Mom and Pop Place Blog

Here’s my little guy busy at work at his Art Stand.  He was inspired by our neighbors, who hosted a successful Lemonade stand last week.  He and his brother sat in the yard and watched cars stop and give the neighbors money for lukewarm Kool-Aid.  It seemed like magic.  Money for nothing?!   My kids like money.  They instantly started begging to have a sale themselves.  Kool-Aid was not an option: we don’t have any Kool-Aid.  They wanted to sell their broken toys: that seemed less than classy to me.

I wanted to come up with something that actually helped them understand entrepreneurship.  Selling broken toys (that technically belonged to ME) didn’t teach them much about the marketplace.  So I suggested they create something on their own to sell.  My oldest son immediately lost interest.  He’s not my most imaginitive.  That’s ok.  But Gage, my youngest son, was captivated.  He immediately set to work with watercolors and glitter glue and created over 15 works of art.  He’s an amazing artist, if I do say so myself.  I just love to watch him as he loses himself in the worlds he creates in his artwork.  He loves it.  People say to him “Maybe you’ll be an artist when you grow up.”  He always replies the same way.  Gives them a  puzzled look and says “I’m already an artist.”

So, Gage set up his stand and started offering his art to passers-by.  He thought 10 cents was a fair price.  I talked him up to 25 cents.  He sold about 8 paintings the first evening.  He sat out there for almost 2 hours, looking expectantly at each car that passed.  I couldn’t stop watching him from the window.  Pretty soon, my oldest son started to wonder just what he had passed up.  He tried to go sell a handful of Matchbox cars alongside his brother.  But, the creativity conoisseurs in our neighborhood weren’t interested in Matchbox cars.  They know art when they see it.