The Quiet Still of Morning

I should be getting ready for work, but with my girl still sleeping I am choosing to enjoy my coffee and pet my cat in the quiet, peaceful morning. I don't get many moments like this anymore. Ones where I can sit with my thoughts and...and she's awake.

I've been feeling creative yet stifled in my creativity at the same time lately. On one hand I do feel the creative pull. I have ideas spinning in my head, I send myself emails during the day of to-do lists for when I get home, but once I get home I have a hard time focusing on things that will help my business move forward. I'm hoping that once my roommate moves out and we turn his room back into my office that I will be able to focus more. It's hard to run and expand a business when there is no dedicated space for it and my home just ends up cluttered with paperwork, paint projects, and the inevitable toddler toys everywhere. Not to mention, my roommates furniture is HIDEOUS. Talk about sucking the creativity right out of you.

On Mother's Day I went to a class at my local art gallery called "Shifting your Consciousness and why this is important to do." We spent a lot of time focusing on being awake and present in your life. Not letting other people make decisions for you, and listening to clues your body and the world are giving you. We talked about journaling in general and one aspect of journaling that we spent a lot of time discussing was our dreams. I admit that I've been bad about writing anything at all since then. I'm using the excuse that I had the market coming up and just haven't had time. I have had some really interesting dreams since the class though that have gotten me thinking. The latest one was I was sitting in a classroom with my friend and my forearm started itching. I absentmindedly scratched it and felt something strange. I looked down and I had feathers growing out of my arm. I was growing wings! They were very new, soft, baby feathers and when I looked over at my friend, he was noticing the same thing on his arm. We were the only ones in class noticing this sort of thing so we tried to hide it. That was the end of that dream. I never really remembered my dreams before this class, but I never paid any attention to them either. The ones that I'm remembering now have definitely given me insight into what I'm doing with my life and the direction it is going. It's interesting and a bit scary at the same time.

This post isn't really about anything in particular. Just mostly a brain dump. Maybe my journaling needs to happen on my blog instead of in a notebook for me to be comfortable with it? I'm not sure, but if feels good to get this off my mind. Does anyone else journal or even pay attention to your dreams in regards to your life choices? Have you had any enlightening ones lately?

PS- Yes my face and my header are missing from my blog. I shouldn't play around with things that I don't know how to fix :/

xoxo

The Tragic Tale of a Beautiful Hutch.

 There once was a beautiful french provential style hutch. It had amazing legs, beautiful details, and the most gorgeous curves you could imagine. She wasn't found in such pretty condition though.

She was found sad, dark, and dated. There was a girl who fell in love with her though. The girl could see through the chunky hardware and the ugly speckled wood. The hutch was much more than the girl's furniture budget would allow, but the girl couldn't stop thinking about this hutch. The girl dreamed about breathing new life into her so she made the decision to buy her. She had to rescue the old girl.

So the girl brought her home and breathed new life and beauty into the dated old hutch.

She spent hours upon hours painting the biggest piece of furniture she had ever worked on. She took it and put it on display for the world (ok, just my small town... getting ahead of myself here) to see. Other people fell in love with her. She caught the attention of many, but unfortunately didn't find a home. 

So she was packed up and taken back home. Except on the way home a tragedy happened. The worst sound to hear when hauling beloved furniture home. Broken glass. Blood, sweat, and (now literally) tears went into this beautiful hutch which was now no longer a hutch. It was now reduced to a...

Buffet?

We'll see what she ends up as, but yes, the whole top half of the hutch came tumbling to her death on the highway on the way home from our market on Sunday. It was horrible. We don't really know what happened exactly, but there's half a tie-down and a lot of glass now on the side of the road that I have to drive by twice a day!!! I suggested that we put a RIP cross at that spot on the highway and I'm still seriously considering it. There were a lot of tears, a lot of curse words, some fighting, blaming, apologizing, and making up. Now I'm at the point of trying to come up with ideas on how to salvage this beauty. She has a story and she still needs a home. I love her.

xoxo

Secrets Revealed!

Hey guys! Sorry for so much suspense in the last post! I have some great news though! One of the two "secrets" that I was crossing my fingers for came true and the second "thing" should be either tomorrow or early next week!

So the first thing is I was accepted into three vintage shows this fall and early next year! I'm getting back into the show ring full time and I'm so excited about it! My dream is to not have to work anymore and support myself and my family with my furniture refinishes. This is step one towards that dream. Step two for me is expanding my business which as of yesterday will start happening this fall. I'm going to become a retailer for American Paint Company and will be teaching furniture painting workshops at Rising Sun Gallery and Art Studios in Fallon, NV! You guys.... I could not be more excited with the direction my life is headed. After such a rough time last year with the closing of my boutique, I am just so thankful for the timing of people coming into my life. I'm working very hard to get back on track and it is paying off.

