Makena's first lemonade stand!

Last summer Makena wanted to have a lemonade stand. I'm not sure what sparked the idea, maybe it was a book or tv show or maybe we saw one or just mentioned it. She asked about it a few times and we just never did it. Then the weather got colder and I told her we'd be sure to have a lemonade stand at summertime. When we made our Summer 2013 To Do list last month, it was on the top.

I put an ad on freecycle asking for lemons for my 3.5 year old to have her first lemonade stand, and got a few replies. We picked up a big bag of freshly picked Meyer lemons and had fun juicing them. I think we had about 7-8 gallons worth of lemonade made, and then I spilled a huge amount. I figured we had too much anyway, and was more annoyed about having to clean up a huge sticky mess.

We made signs (okay, I made signs) and Makena decided a cup of lemonade should be a quarter. So I bought little cups, and the big cups we sold for $1. I put an ad on craigslist in the garage sale section, and told everyone on facebook to come on by! 

My mom came over to help. The day before Makena had asked me "Does Grandmo have work tomorrow? Does she have the car? Is she coming to buy lemonade or to sit behind the table with me to sell it?" then she asked me to call her and ask. We made pink lemonade cookies and lemon cupcakes (with coconut oil so they tasted lemon coconutty) and key lime frosting. Makena wore a special yellow shirt/dress and was so excited. She woke up this morning asking me when it would be 1 o'clock. To kill some time we walked to the party store and bought 3 yellow balloons. My mom arrived and we got the table cloths ready and then Pam came home and we started setting up at 12:30. As we were grabbing more stuff in the house my mom sent a text telling me we had customers! We brought the lemonade and ice out and Makena was thrilled to have her first sale of the day! 

I wanted to get a photo of our whole set up, we picked a great shaded spot next to the ball field where they were having a game. As I snapped this photo a customer was walking up and I love Makena's excited face! She got shy often and even though we practiced the last few days she seemed to get a bit of stage fright and forgot her customer service skills. We did most of the transactions for her while she put the money into her register. Our method of filling each cup with ice/lemonade wasn't very efficient, next time we'll have a better system!

Overall it was a big success, we had a pretty steady stream of customers and even a line at a couple points! We ran out of lemonade about an hour in, so Pam rushed to Safeway for some back up. We poured the store-bought kind in with the rest of the freshly squeezed kind, so it wasn't exactly false advertising... lol.

She kept drinking more and more lemonade. The cupcakes were a hit. Some people came back for seconds of lemonade, or decided to buy a large cup after drinking their small cup. We even had a couple people drive up to the curb and we brought them a cup right to their car!

She made $41 and that's pretty good considering I spent about $30 on supplies. My mom put in $10 to help us have change, and Pam spent $10 when she went to get more lemonade.

Gosh she's adorable. She had quite a few friends show up and loved seeing them.

Makena said her best part of the day was "When Emily came to the lemonade stand and gave me the placemat I've always been wanting!" (When we went to Disneyland in January she had a choice to buy two different placemats, and she picked the Ariel one. Then once we were home she said she wanted the other one. When Erin was at Disneyland a couple months ago I asked her to grab it and when she opened the bag Makena exclaimed "It's the one I've been wanting!" I love that she doesn't forget stuff!)

Her other favorite part of the day was "Eating lunch at the kid table that Grandmo left here!" Lol. Normally she'll eat at either the kitchen table or on her snack mat in the living room, but we don't have a little table/chair for her. We just don't have the room. My mom let us borrow the little table she got from freecycle for the lemonade stand, and when we were done Makena was excited that it was left behind.

She said the worst part of the day was "When my balloons flew away at the end, and it was so bad I even cried." And she sure did cry. Pam was taking the balloons down and they escaped, and Makena stood there in tears saying she wanted them back right now Mama!

And what will she do with her hard earned money? She said "Buy stuff, like another Minnie doll for the baby, or ice cream, or play mini golf because I never did that!" At bedtime she asked if Mama had work tomorrow, and I said no. She asked if we could do something fun all together, and I asked like what? She said maybe we could go out for ice cream. Sounds good to me! :)