SO: I gave notice at the Fayetteville antique mall and prepared my booth with a closeout sale for the months of July and August. Everything is 50% off right now and then, come about August 15th, we’re putting up a 75% sign to try and get rid of what’s left. I have to give a HUGE shout out to my friends Kristie and Barb, who both have a booth at All My Treasures (frankly, the BEST booths in the place) who helped me price stuff there at the end– Barb had me change a price tag on a children’s cabinet that I was selling for half off of $25 to $80 — I didn’t think the cabinet was in near enough decent shape to sell for that price but within three days, it was gone. I feel pretty secure having the two pros advise me on this stuff!! I even got the storage space all cleaned out, which I didn’t think I was going to be able to do; I was trying to figure out how I could get down there again sometime in August to finish up things at the booth and empty the storage space. A few things happened that helped me be more efficient, though: the morning sickness started to seriously dissipate, I was able to fit more stuff into the booth than I thought, both older nieces stepped in to help a great deal, and their superwoman of a mother, Michelle, was relentless with her help despite the fact that she herself is seven months pregnant. “Let one of the girls lift that, Michelle,” I would say, only to turn around to see Hercules heaving some ridiculously heavy object onto her back and tossing it into my car like it weighed nothing. So in the end, I got to close out my storage space and JUST IN TIME: the day after I got everything out, I got a call telling me that a flash flood had flooded my storage space! I was happy to inform them that I had moved out the day before. The girls have promised to accept an hourly wage for going down at the end of August and boxing up what’s left for Goodwill. I was so relieved to realize that I wasn’t going to have to make another 10-hour drive in the August heat that I wasn’t as sad as I thought I would be about giving up the booth.

After Fayetteville, I drove up to see my parents in Little Rock, where my Mom and I did a little antique/thrift shopping. Shout out to Savers Thrift Store (which we don’t have in Chicago), who puts all of their maternity clothes in their own section — none of the thrift stores in Chicago do that, that I’m aware of. I have been sick over the thought of paying full price for maternity clothes since they’re SO temporary (hopefully — for all I know I could still be fitting in to maternity clothes this time next year!) so I was thrilled to find a ton of really good quality thrift store buys. I think I spent around $80 total but got SO MANY outfits — I’m probably set for September and October…I just have no idea how big I’ll be at that point, so I don’t know what to expect. I haven’t said this out loud on the blog before but we are actually having TWINS! I wanted to wait until we were pretty far along since there is always the possibility of a vanishing twin and it just seemed more prudent to wait. So, with twins, as everyone and their mother is all too happy to tell me, you get REALLY REALLY BIG.

Along with maternity clothes, here are a few little things I couldn’t pass up:

I did not get very good pictures of the booth this time around. It was such a quick trip — I was trying to get my business at the booth finished so I could zip over and catch some of Taylor’s soccer game, but I ended up doing a crappy job on the booth AND not making it over to see her game.

About an hour after I did my rush job on the booth, the antique mall called to say my linen rack had fallen — I put a ton of new linens out and had just priced them and arranged them just so. It made me ILL because there was no way I was going to get back there to fix it and I am SUCH a control freak. My amazing SIL and niece Taylor headed back on Sunday after I had left to fix it up — Taylor said Michelle figured out how to tie it to the booth frame so it won’t happen again. I won’t get down there again until after school is out — June 18th — so for now I just have to deal with not having control over it. I knew these were the risks of opening a booth ten hours away from where I live! My own foolish fault.

My friend Kristie’s booth looked AWESOME and I have been doing nothing but kicking myself for not taking a picture — she’s got a lot of mid-century modern stuff in there, all very vibrant, yellows and greens — really Spring-y and different from every other booth in the building. She’s got a lot of owl-themed things right now which are huge in Chicago. Kristie, have you considered moving up here?? Imagine the shopping trips we could go on!

Here’s a quick story to give you an idea of how insanely busy and hectic this trip was — after I flew through the booth rehab on Saturday morning/early afternoon, Justin and I had to run some errands to get some things we needed for the wedding, which was at 5 — my brand new shoes turned out to be missing a rhinestone. Although the rhinestone was tiny, tiny, tiny, it somehow managed to leave a gaping black hole in the buckle on the shoe and even I, who am NOT the sharpest dresser and usually cannot even be trusted to iron my clothes, could not deny that something needed to be done. So we drove to Hobby Lobby, miraculously found a rhinestone the right size, grabbed some Super Glue, and set off for our next errand. For some reason, Justin got mad at me for trying to glue the rhinestone in the shoe while I was driving (I swear, I was doing the majority of the work while at a stop light) and grabbed it away to try it himself. The next thing I hear is cursing from the passenger seat. I look over, he’s Super Glued his thumb and forefinger together. I was in a full metal rage at this point and yanked the car into a parking spot — by the time I put the car in park he had somehow Super Glued his HAND to the SHOE. REALLY?? We need this added to our already stressful day? It took about thirty minutes hunched over a bowl of nail polish remover to detach his hand from my shoe.

