Oasis Christmas Fair 2014

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Oasis hosted our annual Christmas Fair, a fun event for the community we do each year. I don't craft much now that I am teaching again, but I usually take on organizing the workers for the day and work myself on that fun day. Here's the morning crew! There were crowds of people at the door, but we stopped for a short photo and a prayer that God would protect us and make us a blessing to all who came.

As always, our school moms turned out some amazing crafts, meeting weekly to work together. This year we had a group of Polish moms who came saying, "Oh, I can't do much...." and we soon found out about their amazing hand-stitching work!

I recruited my friend T to be our chief personalizer. We always create some basic wooden ornaments that can have names written on them. The Turks seems to love these.

My girls have always loved signing up for a few hours to work...that is...from about 4th grade to 7th grade, they do. Then after that age, they show up at the Fair, but it is to hang out, see friends. This year Miss Middler came and worked for a little bit.

I am in Middle School now. This is my 3rd grade replacement, a dear friend. She agreed to be our elf along with her husband. Actually, she told me to ask her husband. And he told me to ask her. So, in the spirit of what my children do to CC and me, I took that as a "yes" from them!

Sweet Cheeks got her first chance to work with me. She was up and dressed and had as much Christmas bling on as she could find. I thoroughly enjoyed remarking to her sisters how they used to be up early, couldn't wait to go work the craft fair with me...they smirked, in pj's, sipping their coffee.

Several years ago, when my Granny went to heaven, I gave a bag of hand-me-downs to my friend B. Knowing she would be working side-by-side with Sweet Cheeks, Granny's namesake, she wore one of Granny's Christmas sweatshirts. Isn't this the sweetest picture?

 My friend G managed our cafeteria, where we served hot soup lunches. We sold out of soup by 12:40!

 Santa was awesome this year. He was set to arrive, but someone commented that they hadn't yet seen him in the building. They asked me, "What does he look like?" I said, "Santa. Even without the costume!" He was so sweet to do this for us; he even went around singing to folks.

It was a super day! I hope everyone else had as much fun raising 9000TL (5000US) for the school as I did!