Summer arrived right on schedule, how's that for some normal weather! We're still soaking it up before it gets too hot and we pack up and go up north. We're more than half way through our spring Craft Fair season and have been having an amazing time with our own GO WEST! Craft Fest, then Art Star Craft Bazaar and the Clover Markets.  It felt like summer hit with the Trenton Ave Arts Fest & Kinetic Sculpture Derby and we so much fun watching all those bike powered sculptures and drinking too much iced coffee. We're in the midst of 2 weekends (make that 3 due to a weather related cancellation) off and had a leisurely memorial day weekend canoeing on the Schuylkill by Manayunk and barbequing with friends in West Philly. I have no pictures to prove it though! Which almost feels nice... I do have a homeschool volcano experiment from these weeks, creation to destruction, just like the volcano itself.

This coming weekend is packed full of wonderful antique markets. First is the debut of McConkey's Market in Washington's Crossing. We can't wait to be out in Bucks County in the beautiful Washington's Crossing Park surrounded by historic buildings. Being steeped in all that history feels just right. We'll be sure to have some colonial inspired necklaces too! 

Sunday is the final Clover Market of the season. I have some of my favorites from the last Chestnut Hill Market below and I'm excited to see what's new this Sunday. I'll be on my own for most of the day (stocked with water, coffee and snacks!) as Mike and E will be at Bartram's Gardens participating in the Tidal River Boat Parade at the Bartram's Community River Fest. For all of you non venders that's a pretty good Sunday plan! Clover Market for the finds then boating and kids crafts at Bartram's. Hope to see you all some time this weekend!

Happy New Year! Our shop will be closed for the month of January while we are away down south, searching for new and exciting things to bring to you all. If you want to follow on our journey follow us on instagram. During the month of January L and I will be participating in Fun-a-Day, a terrific art a day project for anyone to do! Since we'll be traveling we figured the easiest thing to do would be photography, so you can see our Southern Vacation from the eyes of 5 and 37 in Febuary at the opening at Studio 34 in West Philly. We're excited about the trip but also about coming home and starting new (small) beginnings in our jewelry and clothing! Happy New Year everyone, see you soon!

Here we are in the thick of holiday vending, it's a fun and exhausting time for us.  Making and making, shipping and vending all the while trying to balance the magic and simplicity of what Winter's  Solstice and Christmas means to our family. Two weekends ago (was it really that long!) we took a bit of a breath, and ventured to New Hope to a Christmas Tree Farm that my old friend from high-school runs and has been in his family for 3 generations. Tuckamony Farm is a simple and wonderful place to get a tree. While wandering around in all sizes of trees we saw wild geese flying over head, hawks and some cardinals. It was a huge event for L, my budding birdwatcher. For the past 3 years they have had an Arts & Crafts Pop-Up shop that has a wonderful variety of local makers. This year they invited us, and we were so pleased. The shop is open on all the weekends leading up to Christmas.

Last weekend we had a great time at the first annual Superfantastic Craft Bazaar at the Philly Free School in South Philly. Elissa from Nice Things Handmade (another high-school friend) partnered with The Free School for the event. It was a festive event, with face painting, great vendors, kid made crafts and face painting.

On Sunday we were at Winterfest, put on by Art Star at the skating rink at Penns Landing. We had quite a fun time there too despite the lack of customers due to the snow. We arrived just before the snow started and what a snow it was! It was a beautiful spot to be, a real winter wonderland with decorated trees, ice skating and a lodge with pine cone painting crafts, winter games, smoked turkey legs and (my new favorite drink) milky chai with Snap. We went ice skating, and hung out in the lodge painting pine cones with elves (seriously!) We shared shipping container space with Chez sucre chez and Black Heart Letterpress, both wonderful artists fine folks. We're planning to go back again, just to ice skate and shop right after the holidays. We just can't get enough of the turkey legs (and Snap chai).

Now to this weekend! We'll be having another snowy vending experience (slightly more inside) at The Punk Rock Flea Market tomorrow in Northern Liberties. We're excited to take turns vending and perusing the finds while L is off with her GrandDad at the Nutcracker. In the past it's been a busy day with wall to wall crowds and we hope tomorrow won't be an exception.

Sunday is the GO WEST!  Craft Fest at the Rotunda. We're so excited for this event! We have brand new jewelry, and cozy dresses just for the event. We've been working tirelessly to bring you a fantastic handmade fest full of the quality and affordability you've come to expect from GO WEST. We've gotten a lot of press and have put out a ton of fliers around Philadelphia. We love that the Daily News called us "one of the friendliest festivals around"! Check out a post I wrote "checklist for GO WEST!" Hope to see you there. Don't worry though, even if you can't make it to anything this weekend we still have one more weekend left for holiday shopping check out our events page and our etsy shop will be open till the 18th for mailing out before Christmas.

Hello Fall, I'm glad you're here. It's our favorite season, soup, apple picking, crisp walks through the city , sweaters and the best knitting weather. Exciting change and settling into comfortable routines always seems just right in the Fall.  I'm hopeful the weather will actually turn into that wonderful season soon! If you've missed us here please check out our instagram for what we did this summer. Here's a little bit, it seems so long ago now!

We're back now (although going to a family reunion on the Florida gulf this weekend), uh oh Hurricane Karen.... and are excited for many weekends of vending. We had a great time at GO WEST! Craft Fest our first show in September and wearing my organizer hat I couldn't have asked for a better day or a nicer crowd. Check out our events page for all of our upcoming shows later on this month!

Now, we have some exciting new jewelry that is up on Etsy and will be available at all of our forthcoming fairs.  First off Belt Buckles! For a while now we've wanted to expand our market into something a little "butcher". With Mike's new found love of his tile saw and grinder, belt buckles seems like the perfect way to go.

Once we started shopping for findings and epoxy it seemed like sterling silver post earrings would be another wonderful addition to our line. Simple and lovely they really take small bits of the plate to a heightened beauty.

We have some plans for rings and hair accessories that we'll be debuting soon. In the meantime stay tuned for new kids dresses, warm for the fall and winter beyond. I promise I'll be back soon!

If you've been following along with our summer plans on instagram you'll know that we've been doing plenty of vacationing and thrifting since our last fair at the 30th Street Craft Market. Our latest was Cape May, NJ to meet up with family and share a week together near the beach.

Cape May is our favorite place on the Jersey Shore. Many houses are beautiful and historic, the beach is friendly and right there and there are lots of things to do when you want to get off the beach too. There's a tiny boardwalk with ski ball and photobooth pictures, "the mall" a walking plaza with restaurants and shops, mini golf, all in a 5 block area. We love Historic Cold Spring Village, a wonderful, relatively inexpensive living history museum just outside of Cape May. L and her cousin loved walking around learning how people lived in the "old times". We've gone 2 years in a row and there's always something interesting to learn, plenty of games to play and an ice cream parlor.

The Cape May Zoo is another terrific place to go. I'm not a huge fan of zoos but I really liked this one a lot. There was a good amount of space for the animals, who seemed pretty content, especially the baby snow leopards who were unbelievably adorable. It was all outdoors with much of the area covered with wooden walkways so you saw the animals from a platform, it seemed much less obtrusive. Did I mention it was free? Just a donation for parking.

There was a lot of down time too and it's always nice to get to make a seaside themed Etsy treasury, thinking of Cape May's glorious seaside past.

Mike did manage to scour some out of the way junk shops while we were there and found a cracked and dusty robin cream pitcher which he already has in his studio as a work in progress. Tomorrow we'll be off and making our way to Maine where we will be stopping along the way at every little place we can find. Join along on our instagram adventures and I'll try to be back here soon.