Top 10 Highlights for 2008

Now that the dust has settled and we have returned from our annual New Years time with our friends John & Linda I'd like to join the throngs of bloggers offering up reviews of the past 365 days.

In no particular order, here are our Top 10 Highlights from 2008:

10. Being honored for the Martin Rishti Award at the Buyers Market of American Craft at the Convention Center in Philadelphia. I am on the board of the Craft retailers Association for Tomorrow. It's a group of Galleries like ours (180 galleries) that sell Art and American Craft. The Award I was given was for my work developing a website for our organization.

I've met great friends through our business and the CRAFT organization, both the artists and other gallery owners like Sandra from GoodGoods, Karen from Whippoorill, David & Polly from Appalachian Spring, Deb from A Show of Hands, Gloria from Brooke Gallery, Donna Milstein from Hanson Galleries, Don, Laurie from Gallery Morada and others.

9. Our 25th wedding anniversary that we celebrated in NYC.

8. Being of chairman and spending over 200 hours on our "Dickens of a Christmas in Downtown New Bern."

7. Having our new home on the Historical Society Home Tour. You might ask how does a new contemporary home get to be on the Historical Home Tour? For the past 2 years the Historical Society has added Art to the title, Historical Society Home and Art Tour. I also have been doing the artwork for the home tour for quite a few years. This year the art work I did for the tour was a tile wall hanging shown here.

6. Revamping our Carolina Creations website and adding a shopping cart to it. It's fun to wake up in the morning and look to see what we sold overnight.

5. Going to spend a couple days with Justine doing clay sculpture.

4. Our gallery shows Feb Valentine Show , March Pop! Show featuring work by gallery artists., May Smoke & Fire II Raku Show, July Summer in the City show with Mary Page whitley, Brenda Behr, myself and others, Sept Sally Sutton Show Color and Light, Nov Hand crafted Nativity and Ornament Show.

3. Touring our area with my sister & brother in law and Michael sister & friends. We did the town, went to the palace, rode the Trolley, rode the ferry, and sat on our porch and watched the world go by.

2. Having the Horseless Carriage Club come to town and being able to see more 60 cars parade up and down our street for a week. The newest car was 1926.

1. Surviving in the retail business in a tough business economy.

Wishing all our readers a happy and prosperous 2009.