chunkyrhino: The Lemonade Stand

Once upon a time, there was a Fair Queen who threw a festive "trunk show" party, bubbling for weeks with excitement over the beautiful products she was creating and the certain success of the upcoming event.

The day of the party finally arrived and our Queen, having steamed the carpet by hand, moved furniture, redecorated with displays of her gorgeous gift baskets and custom holiday cards, purchased mini quiches, mini cheesecakes and bottles of champagne, sat anxiously in her home, alone, waiting eagerly for the company that never came.

Ironically, years before the Queen's own mother had experienced a similar fate as a child, when no one attended the birthday party she and her parents had worked so hard on. (Don't feel too bad for the Queen and her mother -- they both ended up with wonderful lives, and I've hjeard tell that the Fair Queen even managed to turn her frown upside down by consuming all the mini-quiches and mini cheesecakes and bottles of champagne all by herself, though again, that's just a rumor.)

You can see why, with all the history in her family, the King was a little worried no one would show up to his Princess's Lemonade Stand that she'd been planning for days.

Little did he know, the curse of the Lonely Party had been broken when the beautiful Princess was born, (owing mainly to her incessant reminders and bugging of friends and family, but that is neither here nor there).

And so it was that Ryan's Annual Peace, Love & Lemonade Event was born, a huge success in its own right, with sold-out cookies, candy, popcorn and lemonade, a FREE sprinkler to play in, and $25 in proceeds donated to Unicef. Friends, family and teachers came from high and lo, along with a couple of Lawn Men who came back for seconds, thirds and fourths (although they did refuse the sprinkler, even after the kids mentioned it was FREE. Silly Lawn Men).

The Prince and Princess, obviously deep in a marketing strategy meeting