It all started with a lemonade stand... or, rather, the lack of one.

Our kids LOVE coming to shows with us, Phish especially. One of their favorite things to do is to window shop to see all the cool shirts, stickers, tie dyes, etc. on Shakedown. My oldest asked if we could come up with some Phish stickers that he could sell at the next show. Since we live in an area where houses are pretty far apart -- there's no real neighborhood to speak of -- we looked at his request the same way most parents would look at a kid wanting to run a lemonade stand down on the corner. Phish is our community, so if our son saw a community activity that he wanted to be a part of, we wanted to support that.

We made our first batch of Phish stickers in 2011 and he had a blast selling and trading them on lot.  One of his favorite stories to tell is from a morning walk up to Shakedown. He had his sign with his stickers for sale and a guy on a bike stopped him to buy some. The guy on the bike asked how old he was. He told him, 7 (at the time), and the guy responded with, "?!? Really?! Wow!! Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have such cool parents? I was so NOT rocking Phish lot when I was 7!!" 

We brought our Phish stickers with us to the Gorge this year, and while he and his younger siblings had a great time selling and trading them early on, we stopped taking walks up to Shakedown after seeing the nitrous scene starting to move in. Because we cut off a big chunk of their opportunities to sell their stickers, when we got home, our oldest asked if we could sell them online instead. 

We thought it was a great idea, so we set up our Etsy shop to see if there would be any interest. Within just the first week, we had 4 sales! The kids were super excited when we told them -- they already have plans to put the profits toward a Disney trip -- so it looks like we'll be sticking around for a bit! The shop is pretty sparse right now, but we'll add more designs as time and finances allow.