Winter Craft Fair this weekend at PFHS
POST FALLS – The most sought after winter craft fair of the season will bring more than 100 vendors, and more than 10 times that many shoppers to Post Falls High School Saturday and Sunday to take advantage of the array of handmade crafts for people on their gift list. Put on by the Post Falls High School Booster Club, the annual craft fair has become the event where many flock to do all their holiday shopping.
“I’m not saying that this is the best craft fair because I’m putting it together,” said Louise Buffaloe, event coordinator. “It’s what we’ve heard over the years. It’s just awesome and we have everything from hand-crafted wooden rocking horses to stuffed animals your kids can stuff and dress themselves.”
One booth has stuffed animals already sewn together, but allows children or parents to fill it with stuffing and choose an outfit to dress it in. A stuffed zebra could be dressed in a soccer uniform or a ballerina dress, whatever the child pictures for their personal stuffed friend.
Shoppers will be able to find hope chests for girls to fill with kitchen and bath things they’ll want in their home someday. Handmade organic soaps and lotions in delicious scents thrill women, young and old. Aromatic candles in dozens of festive colors will help the holidays feel homey and smell of gingerbread, without the calories. This is the place to come to freshen up tattered kitchen towels and pot holders with fresh sets, all lovingly made by the skilled hands of someone’s grandma.
“This year our goal was for every booth to have 75 percent hand-crafted items,” said Buffaloe. “There are a couple that don’t quite meet the criteria, but 99 percent do. There’s quilts and blankets and lots of fleece stuff.”
Many vendors will show off their hand-tooled jewelry, made from silver, beads, stones and whatever else their imaginations provide. There will be photographs and hand-drawn greeting cards for sale, as well as the ever popular painted rocks. Hand-hewn birdhouses in all shapes, sizes and styles will be available for those who want to feed the hungry feathered visitors who come calling this winter. The much loved style of log furniture will be available in large and small pieces.
“There’s homemade jerky, and people who do fresh spices that are really good to make dips and stuff,” said Buffaloe. “And the handmade chocolate is to die for. Oh, it is so good.”
At this craft fair the shopping is made more exciting by the atmosphere created by a group of troubadours who wander through the event singing Christmas carols. Choirs and instrument-wielding band members will take turns throughout the weekend providing joyous entertainment while shoppers gather new treasures. A rather large man in a red suit and white beard known as Kris Kringle, aka Father Christmas, aka Santa Claus, will be in attendance for children to sidle up and whisper their secret wishes to.
Home-baked goodies and decadent chocolates nestled in booths scattered throughout will have shoppers thinking Santa’s already been there. Many people collect a new Christmas ornament each year and there will be oodles of them, each assembled one by one, not in a factory of thousands. The scent of Christmas trees fill the air from the hand-tied pine wreaths adorned with festive baubles and bows. Shoppers will find scrap books, the perfect gift for someone who has just about everything.
Proceeds from the craft fair get scattered about as well. The Post Falls senior class gets the $1 admission everyone pays at the door, last year adding up to more than $1,000. Vendors donate gifts that are raffled throughout the weekend and the Post Falls High School band gets those proceeds, last year around $800. The Fine Arts Club will hold the bake sale and usually make several hundred dollars for their efforts. The band and choir are raffling off a car, a 2008 HHR donated by Eve Knutsen, to help pay for their trip to Seattle.
“The Booster Club is really active and we support everything; academics, music and athletics,” said Buffaloe. “We paid the wrestlers to help carry things in and out at the craft fair last year. The choir raised money with a concession stand, and the school kitchen makes lunch and donates to a different charity each year. It’s really nice.”