At the beginning of the year Zoey, Pazely, the Mr. & I each wrote down something we wanted to accomplish in 2014– like a goal or wish. Zoey chose "Have a lemonade stand" as hers. She has never had one. Shocking, I know. The girl is almost 12 years old & has never sold lemonade on the corner of a neighborhood street.
*hangs head in shame*
I knew the perfect place & time for Zoey to set up shop would be at the upcoming yard sale my mother & I were planning. And I wanted it to be big. You know, to make up for all those lemonade stand-less years. The bigger the lemonade stand, the better I felt. (Notreallyyesreally.)
Since the yard sale would start out in the chilly morning, we thought we needed more than just lemonade. So we added hot chocolate to the scene.
The night before the big event, we baked chocolate chip cookies, & mini coffee cake muffins. Do you want seriously delicious choco chip cookies? I just use the recipe on the back of the NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® bag of mini chocolate chips. And then I substitute shortening for the butter. (1 CUP of butter = 1 CUP of shortening + 2 TABLESPOONS water)
Oh, & here's the recipe pin I found from Serious Eats for the coffee cake muffins. (We made them "mini", so we reduced the baking time to only 10 minutes.)
Zoey had a roller coaster of emotions in the days leading up to her lemonade/hot chocolate stand. She was excited at first. And then she didn't even want to do it at all because she realized she'd have to buy all the supplies to set it up. But then after I gave her the "Sometimes you have to spend money to make money" pep talk, she was fine.
Though this was not a Pinterest-worthy lemonade stand, it was definitely in our style: We used what we had, borrowed what we didn't have, & made + baked what we had time for. (Being busy helping to set up the yard sale made me a tired mama with not a lot of time on her hands.)
Borrowed: chalkboard, vintage tablecloth, carafe for hot chocolate, fancy pitcher for strawberry lemonade.
Handmade: "Refreshment" banner, pinwheels.
Everything else was ours, gathered from closets & cupboards– pretty much all those things that are saved for special occasions & not used very often.
Sandwiched between the cashier station at the yard sale (which consisted of my mom, sister, or I wearing a leather fanny pack + sitting behind a TV tray) & tables full of low-priced knick-knacks, was Zoey's "Refreshement" stand.
She sold out of her treats at 11 am & started giving away free lemonade at 2 pm. She was giddy the whole day & even received several tips. When all was said & done, she took in $41.75, with a net profit of $27.75. (Math on the weekend?! Woot! Woot!)
One of my favorite details of the whole thing was the banner. I printed the word REFRESHMENTS onto pages from an old, discarded dictionary. Before printing, I cut the pages to 5" x 7", then set my page size in Microsoft Office Word to the same size. I used Baskerville Old Face font in size 400. (Well, except for the letter "M", which was too wide– so I lowered it to size 350.) I fed the pages through the printer one at a time & I LOVE how it turned out! I had always wanted to try printing onto pages from a book.
Zoey's favorite part of the refreshment stand?
$$$
That, & serving people.
In the picture above, little Miss Pazely is Zoey's first customer. (In fact, she bought the first & last chocolate chip cookie of the day.)
Pazely & I made the {non-functioning} pinwheels from scrap paper, fun colored brads, & striped paper straws leftover from her S'mores Birthday Party. She sold a few pinwheels throughout the day, which was quite fun for her.
I even found a horrible sketch I drew of the refreshment stand in its planning stages. It's fun to see your ideas come to life from paper to reality!
Goal achieved.
Dreams made.
Mission accomplished.
♥
