So no weekend for me last weekend, no, I was occupied for pretty much every single minute of it, having taken it upon myself to handle Chantelle’s Cookies & Cakes market stalls for both Saturday and Sunday, a first for Chantelle’s fledgling business.
Friday evening took the usual form that pretty much every Friday night has taken since March this year, basically Chantelle in the kitchen until the early hours of the morning, while I pottered around the house picking up on whatever would keep me busy for a little while.
Saturday morning it was up bright and early, as I carted Jessica through to Bellville to be looked after by my folks for the day, and then straight through to Willowbridge to meet up with Cheryl and Robert in order to set up shop for the day. (Though the journey took much longer than expected – the N2 was shut down due to flooding, meaning quite a detour through some rather dodgy areas that I didn’t know even existed up until now!)
Unfortunately for us, the Slow Market group had again decided to place us on the other side of the market for a second time in a row, right between the Tupperware stall and the Dog toys and meal stall – in other words not exactly a place where one would expect to locate mouth-watering, delicious cupcakes, cake pops and brownies!
The weather wasn’t particularly awesome, pretty gloomy, but despite this, the placing and the fact that it was school holidays, we didn’t have a completely awful market, though we did finish up the day with quite a bit of left over stock.
Having organised that Jessica sleepover at Monty and Cheryl’s place after returning from Constantia with Mom and Dad who had been out visiting with Claire for the day, I hit the road back to Gordon’s Bay, where I set about preparing for Sunday’s market, later joined by Chantelle who eventually arrived home from work and who then jumped straight into the baking fray, finishing up… yup you guessed it, in the early hours of the morning!
With Chantelle working and Cheryl looking after Jessica, I was flying solo for our first ever Sunday market, the Century City Natural Goods market. With a heavily packed car, I left nice and early, and unlike the previous morning where I had sat in bumper to bumper traffic as the cars were routed off the flooded N2, I made Century City with plenty of time to spare, taking some time to dawdle through the stunningly beautiful surrounds, a first for me who has up to now, only ever been to the Canal Walk shopping centre in Century City!
Eventually though the huge Bedouin tent on the green commons was open for business, and I unloaded the car and set up shop. This was the first time I had ever been to this market (which runs once a month, 09:00 to 14:00), and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the vibe, the people, the live entertainment and music, and just the whole setup in general. Trade was good, and a couple of hours into the morning, Chantelle managed to break away from work to join me and help me with manning the stall, which of course just served to make the day even better!
(A quick surprise visit from Jessica and the whole Montgomery Clan was pretty cool to!)
Eventually the afternoon had to draw to a close though, and so it was back to work for Chantelle, while I collected Jessica from Bellville and made the trip back myself.
So that was pretty much my weekend – work, work, work. Still, I did enjoy it so it wasn’t all that bad, though I certainly wouldn’t have minded another public holiday to pad it out just a little bit! :)