Top Ten Thursday - Local Entrepreneur Market

Welcome to Top Ten Thursday!

Today let's assume at your town there is a local entrepreneur market. What may be ten items / services you will be offering there? 

I got the idea to turn this topic into a Top Ten Thursday during our road trip. We had stopped at a charming city called Winchester, Virginia where we had dinner on Friday night and returned relatively early the next morning to explore the old town by daylight. 

Kids and their parents were getting ready to set up their stands for a "young entrepreneurs' market" where they were going to offer homemade baked goods, crafts, face painting and the like.

We had to be on our way, so we didn't stick around long enough to actually stroll through the market, but my interest was certainly sparked.

Now if it was me at our village - what would I do..? There'd probably be countless people selling bread, cake and cookies, so that's out of the picture. 

Considering it's Halloween, this is what I'm gonna do. In Switzerland not many people celebrate Halloween. Most consider it yet another American BS, and my kids are not knocking on peoples' doors to beg for candy!

Well, some have a pumpkin at their front door and M&Ms ready for the rare trick or treaters, so my post may inspire them to throw a party next year? This is what I'm displaying at my booth:

Ghost Lights, my favourite. The original craft I found on the internet a couple of years ago asked for milk jugs, you know, a gallon? Fat chance in Switzerland... What you can do instead (gotta start early in the year though OR grab them from your local recycling center...) collect empty laundry detergent and distilled water containers. Using alcohol or nail polish remover, take off the label, google your template and use it to trace the shape with a black marker, then get to work and fill your shape! As a light I use all sorts of things, depending on the with of the spout: glow sticks, electric tea lights or little flashlights.

Bowling Pins (or just use them as decoration) Using some sturdy cardboard tablecloth roll that I had cut, I wrapped them with adhesive orange foil and drew on my Jack'O'Lantern faces. You could also make smaller ones using TP rolls.

Mummy, Frankenstein, Ghost, Witch? Head over to my blogger friend Michèle's detailed tutorial on how to make those cute Halloween Characters out of simple wooden sticks.

If you're patient enough for paper cutting, why don't you try and make your own Haunted House? Purchase the largest thick black craft paper you can find and cut your house and lots of door and window silhouettes, leaving the doors and windows attached so you can open and close them as you please, like an advent calendar.
Use the paper leftovers to cut out your objects like cats, ghosts and spiders that you'll glue on the tissue paper that comes to the back of your craft.
I pinned my houses to the wall - bonus points for you if you manage to arrange them around a source of light!

Now I don't know about you guys, but I don't exist on love and crafts alone, so let's move on to the food, shall we?

Do you prepare snack boxes for your Kindergarten or Elementary School kids? Upgrade them with some Halloween themed Lunchbox Printables. Google finds tons of them. My favourite is "what is an old hag at the beach? A Sandwitch!"

Speaking of.. here are some Jack'O'Lantern Sandwiches. If you're into baking your own bread, add some orange food coloring to your dough, use your pumpkin cookie cutter for those cute shapes. I put some ham and cheese in the middle and toasted them, of course they are tasty as is, too. The green thingies are cucumber pieces.

Here's another simple one: Upgrade your regular pumpkin soup by cutting out a ghost of your sliced cheese, if you have a black food color pencil, draw a face - Boo! Ghost soup!

What else? Kids always love their Mac'n'Cheese. Here's a healthier version of your usual calorie-loaded dish.

Now on to the most important part... Dessert. Because there is not enough candy to make this holiday sweet, haha! It'll actually be pretty healthy, but see for yourself:

Lychee "eyeballs", filled with a blueberry, and to make them bloodshot, trace some lines with strawberry sauce.

Kiwi Frankenstein faces: slice kiwis lengthwise (so the face will be long-is), using chocolate sauce glue on google eyes. Paint mouth with chocolate sauce. Drizzle where the hair will be with melted chocolate and sprinkle with cookie crumbs. You'll have some leftover cookies from the next project!

Bat cupcakes. Bake your favorite chocolate cupcakes and frost them with chocolate frosting. I messed mine up so I just used melted dark chocolate. Break or cut chocolate cookies in half and arrange them as "wings". Decorate with google eyes. Done! Batsh** cute!

Actually this market may spark my party planning business. People may say "this looks great and all, but I don't have the time, patience, skills, to pull it off!" This is where I come in! Let me tell you though, it is time consuming. It takes preparation and improvisation skills. I wonder if people are actually ready to pay for this? 

It's been a while... On November 8 let's do another Photo Scavenger Hunt. Here are the ten items to take pictures of:

1. Rubber duckie
2. Guitar
3. Deck chairs
4. Apple
5. Stick figure family car sticker
6. Fire hydrant
7. Ice cream
8. 13
9. Pizza
10. Taxi

Have fun with your assignment! Sign up here.

November 15: Only one week till Thanksgiving. Time to list the top ten things you're grateful for! Sing up here.

 Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash