By Elinor Tinsley
On Saturday, September 21, 2024, the day before Fall began, the Bolivar Peninsula Cultural Foundation and a host of others brought in Fall with a bang at their annual Fall Arts & Crafts Fair out at Swedes Pavilion. What a great time was had by all, with perfect weather, lots of vendor items to choose from, chili cheese dogs by the Eagles 3719 and fabulous entertainment provided by our own local, The Girl Band. if you didn’t enjoy yourself you probably chose the wrong activity for the day. We had 35 vendors who brought some wonderful, unique, beautiful and delicious items to sell that day and almost all of the vendors were happy with their sales for the day. What a wonderful way to kick off Fall!

Fabulous entertainment provided by our own local, The Girl Band

The BPCF couldn’t pull off this event without many months of planning ahead of time and many people helping to execute the day of the event, and we would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank them. To our board members, Vicky Norris-president, Ange Scheibel-Vice President, Sherry Morgan-Secretary, Elinor Tinsley-Treasurer/Membership and Members at Large, Marsha Fredenburg, Linda Chesser (who spent the day off, in the Mediterranean) and Sandi Covington – you are a small band that continues to bring music, art, history and culture to the Bolivar Peninsula. It is a pleasure working together and your work all day, for two days straight, was greatly appreciated. We give Tom Osten a huge thank you for always being willing to do the things we ask of him, no matter how mundane, to help make this event successful. We would not be able to do it without you. To our BPCF members, Pat Tinsley, Linda and Marcel Elissalde, Marie and Jeff Butler, Denise Boyd and friend Rhonda Hight, Donna Mittendorf, Bob Hibbard, Joy Smith and Ellen Ratliff, thank you so much for your help in setting up, checking in vendors, running the front desk and tearing down, you made light work of the day for everyone. We would also like to thank Lieutenant Juan Peña from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department for volunteering to keep us safe.

We received some wonderful raffle items from Del Papa Distributors, who donated a beautiful mirror, not to mention the beer that was generously given to adult shoppers. Patty Hagstrom once again donated one of her beautiful signed, numbered prints, Glass Tattoo gave a gorgeous Seas the Day panel, Sea Sure donated a 1950’s nautical light, Texas Prairie Company donated a set of three lovely hand turned bowls, Island Liquor and the board of BPCF donated our ever popular, Booze Basket, BPCF gave a set of three talavera ceramic pieces, and new this year, we had a wonderful bag of merchandise provided by many of our vendors. Texas Crab Festival Charities also donated the wine that our shoppers enjoyed. We appreciate so much the generosity of these individuals and organizations in providing our raffle items. We would also like to thank our lovely and effervescent, Linda Elissalde, for bringing us the wonderful photos and for Sandi Covington sending hers along to Linda.

We have a lot of folks asking what the Bolivar Peninsula Cultural Foundation does and what we do with “all” the money we make. Our goal as an organization is to promote art, music, culture and history to our peninsula. One of our goals for last Saturday’s event was to actually break even or make a little money for the BPCF, but our main goals are to provide our guests a wide variety of largely, hand crafted items to shop from and to give our local and surrounding vendors a chance to sell their wares. The fact that we can bring you food prepared by our local Eagles 3719, present a great and upcoming band, The Girl Band, give $440 to the winner of our first 50/50 raffle and on top of all that, provide $1,500 in donations to our three volunteer fire departments, is just sweet icing on the cake.

BPCF provided $1,500 in donations to our three volunteer fire departments

We also make a donation to the Texas Crab Festival Charities and to the Sheriff’s organization that supports widows and children of fallen officers. Thanks to everyone involved we accomplished our goal of at least breaking even and have a few hundreds dollars to put toward our next event we bring to you, and we managed to accomplish our other goals too. Thanks to everyone again for supporting your Bolivar Peninsula Cultural Foundation.

And speaking of our next event, we will be presenting a fashion show at our year end meeting in December at Jose’s Cantina, featuring clothes from our own Second Goings Thrift Store – so stay tuned for details.

[Oct-1-2024]