Today's Adventures
Today we went to Christmas in the Village and the Holiday Market down in Greenup.
After seeing Christmas in the Heart of Charleston, we weren't sure how well this one would turn out, especially since it was sprinkling rain. (Better than snow, and especially, better than ice; we were much relieved at the 40°F temperature.) So we made a backup plan: if the food trucks didn't show, we'd just eat at Naf Naf.
It turns out that Greenup has two multipurpose spaces right near each other.
The Greenup Municipal Building / Village Hall is the larger of the two, where they had the Apple Festival earlier this year. It has a foyer that lets into a big open space with a large raised stage at the far end. Inside the foyer is a rack of free materials, so I picked up several new magazines about area attractions: Effingham Magazine, Downstate Illinois Visitors Guide, and Progress: Celebrating the Effingham Area's Growth Over the Year. I was delighted that they also had A Day Away, because we got that from Grissom's Family Orchard this fall and they're unlikely to be open shortly after the 2025 Spring/Summer edition comes out. So we should be able to catch it in Greenup. I feel kinda bad for Effingham. It used to be a pretty good town to visit for shopping and whatnot, and they're putting out some fantastic local periodicals -- both in electronic and hardcopy formats, no less. But we go down there to browse around and there's ... uh, nothing. Alas. Meanwhile Greenup is getting more and more interesting, and is closer to us. Also, the Village Hall had a giant gizmotronic nutcracker statue out front that way playing music, which was pretty awesome. About 7 feet tall maybe? Far over my head.
The Village Venue is an event space that hosted the Holiday Market. It's basically a medium-size open space, about half concrete floor and half wooden dance floor. Watch your step, because the slanted edge between them is not marked with caution tape. It should be no obstacle to things like walkers or strollers, but an electric wheelchair is likely to balk and need a manual shove to get over it. Still, it's very nice to have an actual dance floor. This venue has only been running as such since 2022 and is available for all kinds of social events. We've attended a few events in Greenup before, but over the last few years it seems like it's really picking up both quality and quantity of events.
The first place we stopped was the Village Hall. On the left side they had a raffle going, a table handing out candy canes, and the food line was just setting up. We have developed a very serious attachment to that food line. It's run by local volunteers, stocked mostly with homemade food plus a few storebought extras, and is offered for at will donations rather than a set price. Nobody goes hungry. We first encountered it at the Greenup Apple Festival. We promptly demoted Naf Naf to Plan C. They hadn't even put the food out yet, but the serving signs were up for chili, chicken noodle, and vegetable stew. I got interested in that chicken right away, and kept it in mind.
In the corner between the food line and the stage was a "Free Toys" table for kids, mostly stuffed animals. <3 The front of the stage had a ton of raffle prizes along it, mostly new toys. The Elf Workshop had been moved to the Village Hall, probably because the Village Venue was full, along the righthand wall. It included stations for ornament making, cookie decorating, and face painting. At the front wall was a guy making balloon animals for the price of listening to a Bible story. Fair trade. The whole middle of the hall was filled with long tables and chairs for people to sit and eat. Having ascertained that we had 20 minutes before the food line opened, and also now with directions in hand to the Holiday Market across the street, we headed over there.
The Village Venue was so full that they had an outer ring of booths along the walls and then a narrow inner ring down the middle. It's a good-sized space but not so big that it feels like a barn inside, really a nice versatile community space for events. This is by far the biggest and best pop-up market that we've seen. I'm thrilled to see these gaining popularity. Used to be we only saw them occasionally, but we've found several this year. <3 This is something that any community can replicate with extant resources, but it is a great deal easier when you have a dedicated event space rather than trying to rent an empty storefront for a day. Having two next door separated by a big open lawn is priceless. Now that we know these are the core of Greenup festivals, we'll have an easier time spotting them in the future.
We did some serious shopping and found wow!loot there. :D I doubt I can put the booths in order because we browsed in one direction then reversed course to make purchases. We always try to look at everything before buying anything, unless 1) we spot a quest item, 2) the event is too big to cover twice, or 3) we're very short on time. This way we can make choices with the whole array of options and our budget in mind. It helped a lot that the place was big enough to navigate easily without swimming through a packed crowd. Most of the vendors seemed to be local crafters or small businesses, with a few traveling vendors sprinkled in. This discussion page has some vendor photos.
