For several years, the owner of The Raven's House has encouraged me to participate in Chicago Street Markets, which hosts events in Joliet, Lockport, and New Lenox.
Unfortunately, the markets often take place on Thursday evenings (WriteOn Joliet nights) or Friday daytime (I work).
But then Michele, a busines acquaintance who runs the markets, invited BryonySeries to participate in her first "Plants, Paws & Pages" event on September 6 in Lockport.
So, despite our limited time to moving, several weeks of almost nonstop work, and three deaths in three weeks (including a tragic one we learned as we were preparing to leave for the event), we wanted to do more than just "show up."
So Rebekah, Cindy, and I brainstormed ways to add "pets and plants" to pages at our booth, too, from existing props.
Here are five ways we made that work.
1. Overall decor.
Rebekah chose earthy colors for tablecloths and shelves.
And she draped plastic bryony-ish vines from the back of the tent (the wind kept blowing them out of place, so she had to keep adjusting them).
2. Purple music roses
Rebekah tied ribbon and BryonySeries cards to our remaining purple music roses and surprised anyone who stopped to look at our books with one.
I also created a recipe for Polychromatic Soup from a hilarious scene featured in "Karla Joins In."
We printed the recipes the last of the scroll paper Sarah had gifted me when we released "Bryony" in 2011 (no photo of the recipe because the recipe is a secret...unless you're gifted with one).
And then we rolled up the paper and held it in place with a bit of plant-themed decorative tape from Rebekah's tape bin and gave those away, too.
3. Plant grove.
We set up a "plant grove" quiz of five plants featured in the BryonySeries (you turned the "tree" stand around to read the answers).
And if this looks simple, those cards were a huge labor of love to print and create due to a series of unfortunate mishaps (oh, the stories Timothy could tell!)
4. Pet products.
Cindy surprised us with crocheted pet caps (two tomato and two lemons, each with ear holes) and four pet bandanas (she had a birthday party yesterday and couldn't hang out with us)
5. Adoptable mice.
Cindy also crocheted more friends of Bertrand for adoption.
Rebekah made bags of "crocheted mouse food" from leftover embroidery floss from childhood friendship bracelet-making days and attached them to the mice (zoom in to see the food).
We did not sell the mice; they were free with the purchase of one teen or adult book or two children's books.
So how did we do at the five-hour event?
We sold eight books, all four pet caps, and two of the four bandanas.
We also gave away twenty-five purple roses, fifty-five recipes, and probably another thirty cards.
We encouraged this author, who debuted her children's book at this event (a book I enjoyed so much that I purchased a hardcover, bookmark, and T-shirt for my grandson and a button for Rebekah), who sold really well.
We received an invitation to an event in early 2027 after the holidays.
And one pet owner came back to show how cute her dog looked in his hat.
