Our {"pop-up-shop"} Country Living Fair 2009

Tidbits of our theatre theme, this "auricula" theatre to showcase prized flower specimens {the history of these date back to the 1700's} was made for our booth. {We used the theatre to set the stage for our puppets by Wendy Addison} Special thanks to a cousin who had these finished the week of the show. Made of cedar along with the towering obelisk planter 2 pics below, these are made for the outdoors.
Thank goodness this year we had an entrance and an exit, as last year you went out the same way you came in = traffic jam. Every year you fix things to make it better for you & your customers. One thing about being so busy is you are not on the selling floor helping the customers, no room first of all in a tent space & you feel like you're not getting to know the customer. Also, there is little time to do our wrapping the way we like it!
1st day of the show, bright & early. We thought the early bird buyers were allowed to be in by 8:00 am & we hoofed it to Lowes to buy Oak trees and boxwood. Out- of- breath we undid our tents to find out early bird pass was for 9:oo am. Oh, well at least we were able to finish things up that extra hour!
Evening before opening day........7pm & setting up "our pop-up-shop" since 12:30 that day. Thank goodness for Chipotle for giving us nourishment for dinner! Sun was shining in our tent and the paper bags of ribbon was yummy.
A little of this & that, merchandised from floor to ceiling in our "petite department store style"!

Wow, our 10x20 tent was packed so full we didn't even get all of it put out!
Haberdashery area........{didn't take as many photos as we would've like, that's what happens when your tired!}
The burlap pennants added a festive touch, perfect at a tent event.........
Our tent was more neutral this year and we loved it. There was a few subtle bursts of color here & there.
Wendy Addison's hand done goodies!
Vintage costume.........
We were able to locate a 30 meter roll of grain sack fabric. Thank goodness for a dear gal who searched through her warehouse and had it to us 3 days before. Oh, the red stripes!

Thanks for all the help, Grandma Karen, McKell, & Barbara......even though it was hard to work in our cramped sales clerk stations we had a ball!

Fun people got to meet in person: Jeni Bowlin, Tara Wilson {Texas gal}, & other lovely bloggers!

Thank you to all of the support............

W is for Winner & Willow Nest

Here is our petite token for our 10 years in retail our favorite paper, over sized and can be put on foam core. Your local framer can do this for you around $11.00,we like to put grommets at top to put ribbon. The border around paper is a lovely robin egg blue, all the colors are very antique looking. Enjoy Gretchen, please e-mail me to get your address!

{Recent article of Willow Nest, Country Home March 2007}

Our new friends: a husband & wife team, Ludmil & Linda Marcov of Willow Nest.......we had read about them in the late 90's in a magazine. They set up their lovely booth at this year's Country Living fair. She has so much experience and loved hearing her wisdom. Kara's mother purchased 2 lovely French sheets from them. Oh, we do hope to run into them again someday! They set up at Marburger in Texas. Thanks, Linda for all your understanding, you're a dear!

Goal this week is to have all new products on our website by Friday......time to get this task accomplished! Thanks for your kind emails this past week.

k&d

Country Living Fair 2009 {Story no. 1}

Did you know the Spangler Candy Company {since 1906} is located in Ohio? We offered the well-know Dum Dum lollipops as a treat for our customers. Oddly a family came in and told us Mary Spangler goes to their church. She is 90 years old and still runs the church's annual rummage sale and brings candy from the factory for events. We plan to take the kiddos to tour the factory. We grew up with these. Did you? The stories we gather at events across the country. Learning things from other people is a treat in itself.............
Karla, left and Beth next. Judith is missing in this photo, these adorable gals run Bloomsbury Loft in Powell, Ohio. They did an amazing job on their tent space. They have an amazing story of the hard work behind this business. We are keeping our fingers crossed they get to tell you their story in a national magazine. We met them at the first Country Living Women Entrepreneurs Event in Chicago. Since then we both have set up for 3 years at the Country Living Fair. We appreciate them a lot.
Findings---jewelry by Joanna and she is talented! Her work was just featured in Family Circle and will be in Country Living early next year along with home and shop. Her mother, Kathe is involved in gathering goodies for the shop.
Bracelets in a funky, vintage drawer thing-y.
Number bracelet, this is what McKell picked out to buy...........{Darcy's daughter}
Lovely display in Findings booth space...........
Oh, the fun paper goods.
Joanna's mom, Kathe brought lots of Ephemera, vintage goodies and a lot of delightful, petite treasures. They have a shop Summer House in New Jersey. Their style is very edited and museum like. Which we love as our booth is crammed..........so fun to enjoy every one's individuality!
Joanna's bracelets.........just yummy. We sold her bracelets in our shop last year.
Darcy admiring the bracelet that her daughter picked out to wear..........
Kasey from Lola B's Boutique, she has set up the last two years and this year headed to just shop at the Country Living fair. She posted on it here and her most recent post is celebrating her 300th post and is giving away great prizes. Anthro is involved so head over there to celebrate. Cheers to Kasey!

She is kind enough to give us support and called us right before the fair to cheer us on. She knows first-hand the hard work that is involved.

Tomorrow: Willow Nest

k&d

Hooray!

Tent is rented, a flurry behind the scenes~pricing, organizing, piles of catalogs, brainstorming, layouts, business cards printed, what worked last year & what didn't, calling, e-mailing, strong coffee, lists, sketching, cleaning, stacking, replying, stapling, cutting and so many more verbs to bring you a blue ribbon tent at this year's 2009

Country Living Fair.............