JAM Artistry offered fluid art crafts made with acrylic paint pouring, which is a medium that has gained a lot of ground over the last several years. If you're into art based on physics and chemistry, or watercolors, definitely check it out, and same if you love unique things because it never looks the same twice. The methodology also makes it more efficient than brush-stroke paintings, and acrylic is cheaper than oil paint, so this is a good medium if you want affordable original art without shafting the artist. You're paying primarily for the skill of knowing how to make a bunch of frisky liquids do pretty stunts. This is applied chaos theory that you can hang on your wall, and making it turn out well is a great deal harder than it looks -- unless you know enough chemistry and physics to extrapolate just how rambunctious those media will be when released from a cup. Look up some how-to videos on YouTube, they're fun to watch. I picked out two small magnets, which look a lot like dichroic glass, for the refrigerators. Our big find of the day was a lazy susan done in shades of deep rusty reds and browns with copious gold glitter to match our kitchen-dining room. It's the first time I've seen anyone make this particular item, and it's such a logical application of an art form whose patterns are often created by spinning so that centrifugal force creates a radial design.
Melz Potionz & Lotionz provided a variety of herbal products, Llewellyn annuals, and woodwork. Turns out we have some friends in common, which is why they had the annuals -- we pointed out that I have writing in those too. :D Most of the products use all-natural ingredients. The scents (available in liquid roll-on or solid sticks) mostly had fragrance oils instead of essential oils, except for Hippie Chick made with straight patchouli oil but that one was sold out. Hardly a surprise. I first picked out two solid sticks from the medicinal offerings. Trying to read the very tiny print on the labels is hard, but I can make out most of the active ingredients. The Pain Balm includes arnica, yarrow, comfrey root, cayenne, rosemary, lemongrass, eucalyptus, tea tree, ginger, and mint; it has a very pleasant spicy scent, like incense. The Healing Balm includes plantain, valerian, echinacea, devil's claw, nettle, eucalyptus, clary sage, frankincense, lemon, lavender, orange, and cedar. It has a much mellower, creamy herbal scent. Next I got Pampered Feet, which is a bigger stick of solid lotion that features neem oil, cajeput, fennel, grapefruit, patchouli, lemon grass, tea tree, rosemary, cypress, and peppermint. It has a bright clean scent, slightly medicinal, that reminds me of some foot powders. So that was a very useful find.
Country House Crafts by Dennis & Tressie Funneman had two aspects. One was woodworking. I first noticed the large spiral trees made from thin slats rotated around a central axis. I'd never seen any so big before; I'm used to short ones with wider slats for displaying things like bonbons. I was particularly impressed with the sculpted flags, because it's really hard to get solid wood to look like rippling fabric. The other aspect was baked goods. We got a blueberry-banana quickbread, which has a nicely balanced lemon-blueberry flavor but is much denser than usual for quickbread, almost more like a cheesecake. The real standout was the raspberry brownies done with raspberry jam, definitely one of the best renditions of this that I've had.
Pete's Family Patterns by Donna Meluzzo had the back left corner. It was packed with a bunch of hand-sewn and quilted items. I quite liked the throw pillows but didn't have a place for more. I picked out two new oven mitts. I was just going to get one, but in sorting through for favorites I discovered that they were different sizes, so we got one sized for me (with roosters) and one for my partner Doug (with flowers and fruit). This is great because standard storebought ones tend to be a bit big on me and a bit small on him. There were also quilted centerpiece cloths, either 9-pointed star or hexagon shapes. We got one for a gift, one green-and-gold sunflowers, and one with very twee scarecrows on the front but a lovely autumn leaf background. It's a great place to look for practical or decorative quilted goods.
Sisters Shenanigans was another quilt booth that we saw. They had a runner with books quilted on it using strips of random fabric: an excellent stashbusting pattern. Granny's Got Wood Creations by Diane Simmons was another woodworker.