Looking forward to this weekend…although it has been rainy and cool here today, I have high hopes that there will be SOMETHING good on Saturday. Hope you all have something to look forward to as well.

I am obsessive with the booth when I visit. I am there everyday, often for hours at a time, moving things around. Michelle has gotten to the point where she can’t even watch me, it drives her so crazy. I don’t know that it would be a good idea for me to be in the same town as my booth — I think I may hide in the corner, spying on people as they shop, frantically replacing each item as it’s purchased.

I love being there, though, and always end up having conversations with the shoppers. That place does the business, let me tell you. Even on weekdays, the foot traffic is unbelievable.

The highlight of this booth re-do was meeting my long-distance friend Kristie in person. She has a booth at All My Treasures too and knows my SIL — she called me to chat about the biz. She’s amazing — she’s running two booths right now in two different malls. I can barely keep up with one. Kristie, you need to start a blog and teach us all how it’s done. She and her daughter Bailey have come across some amazing finds that would make for intriguing blog fodder!

The second day I was there I came in the front door of the shop and saw this:

Great googly moogly, the Vintage Bazaar was a ROUSING success. Take a look at this photo on vendor Study’s website of the line that stretched around the corner for about half of the sale time.  Katherine Raz says that, by the DANK House’s best estimates, there were about 3000 attendees! Amazing! And through it all, Katherine and Libby Alexander stayed cool, calm, and collected — despite the fact that, over the course of 48 hours, they probably never stopped moving for longer than five minutes. Even at the height of the nuttiness, when the place was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, they didn’t appear to break a sweat. I swear to you, I think they were meant to do events like this!

Here’s how it went down for Justin and me: we rented a van on Friday and loaded in to DANK House at 3:30, our scheduled time. Libby and Katherine had managed things so well we had everything loaded into the building by 3:50. When I first saw the space assigned to us I had an awful sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to fit even half of the stuff we had brought in it — but it only took 5 hours for us to get it all shoe-horned in. 5 hours! 5 hours to set up! Meanwhile, the guys of Study came in and set up an amazingly stylish space in 20 minutes flat. So I need some practice there.

For shelves, I borrowed two wooden ladders and set slats of wood up on them. It looked a little less polished than I would have liked but it really did allow for a lot of merchandise to be displayed. It was narrower than the tables at the space and multi-leveled. Here are some shots of our space.

Our booth was in a little room that was right off the ballroom, and because it was enclosed, it got full very quickly. Justin and I spent most of the day on the outside of the room, peeking around the door to watch for when someone was looking for us to pay for something. From about 11:40, when the first customers came through the door, until about 2:30, when I finally looked up, I spent every second wrapping purchased items and taking money. Justin was running around like a madman, helping people with large items and finding more paper to wrap things with. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so overwhelmed. Here’s what our booth looked like for most of the day:

It was exhausting, overwhelming, and completely, utterly successful. Also, really, really exciting to be involved in something that was so HAPPENIN’.

I met a lot of amazing vendors there who also have blogs that I’m a big fan of — it’s almost like meeting celebrities for me! I finally got to meet my blog friend Leilani in person (Thriftaholic and Show n’ Tell), my space was next to the amazing Diane of Fine Diving, and Lisa from Lisa’s Retro Style gave me some very useful selling tips. I took pictures of all of their booths and am working on a post featuring their wares.

Stay tuned for more Vintage Bazaar Reports.

In my last post about the booth re-do I somehow forgot to highlight the adorable hand-made Scottie dogs that my Mom is making out of vintage and felted fabrics.

I’ve been sick for the past week so I’ve lost some serious time in preparing for this — it’s next Saturday! So soon!

And before I close I want to say a big HELLO to my new friends Christie and Bailey in Fayetteville. It is so nice to talk to people who share the same interests (obsessions?). I am looking forward to meeting you in Fayetteville in March!

I zipped down to Fayetteville last weekend to do a quick rehab of the booth. The last time I did this, the second week of December, we had our biggest month yet. Of course, that can probably be attributed to Christmas, but I’ve read that shaking things up on a regular basis can really help with sales. I drove down on Thursday and drove back on Saturday…and felt like I had been hit by a mack truck the day after I got back. My niece Alex was on the basketball homecoming court on Friday so I managed to pack a lot in 24 hours.

Michelle and I are wondering how long we should leave something in the booth before rotating it out — I packed up about three boxes of stuff that didn’t sell this time around. These items have been in the booth since November — about three months — so I figured they should come out…but then I stopped at an antique mall on the way home from Arkansas and noticed that people there leave things in their booth so long some of the ink had faded on the price tags! So maybe three months is a little hasty. I had three vintage cake stands that didn’t sell — and they were priced super low. That surprised me. I thought cake stands were still really collectible.  Maybe this is a case of me loving something so much I just assume everyone does as well.