Please come and take a peek,

Kara + Darcy

Country Living Fair 2009

Yes, we'll be at the Country Living Fair 2009

Theme:

Habadashary, 5 & dime with a carnival twist

{because if you know us we generally can't make up our minds!}

& of course if you arrive at the tent, we might even have a totally different theme!

We'll make sure to have a grand selection and the tent will be decked out in McMaster & Storm style.....

We have already been in touch with some that want to go

out to eat together in the evening......

The place: NorthStar in the Short North with Jeni's Icecream afterwards!

Contact us if you want to eat with the gang: mcmasterandstorm@embarqmail.com

We'll see ya there!

Love,

Kara + Darcy

CL Fair 2008 Peek Inside our Tent

So much "behind the scenes" at this year's
CL fair and I will let Darcy elaborate.
I'm going to bed, zzzzzzzzz! {k}
{meanwhile}

Please check out these funny blogs

that have a great posting about the fair.
These are our new friends and we're
going to get together somewhere and
not work at all. Shopping and coffee
and lots of it.
Thanks for the memories, ice cream, and dinner!
jeanne at bushel and a peck
beth of chic junk
kasey of Lola B's {she's now moonlighting as a tent representative}

Sad thing is we were either wet with sweat or rain {I'm not kidding either} and so tired during this venue we didn't get pictures of other booths and pics of our evening out. Thank goodness for Kasey and her fancy camera she took care of that. {Hey, Kasey can you send pics of all of us out for dinner and the ice cream photo!}

The day before we head out........

{Think of us while we are packing up the shop today}

Good morning!

It's chilly here this morning in Ohio. A bit snappy, fresh after our rainy Monday night. The corn is turning over to it's bountiful harvest color and even though the days warm up you feel fall in the air. Coffee is steaming hot in my cup and after a good night's rest I am ready to start my day.

One last post before we head out tomorrow. All in all things are going well. As a shop owner I'm amazed at the checking and re-checking of orders. Yesterday I called to see about our shopping bags for the event as they were nowhere in sight yet. The company decided to ship them to Southeast Asia instead. Not really, but they had the previous store listed before us with our address. The FedEx driver didn't recognize this store name and it was sent back. They are going to ship out next day air so we hope they show up today. Shop owners do so much checking on things this leaves little time for posting, taking pics, etc. for our blog.

We are shipping out all orders today. Those of you who were waiting on staplers they have arrived in a lovely shade dark aqua green. This is the only color they sent us and we do have one red one as well that showed up. Refills are back in stock. We will ship out all new orders next Wednesday.

Enjoy your day!

Countdown!

July 29th brings a sudden realization....Country Living Fair is not too far away. Sept 12, 13 & 14th and to us retailers that is in a blink of an eye. BUT, first things first! We are going to enlarge pics that we have left on our website tomorrow! We're going to accomplish this before we upload some fun new products {linens, new petite fleur colors, fun creative supplies, etc}! I hope to have new things uploaded by Thursday or Friday.

August 1st then marks our official countdown to the Country Living Fair 2008! We have lots of ideas that are beginning to bloom in our "back room".
Sara {our talented seamstress} has made a custom pattern for darling________! We are excited about bringing our petite department store to a 10x20 tent at the fair. We'll keep you posted on our creative process along the way!

Also, a congratulatory note to Abby of The Blissful boutique in Canton, Ohio for her successful trunk show she had this past weekend!

Country Living Fair 2007

Ribbon

Our vintage-y cabinet that we added our "bird" & novelties on the glass


Our booth, with some of our hand crafted prize ribbons, which is part of our Trophy Co. line

Country Living Fair 2007

We feel completely humbled by the response to our booth at the fair. We have received numerous phone calls and e-mails from excited customers who would like to venture to our store. THANK YOU! We wanted to bring a taste of our store to the fair complete with our colored tissue. I met customers in the hallway at our hotel, which was booked! Darcy & I went to our van at the hotel to get some things in the evening---every door we passed exuded women's laughter, I think the whole hotel was filled with Country Living fans. Today at the store a customer told us she & her husband was sent to Kentucky to find a hotel, which was booked with a wedding, so turned around and finally someone found them a bed & breakfast with only a twin bed. The couple took it after 2 hours of searching! They were so glad they came (yes, really). Country Living has received unhappy comments but we would like to add they didn't know 3 times the people would show up. We were floored also! Last but not least----to Abby of The Blissful and Rebecca of a la mode design, our friends through blogging, we got to meet for the first time there! I wish we would've spent more time with them, I think a trip must be planned to Canton, Ohio! So glad to meet both of you! (love your new website & blog Abby, it's perfect!)
AND, to the other vendors that we got to meet again after too long of a time:
Judith & Karla of Bloomsbury Loft in Powell, Ohio--where vintage meets modern
Lisa Norris of Made by One Girl in Chattanooga, Tennessee--who states "if it's perfect, I didn't make it!" (we love that)
AND, to the new vendor we met, Rebecca of Rebecca Ray Designs, who designs purses made by the Amish community and was picked by Country Living as one of the "pitch your product" winners held this past March. Watch your magazine as she will be featured in 2 weeks.
Enjoy your week!
Best, Kara & Darcy