Level Up Crafts had poured resin creations, mostly done with flower petals or leaves. (See pictures on their website in the previous link.) There were dishes with quite detailed designs that took several layers of very careful pouring to complete. I've worked with flower petals and I'm impressed that anyone managed to get a design to stay put while pouring liquid over it. I picked out a set of 6 buttons each with its own flower; 4 are matching white ones plus a yellow and a purple. Very bohemian. The crafter also does custom work if you wish to preserve flowers from a wedding, funeral, formal dance, or other special occasion.
Someone from Grissom's Family Orchard was staffing the coffee bar, which also had some desserts or snacks or something. I didn't find out about those bits until later. I just saw "coffee" on the sign and ignored the whole thing, because I don't drink coffee. Guess I should've looked closer, but there were so many other interesting things enticing me.
Now somewhere along in there, the food line opened, and people started bringing things to folks who were working at the booths. By the time we finished buying things, I'd been smelling that chicken noodle for 20 minutes. I don't think anyone brought over the chili. There was a food truck outside. We checked it. They were selling barbecue and it smelled tempting. But. I'd been smelling chicken noodle already and I had very fond memories of our previous trip through that food line during the Apple Festival. (Also it was raining more and I was not enamored of trying to carry hot food through the rain.) So we went inside and got trays for the food line.
Doug got the chili and I got the chicken noodle. There were also chips, which we skipped; storebought cookies, which we got for dessert; and a choice of various beverages of which I got hot chocolate with fresh marshmallows on top. The chicken noodle consisted of thick noodles, thick gravy, and chicken cooked down to shreds that all kind of melded into one delicious mass. <3 We swapped bites, so I got to taste the chili too. I'm not a big fan of chili but I could tell that it was well made, moderately spicy up front but with notable afterburners. They did put out oyster crackers to go with it. The hot chocolate, once it cooled down enough to drink, was also delicious.
The food isn't fancy, it's simple home cooking. But it's sooo good. Also, we both really enjoy the atmosphere of a small-town event that feels familiar and homey and welcoming. Food is bonding and a good community table is hard to beat. Recalling that we were short on cash back in October, I went back and dropped in some extra this time around, because I really want this feature to continue.
We did eventually go back to the food truck to see if they had a good take-home dessert. Sadly all they had was red velvet cake. I'm really not interested in the modern version made with copious amounts of red food coloring, as the artificial colors tend to taste inedibly bitter to me. We did feel sorry for them parked out there in the rain and trying to compete with that scrumptious food line. You know it's got to be good when a very fragrant smoking barbecue truck is losing hands down.
Note that things like the food line for at will donation, the free toys table, and the pop-up market of local vendors are things that anyone else could start doing too. You might not have quite as nice an event space, but that's okay, I've seen other towns doing a worthwhile market in less than half that space. Just do something local to build community while there's still enough left to salvage.
So, we've reorganized our priorities a bit. If Greenup is throwing a community event, we're interested. If it conflicts with another community event, Greenup wins unless the other one has a spectacular lineup of specific attractions listed. If Greenup is doing the food line, it is now Plan A. Unless a food truck has something outstanding like bison burgers, they're Plan B. And Naf Naf -- which is one of our favorite restaurants, mind you -- is Plan C.
On the way home, we drove around to see the holiday lights in Charleston. Deer made of lights are popular this year, as are wallcrawlers, a little machine that throws moving light patterns on a wall. We saw one white house with large red and green lights on the ground pointing up, so the whole house was washed in colors. Another had a row of little angled lights all along the eaves, so the light fell on the house in scallops of blue and green, very pretty. One had white icicle lights tipped with blue snowflake lights. Some were just a clutter of decorations all over the yard.
Really, if you've got a huge space, you need a plan. You can't go wrong with a single color, or doing everything in multicolors. Two alternating colors (usually white with either red, green, or blue) is reliable. You can add a third if you use it only as an accent, like blue and white in the yard with green lights on the door wreath. Avoid warm (yellowish) and cool (bluish) white lights in the same display, because they really tend to clash. It's easy for a big display to get busy and incoherent. I did see one that used a bunch of colors effectively, which was impressive -- I think they had flowerbeds, they used a lot of white to outline things, but the trees and things were done in several different solid colors. And if you have a white house, you can make a striking display just by shining one or two colored lights on it, which really stands out.
