Boothing day

One of the best ideas Holiday Market ever had was to rent the fairgrounds exhibit hall for an extra day. Before this, Christmas Eve was just mayhem, with everyone trying to get work and booths stripped down and moved out before they locked the doors at 7 pm.

I remember many nights we dragged ourselves out, exhausted and cranky and not at all in the mood for Christmas, supper, or indeed anything but bed. This is much better. In fact, coming in rested and fresh has an unexpected benefit: we have our booth down and loaded in the van in just over an hour, hardly more time than it took to pack up the pots Thursday night. (Some of this may also be due to the fact that we aren't competing for aisle space to move out our cart, nor curb space for the van.) All in all, a much more civilized load-out.