List o' fun-- Espresso Yourself Cafe

If you've never been to old town Powell (Ohio), you should go.  It's cute and quaint and has fun little shops and restaurants.  I especially like to go when they have the downtown street market... lots of antiques, homemade crafts and fun.

There is an old church right in the middle that has been converted to a coffee shop.  They have live music there almost every night and even some day time shows.  Every Friday morning they have something for kids.  They rotate between music and story time and music and puppet show.  Personally I prefer the story time days over the puppet show days.  I don't think the puppet shows keep the kids attention.

This picture is pre-show.  You can see there is a stage (that use to be the church stage).  They have carpets for the kids to sit on.  You are encouraged to bring instruments, but this last time they actually had some that they supplied for people who didn't bring anything.  You can also see the puppet stage. 

Lots of couches and chairs for the big people

The owner always starts it off with some music.  The kids are encouraged to sing along and play their instruments.

Then the story time or puppet show

Then more singing... this time the kids are invited up to be the back up band and singers.

They even have two microphones for the kids to use and sing in to.

Usually Little Man loves to sing in the microphone. This time he found a xylophone though and wanted to stay close to me for some reason. 

I love this concept--entertaining the kids while the big people get coffee.  There are a few things I didn't like about this place.  It started out free and then they got pushy about "donations".  At one point, I was ordering a coffee and was basically just charged a $2 donation and told "you were going to donate the cover for the puppet show, right?"  Yeah.  Annoyed.  Their coffee isn't that great and it's more than Starbucks.  Then you are going to charge me for entertainment?  I sort of feel like if I am buying your coffee, that should be good enough.  They also kept asking for donations for new books for story time.  I wanted to stand up and scream, "GO TO THE LIBRARY".  I don't know.  I just got rubbed the wrong way.  But this last time we went, there wasn't hardly a mention of donation and when the guy did mention it, it was brief and he even said he wasn't telling people to give him money.  Hmmmm... someone must have said something to him.  It does sort of make me want to open my own place and do it better! :)  Nonetheless, it's a great place to check out on a rainy Friday when you have nothing else to do.  It starts at 10:30 and lasts about a half hour to 45 minutes.