Patchwork Show – Santa Ana June 15

Find us at this wonderful festival on Father’s Day!

CELEBRATE FATHERS DAY ALL DAY WITH PATCHWORK SHOW!

Join us at Patchwork Show: Modern Creative Festival and shop local from 200+ local independent vendors featuring handmade & independently designed goods including clothing, art, paper goods, accessories and housewares.

– FREE bike valet from The Bicycle Tree
– FREE shuttle at East End lot (pickup at 4th/Spurgeon) + Santa Ana train station
– Over 150 craft artisans
– 35+ artisan food vendors, pop-up restaurants and gourmet food trucks
– DIY/hands on crafting station from The Makery 
-3 stages of music & performance art all day from OCCCA , Naturalist for You & Royal Albatross
– Joia beverage bar + tasting station
– Pop-up trucks : The library Truck, Fashion Truck & Lil’ Green Wagon
***PLUS***
All of downtown is celebrating Fathers Day! Restaurants are hosting special meals + drinks + events throughout the day!
PLAYGROUND: visit this Jonathan Gold’s (LA Times) list of The 101 Top Restaurants
CIVIC EATS (corner of Civic Center @ Bristol): Tri tip + eggs or chorizo burger combo from 9-2PM
C4 DELI: Happy Hour from 3PM – 6:30PM
CHAPTER ONE: Buy dad a meal and we will provide a select craft draft beer or Bloody Maria “Ozawa”!
LOLA GASPAR: Pasture menu + two World Cup matches (11:30/2:30)
and more specials from restaurants across downtown!

 CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Want free lunch + Patchwork Show mugs?
We need a few more volunteers for the Santa Ana show. Send an email to staff@patchworkshow.com if you want to help out.

World Allergy Week

World Allergy Week

Do you know why we don’t use Peanuts or Tree Nuts?

 

These items have a hi incidence of allergy reactions.  

I myself (Kat) am allergic to Tree Nuts.

So many people have allergies so severe that even a hint of peanuts could be fatal.  So we stick to Almonds.  A misunderstood and miscategorized fruit among a bunch of nuts.

Supporting local artists/ crafters

As I mentioned, at Patchwork Santa Ana I started my Christmas shopping.

Now to explain, I’m someone that doesn’t think Christmas season and shopping should happen before Thanksgiving.  So it’s common for me to start the weekend after Thanksgiving.  The biggest shopping weekend of the year.  But I didn’t step foot in any mall or big box store.  I stuck to local vendors working their own pop-up booths at a big craft fair.

I’m not going to give too much detail – so I don’t give away information on what my friends and

family are getting for Christmas.  But I shopped at a couple of great vendors.  This amazing artist, Chris Kawagiwa, had some amazing prints of his original works in his booth.  Be sure you check out his work for the fanboys in your life: http://chriskawagiwa.com/

 

And who doesn’t love PAC MAN and Ms. PAC MAN ghosts!  I shopped at felt artists Ester Shin’s booth: http://madebyfelt.bigcartel.com/

Remember, support local artists and businesses this holiday shopping season!  It’s good for your neighborhood!

 

Shopping Small on the Biggest Shopping Weekend

I ended up cooking most of Thankgsiving dinner.  Not a big deal, except I wasn’t expecting that to happen until about a day or two before.  So that’s one easy day that kept me away from any big store sales.  But I wouldn’t have gone out to shop on Thanksgiving anyway.

Now I’ve never been a big Black Friday shopper.  The crowds and lines are crazy.  And people get too wrapped up on saving a few dollars and end up spending/ buying more than they planned to or should have.  I’d rather wait and shop late in the day or on the weekend after Thanksgiving.  So instead of shopping on Friday we had family over and enjoyed a mix of our and their leftovers and watched a movie.  I did brave the stores later though – I needed some more ribbon for packaging.  A big whopping $5 spent on Black Friday.

Small Business Saturday was next.  I had every intention of checking out one of their events: https://www.facebook.com/WhittierLaMiradaCraftFair.  But we spent the day making and packaging candy for our Sunday event.  (we’ll talk about that one shortly).  And the evening we visited friends for a 3rd run at Thanksgiving. I’m all Turkey’d out!