What this means for this here blog? Well I'll probably be posting about as often as I do now. Hopefully a little more because of the projects I will be working on, but I am still working a full time job, will be starting online school in the fall, raising a toddler, and now this. The shows and workshops will be spread out enough that it shouldn't be too stressful with some time management, but I'm a terrible procrastinator so I am going to have to keep myself on track. I want to keep this a lifestyle blog and not only a furniture refinishing blog because I've enjoyed that style so far, so there will still be ootd and decorating posts here and there. 

My roommate is also moving out (hooray!) so the home renovations will be full steam ahead. His bedroom will be turned into an office for both the boyfriend and I. My garage will finally be empty as well so we can set up our table saw and really start pumping out the work!

So here's the show schedule through the end of the year and into the beginning of 2014:

May 18&19, 2013 Spring Block Party Fallon, NV

October 12, 2013 Roses and Rust Vintage Home & Garden Market Redding, CA

November 15&16, 2013 Junk Salvation Puyallup, WA

February 1&2, 2014 Junk Salvation Hillsboro, OR

I'll be changing the link up at the top that says "Thrift Wish List" in the next few days to reflect my show schedule and painting workshop schedule once we figure out the dates for those and I'll keep you all posted on how things go!

Thanks to those of you lovelies who have stuck around through this journey with me. If anyone would like to swap ad space, I would love that. I would REALLY love to swap ads without passionfruit and just leave the ads up on my sidebar without the renewal stuff. I always forget to renew ;)

xo

In-Progress and my Next Show

I've been a busy little bee lately. There's so much I want to spill right now, but I have two things I'm crossing my fingers over and don't want to jinx them from happening if it doesn't work out the way I'm wanting. Besides psyching myself up over unsaid excitement (sorry for teasing!), I've been working my fingers off getting ready for my next show. It's just a small one, but it's perfect for getting back into the swing of things. If you are local, here's the Facebook event link. 

1. My work space gets smaller and smaller as I get closer to show time. 2. Furniture in different stages of painting/waxing/distressing. 3. New stickers from Vistaprint to use for packaging up orders from @paintedtrailershop on Instagram! 4. New business cards from Vistaprint. I ordered these on a whim and wish I would have thought them out more and paid more attention to spacing, but I got 250 cards for free so they'll do for now.

Do you have anything exciting coming up that you can actually talk about?!

xoxo

First Attempt at Milk Paint

This is the first piece of furniture that I picked up after I got back to Nevada. It's not really anything special, but the store I'm consigning with had it outside under an awning forever so it wasn't getting any attention and it was a weird combination of blue with purple knobs. The owner asked if I would buy it and fix it up. I agreed thinking that she would sell it to me for something like $5 since that's about all it was worth. She wanted more and I was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. I needed furniture to start consigning with her and all of my good stuff is still in storage in California. I bought it and decided that even though I would LOVE to put some pretty knobs on her, I wouldn't be able to make much (or any) of a profit if I did that between what I paid for the dresser and my consignment fees. I had, however, just ordered some Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint in Ironstone. I decided I would use that and figure out something to do with the knobs after I saw what kind of chippy effect the milk paint gave me. I watched all of the videos and read several tutorials on how to mix and apply the paint, but for some reason I just couldn't get it to mix well. It stayed clumped at the bottom and turned out to be more of a white wash than a paint. I really wasn't happy with it at all at first and was thinking about painting over the whole thing. I actually posted a picture on my Instagram of the new paint color I was about to apply and that picture got me doubting myself. Maybe it still looked really cool even though it wasn't what I expected. My IG buddies confirmed my doubts. They all said to leave the blue and now I'm happy I did. It still isn't what I thought it would be, but it has a really cool look up close. I waxed it yesterday using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Clear Wax and it feels so smooth. 

I still have plenty of the milk paint left over so I plan on watching the videos again to see what went wrong and giving it another go. I can't wait to take this back to the boutique!

xoxo

New Grass on Earth Day. How Fitting.

When I first bought my house back in December of 2010 it had full green grass in the front and back yards. At the time (and still actually) I didn't own a lawn mower so my awesome neighbor helped me out with mowing the front, but the back became an overgrown mess. I moved out of the house and to California in August of 2011 and had a landscaper come and clean up the back and turned the house over to a property manager to rent it out. If you've followed this blog for a while then I'm sure you have heard me mention my wonderful (insert sarcasm) property managers and the renters they had in my house. During the course of the 8 months that the renters were in my house, a ton of things went down and at one point I was asked by the property managers if I wanted to re-sod the lawn because they had a "bad winter." It turns out that only my house had that bad winter and every other house in the neighborhood had a great looking lawn. I also found out that the renters had been complaining about the sprinkler system being broken, but that message was never relayed to me.

Fast forward to last weekend while I was in California visiting family and this picture was sent to me. That is the boyfriend's (oh yeah, I haven't mentioned him yet!) brother and 2 of his nephews raking up my now dirt yard (with wonderful little pieces of trash everywhere) and pulling up the mesh that they lay under sod.

These ugly little bushes were planted by the previous owners. I hate them.

