A recent Saturday morning saw me loading my car and heading out the door soon after 8:30. It was the day of our annual church craft fair, with luncheon and bake sale.

And while the day of the event is always a bit chaotic, the preparations can also keep people hopping.

For me, the focus was on baked goods.

Should I make two kinds of cookies? What day — or days — should I make them?

My mother used to approach her half-moon cookies as a three-day process. I thought I could manage it in two days, but that was before I realized we didn’t have the sour cream I needed. So, I put together the dry ingredients one day, picked up the sour cream at the grocery store and did the mixing and baking the next.

It was Thursday afternoon before I got around to mixing up the frosting and frosting the cookies.

My next-younger sister and I each planned to make chocolate chip bar cookies­ — I baked mine Friday morning — and I had a couple of small loaves of zucchini bread in the freezer to donate as well.

The two of us had offered to help with food preparation for the luncheon the day before the big event. We cut up onions and prepared and chopped up hard-boiled eggs to make egg salad. I added mayonnaise and some salt.

“I usually add a little mustard,” I said.

We couldn’t find any mustard in the kitchen, so I added that to my list of things to bring the next day.

My sister had made a couple of kinds of banana bread with one batch gluten-free and the other acceptable for those on a vegan diet. She wasn’t sure how well they’d turned out though, since she was trying to juggle recipes, two sets of utensils and calls from work all at the same time.

One of our church members took a gluten-free loaf to taste-test and said it was fine.

When I made it to the church on Saturday, the tables set up for the bake sale were already full.

We had to move some of the goods around to make space for more and hold a few cookies
back to add later. We priced items as customers began stopping to check out the selection and make some purchases.

A couple of people bought my zucchini bread and the other breads began disappearing as well.

We had lots of chocolate chip cookies, so our bar cookies weren’t exactly flying off the table, but the half-moons were selling.

In the afternoon, a woman stopped by the table and bought those that remained.

Our table stayed pretty busy, but I managed to order soup and a sandwich from the luncheon and clear a space to eat it. I even left my post to tour the craft tables and found a couple of items to purchase.

Normally, I would have stayed until the end, but my sister and I had to get to my house about mid-afternoon.

My niece’s husband was coming to do some chores around the house.

At the end of two hours, he had carried bags of salt for the water softener to the cellar, set up our new compost bin, tilled the garden, patched the holes in the garden shed and cut down a sapling in the middle of the weed patch where elderberry bushes once grew.

The rest of us mostly stood around and watched, but we were tired by the end of the session.

“Would you mind if we just ate sandwiches for supper?” my sister suggested.

It worked for me.