It has been a spectacular trip.
After seeing Christmas in the Heart of Charleston, we weren't sure how well this one would turn out, especially since it was sprinkling rain. (Better than snow, and especially, better than ice; we were much relieved at the 40°F temperature.) So we made a backup plan: if the food trucks didn't show, we'd just eat at Naf Naf.
It turns out that Greenup has two multipurpose spaces right near each other.
The Greenup Municipal Building / Village Hall is the larger of the two, where they had the Apple Festival earlier this year. It has a foyer that lets into a big open space with a large raised stage at the far end. Inside the foyer is a rack of free materials, so I picked up several new magazines about area attractions: Effingham Magazine, Downstate Illinois Visitors Guide, and Progress: Celebrating the Effingham Area's Growth Over the Year. I was delighted that they also had A Day Away, because we got that from Grissom's Family Orchard this fall and they're unlikely to be open shortly after the 2025 Spring/Summer edition comes out. So we should be able to catch it in Greenup. I feel kinda bad for Effingham. It used to be a pretty good town to visit for shopping and whatnot, and they're putting out some fantastic local periodicals -- both in electronic and hardcopy formats, no less. But we go down there to browse around and there's ... uh, nothing. Alas. Meanwhile Greenup is getting more and more interesting, and is closer to us. Also, the Village Hall had a giant gizmotronic nutcracker statue out front that way playing music, which was pretty awesome. About 7 feet tall maybe? Far over my head.
The Village Venue is an event space that hosted the Holiday Market. It's basically a medium-size open space, about half concrete floor and half wooden dance floor. Watch your step, because the slanted edge between them is not marked with caution tape. It should be no obstacle to things like walkers or strollers, but an electric wheelchair is likely to balk and need a manual shove to get over it. Still, it's very nice to have an actual dance floor. This venue has only been running as such since 2022 and is available for all kinds of social events. We've attended a few events in Greenup before, but over the last few years it seems like it's really picking up both quality and quantity of events.
The first place we stopped was the Village Hall. On the left side they had a raffle going, a table handing out candy canes, and the food line was just setting up. We have developed a very serious attachment to that food line. It's run by local volunteers, stocked mostly with homemade food plus a few storebought extras, and is offered for at will donations rather than a set price. Nobody goes hungry. We first encountered it at the Greenup Apple Festival. We promptly demoted Naf Naf to Plan C. They hadn't even put the food out yet, but the serving signs were up for chili, chicken noodle, and vegetable stew. I got interested in that chicken right away, and kept it in mind.
In the corner between the food line and the stage was a "Free Toys" table for kids, mostly stuffed animals. <3 The front of the stage had a ton of raffle prizes along it, mostly new toys. The Elf Workshop had been moved to the Village Hall, probably because the Village Venue was full, along the righthand wall. It included stations for ornament making, cookie decorating, and face painting. At the front wall was a guy making balloon animals for the price of listening to a Bible story. Fair trade. The whole middle of the hall was filled with long tables and chairs for people to sit and eat. Having ascertained that we had 20 minutes before the food line opened, and also now with directions in hand to the Holiday Market across the street, we headed over there.
The Village Venue was so full that they had an outer ring of booths along the walls and then a narrow inner ring down the middle. It's a good-sized space but not so big that it feels like a barn inside, really a nice versatile community space for events. This is by far the biggest and best pop-up market that we've seen. I'm thrilled to see these gaining popularity. Used to be we only saw them occasionally, but we've found several this year. <3 This is something that any community can replicate with extant resources, but it is a great deal easier when you have a dedicated event space rather than trying to rent an empty storefront for a day. Having two next door separated by a big open lawn is priceless. Now that we know these are the core of Greenup festivals, we'll have an easier time spotting them in the future.
We did some serious shopping and found wow!loot there. :D I doubt I can put the booths in order because we browsed in one direction then reversed course to make purchases. We always try to look at everything before buying anything, unless 1) we spot a quest item, 2) the event is too big to cover twice, or 3) we're very short on time. This way we can make choices with the whole array of options and our budget in mind. It helped a lot that the place was big enough to navigate easily without swimming through a packed crowd. Most of the vendors seemed to be local crafters or small businesses, with a few traveling vendors sprinkled in. This discussion page has some vendor photos.
