Vintage Carnival Sale

Every year on Angie's birthday, she wants us to
bring out our big metal duck pond.  We bought it from a wholesaler called Design Legacy.  In the past, we just called the sale a "Duck Pond Sale" and put a percentage on the bottom of the duckies which told customers their discount.  Here is the pond.  It has a hose and a motor so they swim around.

This year, we decided to take the theme a little further.  My mom (Angie) said, wouldn't it be fun to have a little carnival this year?  (This was basically a hint to me to plan the whole thing so I got right to work.)  The first thing I needed was a cute invitation to mail to customers.  I can do the simple design stuff/word processor/blog/editing photos, but actually designing something that looks carnival-ish without being cheesy was beyond me.  I figured the best person for the job would be Sara Duckett of Sadie Olive because she designed our website and blog template and she is fast and reliable.  We highly recommend her!  Within about an hour after I described what I wanted, I received this in an email.

It was perfect!  Now that I knew that my colors needed to be red, white, and turquoise, I headed to Party City and got streamers, plates, napkins, and balloons.  I also got a disposable helium tank so we could have lots of balloons.  We can't ever have that many because they won't fit in our cars.  My next plan was to order cupcakes from Sams because you can get 30 of them for $12 and they are amazing!  The only thing I don't like is the crabby people that work in the bakery.  They are clearly not interested in helping customers.  The cupcakes turned out cute though!

My mom decided that we really needed a popcorn machine and a cotton candy machine.  She rented them both for the day with all the supplies for about $100 from True Value.

I had seen some water bottles covered with custom labels on ETSY so I decided to take the invitation front and print it on sticky paper so we could cover our bottles.

Last, our crafty employees, especially Kristin, made fun paper banners and drawings on our chalkboards.

As you can probably see, we had a lot of fun!!! 

Angie's son(left) (my brother) and his boyfriend Dustin came to help us use the machines

Here's the Birthday girl with both of her kids.

The sale was a huge success.  Several people got the one lucky duck in the pond with 30% off!  The cotton candy surprisingly wasn't all over our merchandise at the end of the day.  We fully expected a mess of frosting, cotton candy, and popcorn everywhere but it turned out to be pretty managable.  If you missed it, don't fret, Angie wants to have a Cowgirl theme next year for her birthday so get your boots and skirts ready!

-Lindsay 

Atlanta Market Trip January 2012

Customers always get so excited when I post pictures from inside market so I made sure to take some photos with my phone while we were there.  The major home and gift markets happen in January and July and our favorite is in Atlanta.  We've been to Dallas, Chicago, and Kansas City too but they just don't seem to have as many vendors as Atlanta.
Our trip started with a long line for cabs at the airport!

When you arrive at market, you have to register and get a badge because only people who own or buy for stores can be in the buildings.

You have to plan really, really well at market because it is 3 buildings and 6 million square feet!  There are hundreds of vendors that sell everything from rugs to candles to furniture to jewelry.  You can't take anything with you (except in a special cash and carry section) because the purpose of market is to order for future seasons.  We order all of our Christmas in January and Spring in July.

The permanent showrooms are kind of set up like a store.  You go around with a sales rep and tell them what you want and how many to ship.  Then you give them a shipping date.  Here are pics of a very garden, farmhouse inspired showroom called Park Hill.

We ordered the mirror below and some of the boxwood wreaths.  The lamps were too expensive.

 We ordered this cool clothing rack.  It was super expensive but it will be a great display!!  It's an investment or at least that's what we told ourselves as we were ordering it...

We also got a couple of these dress form lamps.

This showroom also had a section of holiday things.  Very natural and pretty!

We found several good lamps in some of the showrooms.  Here are a few that we ordered.

The chandelier above is a mini version of one we've had before.

Some of the permanent showrooms do really cool and interesting things with their displays.  This one caught my eye.  It's a bunch of chandelier ceiling covers made into a lighting feature behind their counter.  I need to post this on our Pinterest page!

Another permanent showroom had silly things displayed around their merchandise like this fuzzy chair.  Emily decided to stop and give the rooster a kiss!

Our favorite showroom is Creative Co-Op.  They just always seem to have lots of things that we love.  It's always crowded too!  Here are some photos inside.

We ordered the table above even though it was a little pricey.  When you see it in person though, the colors and the finish are so nice looking that we thought it was worth the price.

Got some great curtain panels.

Ordered this cute clock on a stand.

We tried on some silly holiday headbands.

We ordered the New York and Chicago versions of this wall canvas map.

We ordered this tree to hang jewerly from.

We had this burlap ribbon and people kept asking to buy it so we ordered more. 

Another favorite permanent room has mostly holiday items.  They do a great job of displaying them with vintage things!

This place has some of the coolest Halloween stuff I've seen!

In the Bethany Lowe showroom, we decided to do a whole paper theme for our Christmas display in 2012 that will be similar to this look.  We found things in other companies that go with the theme too!

The garland above was designed by Wendy Addison and will go perfectly with the paper theme!

In the temporary areas, we found two new lines of candles and lotions.  Aren't they cute?!

This is what the temporary booth areas look like.

These are usually smaller companies that only set up during the week of market.  I didn't get any more pictures because they're really strict about photos. 

Market was a lot of work and a lot of fun.  We're excited to be back so we can start getting deliveries of some of the things we ordered for right now!  I'll post pics on Facebook of new stuff as it comes in so keep checking back!  See ya!