The Wednesday of our trip was a very nice day for Me. George's mom, Susan and I drove to the Longaberger Basket Factory for a day of shopping. Apparantly Susan has a love for shopping like I do, so I was in excellent company. It was also a 2.5 hour drive each way, so we got a lot of quality time in together. From seeing the "Made in America" show, I knew that you could make your own basket at the factory. I had my mom look it up online and text me the info earlier in the week, and we both decided that we'd wait and see until we got there. Their website said you needed reservations, so we just expected that we wouldn't get to do it. The $60 per person too, was a little off-putting.
When we got there, later than expected as we both slept in that morning after our day on the lake, there was literally only 3 people in the gift shop at the factory. They had just got done making baskets, and they were tiny! No way was I going to spend $60 on that. Well--then I heard someone say there were three different baskets to choose from, and the other two were much bigger. Seeing as we were there, and this could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I sprang for the both of us to do it.
Here, Susan is expertly weaving her basket. Her's has three color bands that go thru it.
Here I am with my goofy smile. Let me say that it was another bad hair day, as it was raining all day, and we had to walk a bit from the car to the factory due to space they reserve for the shuttle busses. My hair was drenched. Lovely, I know.
What's cool is that you're making your baskets right there with a bunch of the master basket makers. In fact, the person guiding you is a master himself. I think his name was Greg or Gary (I'm so sorry I may have the name wrong), and he was great. He'd been with the company for 16 years, and loves it. He was pointing out some new christmas basket one guy had just started producing that day. Very cool, and it was super pretty!
So here we are with our finished baskets. Happy as little clams! The basket Susan made--it was the featured basket for the quarter, so the following Sunday would be the last day they were making that one. She had little butterfly tack charms around the top edge of hers. Mine, I did an Ohio State theme, with the red color band, and football tack charms around the edge. I figured it was appropriate since it was going to be displayed in our house, we're in Ohio, and George is the biggest Buckeye fan on the west coast.
Right after this, we got to run thru the factory store where they have some overstocks and second quality stuff. I love Longaberger, but the pricing is a little out of my budget.
Just a short drive across a large parking lot, is the Longaberger Homestead. A gathering of shops where you could literally spend all weekend. We only made it to one of the shops, but I did find some great things there. Also saw this...
This was inside the Homestead area, and is just the cutest, and largest, basket I've ever seen!
Left Longaberger behind, as everything was closing, and made it back to her house at almost 10pm. Long day, but it was wonderful.
Thursday evening we had a bbq at his mom's house, and lots of people came to visit. I sort of forgot about my camera at this point, and let George take the reigns. Just so you know--this never happens. I did get one shot off before he took it from me...
Lookie there! It's my favorite office helper, Wyatt! Can you just say, too stinkin' cute??? Two minutes later, George grabbed the camera....
Alas, the rest of the photos are still on the memory card. Will I ever get them off? You'll see on the next installment of "The Ohio Trip"...
Have a wonderful week!
~Angie