JAM Artistry offered fluid art crafts made with acrylic paint pouring, which is a medium that has gained a lot of ground over the last several years. If you're into art based on physics and chemistry, or watercolors, definitely check it out, and same if you love unique things because it never looks the same twice. The methodology also makes it more efficient than brush-stroke paintings, and acrylic is cheaper than oil paint, so this is a good medium if you want affordable original art without shafting the artist. You're paying primarily for the skill of knowing how to make a bunch of frisky liquids do pretty stunts. This is applied chaos theory that you can hang on your wall, and making it turn out well is a great deal harder than it looks -- unless you know enough chemistry and physics to extrapolate just how rambunctious those media will be when released from a cup. Look up some how-to videos on YouTube, they're fun to watch. I picked out two small magnets, which look a lot like dichroic glass, for the refrigerators. Our big find of the day was a lazy susan done in shades of deep rusty reds and browns with copious gold glitter to match our kitchen-dining room. It's the first time I've seen anyone make this particular item, and it's such a logical application of an art form whose patterns are often created by spinning so that centrifugal force creates a radial design.
Melz Potionz & Lotionz provided a variety of herbal products, Llewellyn annuals, and woodwork. Turns out we have some friends in common, which is why they had the annuals -- we pointed out that I have writing in those too. :D Most of the products use all-natural ingredients. The scents (available in liquid roll-on or solid sticks) mostly had fragrance oils instead of essential oils, except for Hippie Chick made with straight patchouli oil but that one was sold out. Hardly a surprise. I first picked out two solid sticks from the medicinal offerings. Trying to read the very tiny print on the labels is hard, but I can make out most of the active ingredients. The Pain Balm includes arnica, yarrow, comfrey root, cayenne, rosemary, lemongrass, eucalyptus, tea tree, ginger, and mint; it has a very pleasant spicy scent, like incense. The Healing Balm includes plantain, valerian, echinacea, devil's claw, nettle, eucalyptus, clary sage, frankincense, lemon, lavender, orange, and cedar. It has a much mellower, creamy herbal scent. Next I got Pampered Feet, which is a bigger stick of solid lotion that features neem oil, cajeput, fennel, grapefruit, patchouli, lemon grass, tea tree, rosemary, cypress, and peppermint. It has a bright clean scent, slightly medicinal, that reminds me of some foot powders. So that was a very useful find.
Country House Crafts by Dennis & Tressie Funneman had two aspects. One was woodworking. I first noticed the large spiral trees made from thin slats rotated around a central axis. I'd never seen any so big before; I'm used to short ones with wider slats for displaying things like bonbons. I was particularly impressed with the sculpted flags, because it's really hard to get solid wood to look like rippling fabric. The other aspect was baked goods. We got a blueberry-banana quickbread, which has a nicely balanced lemon-blueberry flavor but is much denser than usual for quickbread, almost more like a cheesecake. The real standout was the raspberry brownies done with raspberry jam, definitely one of the best renditions of this that I've had.
Pete's Family Patterns by Donna Meluzzo had the back left corner. It was packed with a bunch of hand-sewn and quilted items. I quite liked the throw pillows but didn't have a place for more. I picked out two new oven mitts. I was just going to get one, but in sorting through for favorites I discovered that they were different sizes, so we got one sized for me (with roosters) and one for my partner Doug (with flowers and fruit). This is great because standard storebought ones tend to be a bit big on me and a bit small on him. There were also quilted centerpiece cloths, either 9-pointed star or hexagon shapes. We got one for a gift, one green-and-gold sunflowers, and one with very twee scarecrows on the front but a lovely autumn leaf background. It's a great place to look for practical or decorative quilted goods.
Sisters Shenanigans was another quilt booth that we saw. They had a runner with books quilted on it using strips of random fabric: an excellent stashbusting pattern. Granny's Got Wood Creations by Diane Simmons was another woodworker.
