You think you have great friends?

This time last year we visited the Blue Dome Arts Festival in downtown Tulsa. We watched some bands, grabbed some food, and shopped around all the artist’s booths set up in the streets. One thing I didn’t do was think, “Next year, I’m going to have a booth here.” In fact, I didn’t even know that I would start Darby & Dash five months later.

But, here we are, one year later and we did set up at Blue Dome and I would first like to say; I have the best friends and family in the world! Let me explain.

I had a vision of what I wanted my booth to look like but unfortunately I do not have all the skills to complete it on my own. One of the ideas was a small bar height counter that would sit in the middle of the booth, but because I drive a Scion XB and not the stereotypical Oklahoman F150, the cabinet would also have to be collapsible for storage and transport. Duncan was up for the challenge, and after working many hours on his off days and before his scheduled shifts at his day job he delivered even better than I had imagined.

Jess has been helping me with all of the photography of the products from the beginning and the photos are too good not to use in a dominate way. So I envisioned a large banner that covered the entire back wall of the tent and smaller poster shots running down the sides. Luckily, my Grandpa runs A Better Sign Co. and was able to make all the foam board posters and the banner on a short deadline.

Even more bragging on how awesome my friends are, most of the models are all friends from our CityChurch community group.

The booth is almost complete with one major piece missing, something to hang the clothes on. You know, the whole reason for the booth. Duncan is back to work on this one, building all of the racks in two days. Now we are ready.

This is all just the weeks leading up to the festival. 6 AM Friday morning, Duncan and I head downtown and set up the booth which took us until 11 AM when people started showing up. At 1 PM, Duncan was replaced by Jess so he could go work a full shift at his day job. Sarah joined later to finish out the night after getting off. A 15 hour day to start the weekend.

This was the case for the entire three day festival, we all worked 12 to 15 hour days either at the festival or split with day jobs. Like I said, I have the best friends in the world. Over all, the festival was a huge success, we sold tons of product, made new connections, and the counter that Duncan built was so good he was hired by one of our booth neighbors to build her one. Plus, a huge thank you to all of our friends who came out to show support!

Sunday, after the festival closed and we spent a couple more hours tearing down, Duncan and I went out on a man date since the girls left us earlier in the day for a wedding. Perfect ending to a long and exhausting weekend.