See the plant stand in the top middle row? I happen to love it. Very 1950s faux-Mexican. Michelle and I had the following conversation about it:

ME: Don’t you love the plant stand?
MICHELLE: Oh, yes, it’s awesome.
ME: How much do you think I should mark on it?
MICHELLE: Oh, I don’t know, that’s a hard question. Something like that is PRICELESS.

And it was at that point that I realized she was being intensely sarcastic. She hates it! She also hates the rustic, rusty, vintage store display rack that you can almost see in the upper right hand photo, in the corner. I LOVE this shelf. I shifted a bunch of our display shelves around, bought a new one from another vendor, and got rid of a few — and all of the conversations about these moves went like this:

ME: I bought a new shelf and I’m going to move it to where the green shelf is and then –
MICHELLE: — we can get rid of the green shelf?
ME: No, I thought we would set the green shelf on top of the cream shelf in the corner but eventually –
MICHELLE: — we’ll put a price tag on the green shelf and sell it?
ME: No, no, I was thinking we could use it for garden items once we get further into the Spring.
MICHELLE: But eventually we’ll sell it, right?
ME: Call me crazy, but I’m getting the feeling that you don’t like the green shelf.

She says it’s dirty and rusty and all she can think about when she sees it are tetanus shots. I told her that eventually I would put a price tag on it, see if we can sell it, and if we do, I WIN.

I’m thinking I’ll go down again for a few days during Spring Break (late March), then again right after school ends. I’m hoping that if I shake things up a lot every two months or so, and Michelle re-stocks in between, we’ll keep things fresh enough to make sure things keep moving off of the shelves.

I don’t know what happened to me, but over the past year, I haven’t been able to say no to a single jar I’ve seen while out thrifting.

My sweet nieces came to check out my booth the day I left Fayetteville. They’re so adorable– they’ve shown so much interest and support during this whole booth process. Alex immediately spotted an awesome pair of 1940s spectator pumps I had just put out that day. “Oooooh,” she said. “I LOVE these shoes!” The irony was, I had picked them up at a yard sale with her in mind, and then second-guessed myself. What 17-year old wants an old, dusty pair of two-tone shoes from the 1940s? Sure, I think they’re cool, but I decided that she probably wouldn’t. So I priced them and put them in the booth.

I was beyond pleased when she was so delighted with them. “They’re yours!” I said, picking them up. “I’ll pay you for them,” she said, earnestly. My heart? Melted into a puddle. A single tear rolled down my face as I took her ten dollars.

JOKING! Of course I gave her a discount.

JOKING! She got them for free. OF COURSE.

Those girls are PERFECT, I’m telling you.

I wonder if my Dad was this thrilled when I showed a love for The Kingston Trio when I was sixteen?

Arkansas was wonderful. For the first four or five days it was above 50 degrees out! I washed my car! It was delicious. It did get cold during the second half of my visit, but by then I was warmed by the love of my wonderful family (AWWWWWWW!). It was a lovely visit, and my nieces are prettier than ever.

So while I was in Fayetteville, I went to the booth EVERY DAY to straighten and add merchandise. I was obsessed. If I lived in the same town as my booth, I know I would be up there on, like, an hourly basis, trying to replace items AS THEY’RE PURCHASED. It’s very addictive.

The plate/platter rack in the far left photo turned out to be a really great tool — it’s hung from the pegboard and my SIL has to replace platters every week — they’re selling like hotcakes! They’re one of the biggest sellers we’ve had so far.

The wooden bowls in the middle photo and the picnic baskets in the far right photo are the other big winners. Originally, there were three different baskets on that aqua chair, and they sold right away. Luckily I had two more in storage to replace them with.

We’re trying to use the hooks and the pegboards wisely — we only have two walls in our space, because it’s kind of a corner space, so we don’t have as much pegboard as other booths.  The space is really small, and we can’t sell furniture in it — there’s just no room. I’m already feeling all anxious to get a bigger space but I think we should stick to what we have for now, since poor Michelle is the sole person responsible for maintaining it. This visit I stuffed it as full as I possibly can, hoping that customers can peel off a whole layer of merchandise and reveal another fresh layer without worrying about too much re-stocking.

It’s still such a learning experience, as I’m figuring out what people will actually buy and what they’re just not interested in. I got obsessed with those vintage baby planters that used to hold flowers for new moms, and was buying them left and right, but not one single one has sold yet. I think they would be so cute in a nursery for holding cotton balls or q-tips, but APPARENTLY I’m the only one who thinks so. So I’ll out the kibosh on buying any more of those. It’s all a learning process, baby. FUN, though.

I got THE most awesome set of dishes in Little Rock. I’ll be posting those as soon as I get photos of them!

I’m busy threading my fancy new Pretty. Quirky. tags in preparation for traveling down to Arkansas to price all of the STUFF that I left in the storage space.

Photos to come of the revamped booth after Christmas! Yay! Can’t wait to get down there and get elbow-deep into the storeroom.