SANTA FE SANTAS!

HUGE thanks to a friend of mine, Cece, who is blessed to spend time enjoying life both in Vernon and Santa Fe. She graciously offered to take a couple of my Santas (samples) to show some of her friends in various design boutiques in Santa Fe. As it turns out, Trish, at American Country Collections (ACC), requested 3 of them on consignment in their store. With only a week of time to design, create and produce... I had a full weekend ahead of me!

After a jam-packed school day on Friday, I headed straight to Wichita Falls to stock up on "Santa makings". Arriving back home at 9pm, with a bag heaping full of Friday tests to grade by Monday, and several sacks of heavy tapestry fabrics, fancy trims and assorted goodies...I spent the next 2 hours grading papers, knowing that there would be NO time later in the weekend! With a good night's sleep and a very early morning wake up, "Santa's workshop" was opened!

In the dark morning hours, I found myself trudging through the dew covered pasture grasses- pajamas and boots- searching for the perfect wooden base for my project. Finally, as the sun winked on the horizon, my search ended. A 4' long, old and weathered, fence post. After hurling it on my shoulder, I grunted my way back up to the house. We had just had 2 days of rain, so it was heavy, and wet and I was definitely not in lumber-jack form! Setting it in the barn with the huge shop fan blowing on it to dry some of the moisture out of it - I headed up to my studio to get organized. Three body forms were cut out of 1x6 pine and with Dyke's help, the bases were cut. I was all set! I worked all day and all night - til' 1am - staging each Santa as I went.

As I slithered into bed, I quickly found that my second wind took over. Ideas swirled in my head so fast that I just knew that I was losing my mind and would probably need to be medicated...Sleep was no where to be found! No rest for the weary! I must have dozed off at some point, because at 5:00 the next morning, I seemed rested enough to get up and start again. Sunday was a blueprint of Saturday - although I found myself wallowing into bed at 10pm...I knew that I was ahead of schedule...so I could finally sleep. My efforts were blessed with God's hand and here are the 2 finished Santa Fe Santas!

PHEW - what a whirlwind weekend!