’ll be sitting in front of the washing machine, mesmerized by the spin cycle.