Despite a name change, the Chamber of Commerce Deck the Halls event at the Event Center over the weekend kept the Festival of Trees spirit intact, with its combination of silent auction items, food, holiday merchandise, Santa Claus, and more.  

Some of the vendors attended both the Deck the Halls event as well as the prior week’s “Annual Hometown Christmas Festival,” which gave shoppers and extra chance to make up their minds.  But there were also a lot of different faces between the two events, bringing a good bit of commercial variety to town just in time for the busiest shopping season of the year.

Chamber President Mandi Hess was on call on Saturday, but Vice President Autumn Mello was on site to direct traffic and keep things moving along.  There are around twenty members of the Chamber, many of whom were at the event.

“What we ended up changing from Festival of Trees is that we still have auction items, but not the trees this year,” Mello said.  Essentially, the donated and decorated trees created an extra variable in preparing the event that last year left the Chamber nearly treeless.  “This has worked well, though.  It’s been steady.”

The Friends of the Oneida County Library were among the booths, selling crafts and other items to raise money for library projects and programming needs.  Ann Rethard and others took shifts throughout the morning and afternoon.

Juanita Montoya and Babs Gill from Bobby’s Hobbies.

 Juanita Montoya and Babs Gill are the owners of Bobbie’s Hobbies.  Juanita said, “we’re just two working gals who decided we needed a little bit of entertainment.  So we just starting coming up with ideas and putting these together—these little crafts and things.”  The pair has tried to “keep things as unusual as possible.  Most everybody has jams, but we have chokecherry, and wild plum.”  They also make an all-natural cough medicine primarily composed of elderberry and apple cider vinegar.  It was be unethical of me not to explain that in my experience, it worked pretty darn well, and thank you to Babs and Juanita!

Hannah Rasmussen stayed very busy at the Wild West Hat Bar, where her hat press was a literal and figurative hot ticket.  She had a wide variety of patches and blank hats, which can be combined to suit the needs of the customers.  

Heather Corbridge ran the space next to Rasmussen, selling Gel Nail Wraps.  The nails allow for a mani/pedi that will last up to 14 days, and its possible to do on your own.  

This year’s concession was handled by Rickell and Tara Call from Sunflour Foods.  They served homemade chicken noodle soup and chili, fresh baked cinnamon roles and dinner rolls.  Information about their food and business can be found at Sunflour-foods.com.

These and many more vendors filled the Event Center for Friday and Saturday’s holiday event, which gave people an even more final chance to pick up gifts before the big day.