The boys had planned on planting grass that day, but ran out of time and the next day when I got home we woke up to snow on the ground. The grass had to wait.

The boy out tossing grass seed on the watered dirt.

Now fixed sprinkler system watering the grass seeds! If you look at the left side of the walk-way, those ugly bushes are gone too! Now I just need to order some flowers for the walk and for inside of the little retainer wall to the right of the porch. The tree was planted after the sod was put in so the roots weren't able to grow underneath the mesh and are now exposed so it will be getting ripped out and a new one will be planted soon. How fitting that it is all happening on Earth Day!

xoxo

It's Show Season!

So the spring vintage fair season is now in full swing. I went to California this past weekend to visit with family and not-so-coincidentally the Roses & Rust Vintage Home and Garden Market  was the same weekend. If you are "in the know" with vintage shows then you should be aware of this one. It has been named one of the top 25 and even one of the top 10 "romantic" flea markets in the country. I have been lucky enough to be a vendor there twice and plan on vending again this fall.  I have a small show coming up next month and after taking just about a year off of shows, I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. 

I was thinking of all the prep work involved in vending these shows with such large (literally) inventory and remembered this guest post I wrote back in 2011 for Julia at 551 East Furniture Design and thought I would share it here. You guys should also check out her work. She's amazing. 

Julia wanted to know about markets and thought her readers might like some insider tips as well in case the thought of having a booth has passed through their head. She asked if I could write about how to find the right ones, how to prep, how to price, and any lessons learned. I hadn't even thought that people might like to know these things so when I read that, all I could think was... FUN!

A lot goes into the prep work for having a booth at a market. I am still new to this in terms of industry standards, but here are some things that we have learned thus far.

1. Finding your 'niche' market

Research, research, research. I spend so much time figuring out what markets will suit me well, how many people have come to past shows, and looking through vendor pictures to find out if I would "fit" well. Facebook has been a great resource for this as well as other more local vendor blogs. One page on Facebook that has really helped me is Flea Markets Northwest. The title is pretty obvious, but they place markets on their calendar regularly and I have been able to find who to email about vendor spaces through them. I'm not sure what kind of pages might be in other areas, but it's worth checking out.

The Sweetspot sign was a yummy cupcake vendor behind us

Another great way is just as easy as word of mouth. The first show that I started seriously thinking about vending at was Roses & Rust in Anderson, CA (now Redding, CA) and I heard about it a small show last year in Fallon, NV while chit chatting with a vendor there. At the time, I didn't have any inventory and getting a resale license hadn't even crossed my mind, but I loved her booth and knew that I would love having my own. So I googled Roses & Rust, found the email address and contact number and started making calls. Once I got accepted, I knew that was my chance to do what I loved and from then on all of my effort was put into finding more. It's an addiction!

2. Time to prep!

Once you're accepted into a show, it's time to start planning. I'm a last minute gal and have been known to work until midnight the night before and get up at 3 am the morning of a show to finish up last minute projects, but there is a lot of prep that goes into it.

The first thing that needs to be done is to figure out the direction in which you want your space to look. It needs to look inviting and like the customer is walking into a little boutique. At the Roses & Rust show our big pieces of furniture where a french settee and a couple dressers, so we wanted the space to look like you were walking into a living room.

That's Nana on baby duty in the background. She was so little then!

Going through the rest of our inventory, we noticed that we had a lot of small kitchen items so for the next show we wanted to go with more of a kitchen theme.

The key to sanity with this is organization. I am the queen of list making and for the Gathering presents Vintage Country Flea Market I had 4 lists going through the week prior. Yes 4. Front and back. It's important to keep track of everything that's already completed, things that need finishing, and what needs to be done from day to day so that it is all ready to go by show time.

When set up time comes we focus on placement of our bigger items first, then filling in the blank items with our smalls. There also needs to be a good flow space to walk around and be able to look at everything.

Nana was on baby duty again!

3. Show time!

The day of the show can be a bit hectic in the beginning. We try and make sure the truck is packed tight the night before, but there is always some last minute thing that needs to be thrown in so we can head out the door bright dark and early. Once we arrive, it's all about making our space picture perfect and getting everything priced. When I say getting everything priced, I mean E-VERY-THING. A few times I have made small props that I thought would just be decorations and people were interested in buying them. We now make sure everything either has a price or a NFS (not for sale) sticker.

Next? Relax!!! As soon as the start time rolls around, it is time to relax. If you are still buzzing around your booth trying to get last minute things done then people will not want to come in and look around for fear that they will get in your way. Of course, this is the complete opposite of what you want to happen! People need to feel welcomed in your space and need the chance to be able to browse around at their leisure.

Having a friendly and inviting attitude and demeanor are also hugely important. I've met so many interesting and creative people at these shows. Strike up a conversation! You never know who might become a great friend, plus it encourages people to want to buy from you! Nothing better than that :)

This is my very first sale at a show! And those are very tired eyes!

All in all, this has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I'm so glad I decided to make the jump into vintage markets.

xoxo