Hello Friends,
I know several days have gone by since then but I wanted to share our wonderful experience at the "Enid Lights Up the Plains" event we had here in the community on Friday evening. Enid Main Street organizes this festive event to light up the downtown area with glistening twinkle lights. There is entertainment on the court house lawn, vendors of many kinds, and plenty of refreshments for everyone. The evening concludes with a beautiful fireworks display - that was quite exceptional this year! James and I thought that this would be a perfect venue to begin sharing our plans for the B&B with the public.
All week long last week I worked to get things prepared. I printed and copied our brochure, bought several boxes of red and white candy canes, and made these sweet cocoa cones to pass out to the public. The cones were filled with a wonderful cocoa mix I made from scratch. There was pink peppermint cocoa and pink cinnamon cocoa. This sweet cocoa is pink in your cup! Each cone was topped with mini marshmallows and tied with a pretty pink ribbon and a hand-made instruction tag.
I enjoyed putting these sweet treats together but I especially enjoyed passing them out to all of the cute little girls I could find during the event. I know they will enjoy their cocoa when they get it home.
I also baked four batches of my Southard Hospitality cookies that I will be serving at the inn each afternoon. These cookies, however, were Christmas cookies because I added peppermint white chocolate to the dough. Yummy! I wish you could have smelled the house when they were baking. It was just heavenly!
When we got downtown we unloaded the sleigh and I got busy decorating. It wasn't quite 5:00 PM and there were already many people milling around. We didn't want to miss out on sharing information about the B&B with them so we started passing out flyers, cookies, and candy canes. We weren't very far in to the event and I feared we would run out of goodies because we had already passed so much out! We decided to pace ourselves from then on.
The sleigh was a very popular attraction that evening. There was a great picture of a group of young ladies from Danceworks of Enid taken with it, many people from the public had their picture taken in it, and the Enid Regional Development Alliance used it as a backdrop to film a promo ad for their website. The spot should be on their website in January. The sleigh had a big night!
I sure am glad we had helpers that evening because there were a lot of people out to enjoy the festivities! This is Mary Margaret (Maggie) and Lucinda Caroline (Lucie) from Fairview,OK. They are James' daughters from a previous marriage and my new step-daughters. They were great helpers and did a great job passing out brochures and candy canes. Thank you girls for all of your help!
She doesn't look busy in this picture but Miss Lucie passed out 180 candy canes in two hours. I think that is a record! We met a lot of wonderful people and got to speak with several of them about the B&B. We heard lots of great stories about the house from previous owners, friends, and neighbors. There was a lot of excitement that evening about the new B&B opening in Enid in the spring!
I must tell you that I have an absolutely amazing husband. He is such a hard-working, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, loving man and I am so blessed to have him in my life. I have so much fun doing anything and everything with him and I am so glad we were able to share this experience together. It was on this night last year that we sat in lawn chairs on the other side of the court house lawn staring at the building that used to be the "Serendipity" store and dreaming about opening our business. Now this year we got to promote our business. It is so amazing that we are making it happen! I am so grateful to have James by my side as we go on this journey to business ownership and I am so thankful for all of the support that we have found from our wonderful friends and family. Thank you all for everything you have done to get us where we are today!
We worked hard most of the evening but we did take some time out to have some fun. The father of the organizer of the event built this neat snowman and we just had to have a picture with it. We also had to have a hot pretzel with cheese sauce, some hot dogs, and some hot apple cider. We also enjoyed some wonderful entertainment at the gazebo on the courthouse lawn. Besides the almost unbearable cold it was a great night!
Before we went home we witnessed a beautiful fireworks display that lit up the cold November sky. It was truly beautiful and the only thing that could have made it prettier would have been some big fluffy snowflakes gracefully fluttering to the earth below. Maybe next year?
We had a wonderful evening and met some wonderful people. We want to thank those of you that came out to see us and we hope you will spread the word to your friends and family about our inn.
I finally finished decorating the front porch of Southard House for Christmas today and it is beautiful! I plan to share those pictures in my next post. Until then . . .
May You Be Blessed!
Tammy
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