Level Up Crafts had poured resin creations, mostly done with flower petals or leaves. (See pictures on their website in the previous link.) There were dishes with quite detailed designs that took several layers of very careful pouring to complete. I've worked with flower petals and I'm impressed that anyone managed to get a design to stay put while pouring liquid over it. I picked out a set of 6 buttons each with its own flower; 4 are matching white ones plus a yellow and a purple. Very bohemian. The crafter also does custom work if you wish to preserve flowers from a wedding, funeral, formal dance, or other special occasion.
Someone from Grissom's Family Orchard was staffing the coffee bar, which also had some desserts or snacks or something. I didn't find out about those bits until later. I just saw "coffee" on the sign and ignored the whole thing, because I don't drink coffee. Guess I should've looked closer, but there were so many other interesting things enticing me.
Now somewhere along in there, the food line opened, and people started bringing things to folks who were working at the booths. By the time we finished buying things, I'd been smelling that chicken noodle for 20 minutes. I don't think anyone brought over the chili. There was a food truck outside. We checked it. They were selling barbecue and it smelled tempting. But. I'd been smelling chicken noodle already and I had very fond memories of our previous trip through that food line during the Apple Festival. (Also it was raining more and I was not enamored of trying to carry hot food through the rain.) So we went inside and got trays for the food line.
Doug got the chili and I got the chicken noodle. There were also chips, which we skipped; storebought cookies, which we got for dessert; and a choice of various beverages of which I got hot chocolate with fresh marshmallows on top. The chicken noodle consisted of thick noodles, thick gravy, and chicken cooked down to shreds that all kind of melded into one delicious mass. <3 We swapped bites, so I got to taste the chili too. I'm not a big fan of chili but I could tell that it was well made, moderately spicy up front but with notable afterburners. They did put out oyster crackers to go with it. The hot chocolate, once it cooled down enough to drink, was also delicious.
The food isn't fancy, it's simple home cooking. But it's sooo good. Also, we both really enjoy the atmosphere of a small-town event that feels familiar and homey and welcoming. Food is bonding and a good community table is hard to beat. Recalling that we were short on cash back in October, I went back and dropped in some extra this time around, because I really want this feature to continue.
We did eventually go back to the food truck to see if they had a good take-home dessert. Sadly all they had was red velvet cake. I'm really not interested in the modern version made with copious amounts of red food coloring, as the artificial colors tend to taste inedibly bitter to me. We did feel sorry for them parked out there in the rain and trying to compete with that scrumptious food line. You know it's got to be good when a very fragrant smoking barbecue truck is losing hands down.
Note that things like the food line for at will donation, the free toys table, and the pop-up market of local vendors are things that anyone else could start doing too. You might not have quite as nice an event space, but that's okay, I've seen other towns doing a worthwhile market in less than half that space. Just do something local to build community while there's still enough left to salvage.
So, we've reorganized our priorities a bit. If Greenup is throwing a community event, we're interested. If it conflicts with another community event, Greenup wins unless the other one has a spectacular lineup of specific attractions listed. If Greenup is doing the food line, it is now Plan A. Unless a food truck has something outstanding like bison burgers, they're Plan B. And Naf Naf -- which is one of our favorite restaurants, mind you -- is Plan C.
On the way home, we drove around to see the holiday lights in Charleston. Deer made of lights are popular this year, as are wallcrawlers, a little machine that throws moving light patterns on a wall. We saw one white house with large red and green lights on the ground pointing up, so the whole house was washed in colors. Another had a row of little angled lights all along the eaves, so the light fell on the house in scallops of blue and green, very pretty. One had white icicle lights tipped with blue snowflake lights. Some were just a clutter of decorations all over the yard.
Really, if you've got a huge space, you need a plan. You can't go wrong with a single color, or doing everything in multicolors. Two alternating colors (usually white with either red, green, or blue) is reliable. You can add a third if you use it only as an accent, like blue and white in the yard with green lights on the door wreath. Avoid warm (yellowish) and cool (bluish) white lights in the same display, because they really tend to clash. It's easy for a big display to get busy and incoherent. I did see one that used a bunch of colors effectively, which was impressive -- I think they had flowerbeds, they used a lot of white to outline things, but the trees and things were done in several different solid colors. And if you have a white house, you can make a striking display just by shining one or two colored lights on it, which really stands out.
It has been a spectacular trip.