Sunday we were at Patchwork Santa Ana selling our Homemade Candies.

I had help in the booth so I was able to start my Christmas shopping at this wonderful handmade event!  Success!

Today is CyberMonday.  Here’s the temptation for me.  I’m an online shopper through and through.  I’d usually be scanning Ebay and Amazon at least right now.  Searching endless chain stores for the best deal on this or that.  But instead I’m going to put a little more effort in and check out the websites of some of the vendors I saw at Patchwork and other craft shows this year.  I’m going to check out lists like this one: https://app.box.com/s/nitqacbinuau2y5zyckw and I’m going to support local business.

I’m off to a good start.

Walking the Walk – (buying local)

So, as you’ve figured out if you read any of this blog, I’m considered a “local” small business owner.  My other half and I (with our daughter) are running the candy business.  He and I also own another local small business (CC Fine Furniture).  So every year at this time, I start to encourage folks to shop local for their holiday gifts.

I’m proud to say that last year I did buy a few holiday gifts from local handmade vendors at Knott’s Berry Farm’s Christmas Crafts Village and other events.   This year I’d like to take that further.  I am going to try to buy all of my holiday gifts from local businesses/ makers.  I have to admit, this is harder for me than it should be.  I love to shop online.  I tend to search for the best deal and frequent those big chain stores more than I should .

So I’m going to post about my experience shopping local.  I’ll be posting about some great places/ events to do your local shopping at as well.  And I’m going to be featuring any vendor/ local shop that I buy from in future blog posts.

I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to join me on this adventure and I’ll try to feature your experiences too.

OC Chocolate Festival

Our first time at the Orange County Chocolate Festival.
We had a wonderful time and our candy (especially the mountain of fudge) was a big hit.

Keep the Candy Cool – Indiegogo

Homemade Candy with no Preservatives tends to melt in the sun.

We’ve had great success at fairs and festivals in the past few months.  We’ve already paid to do a dozen more events this year and have been accepted into a local Farmer’s Market.  Sadly, our Pop-Up tent has pooped out!   Wind and use has bent most of the upper support.   We need a new one to keep our gooey chocolate candies (and us) from melting in the endless California sun.

Please consider donating to help us get a new Tent and you will get candy or handmade toys in time for Christmas!

 

Can’t afford to donate, sharing and liking our project on Indiegogo will help us get seen by more people!

Even just clicking on the link can improve our ranking to give us exposure… Thank you in advance. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keep-the-candy-cool-the-kandy-jar/x/5092253

SPECIAL SALE ALERT:

We have FUDGE, TOFFEE BARK, BRAINS and TOFFEE CANDY BARS available now. They can be purchased at up to a 66% discount!

•  Brains 2 for $1 (regularly $1.50 each)
• Toffee Candy Bar $1 (regularly $2)
• Chocolate Fudge 3oz for $1 (regularly $3)
• Toffee Bark 3oz for $1 (regularly $3)
• Chocolate Fudge 8oz for $3 (regularly $8)
• Toffee Bark 8oz for $3 (reguarly $8)

If you want to reserve yours please message us or email us at info@thekandyjar.com to arrange pick-up or local delivery.

Win a Free T-shirt and Candy!

Want to win a FREE T-Shirt?  How about FREE Candy?

Go here (https://www.bonfirefunds.com/the-kandy-jar) and click to “become a fundraiser“.

You’ll get your own link to share and then you’ll credit towards prizes for every shirt that’s sold through your link!

You could even receive a full batch of a candy you helped design!!

And if you are local to us and want to pick up the shirt at our of our upcoming events, message me and I’ll give you a free shipping code!

Vote for Us

We’ve been nominated for a chance to win up to $10,000 to further our business, a trip for two to New York City to attend the American Made Workshop, and a feature on marthastewart.com.

All things that would help us go so far!

http://www.marthastewart.com/americanmade/nominee/83011

You can vote up to 6 times a day, each day.

Please consider helping us out!