The last five or six days have been a blur of happy chaos. I was getting ready to build out and fully stock my booth by Friday morning, and then be ready for our inaugural motor home get away on Saturday, as well as one of the grands birthday celebrations.
Let's start with the build out of my booth space for Camas Antiques, shall we?
Wednesday is dealer's night which meant the store closed at 6:00, but all the dealers are able to fluff and fill their booths until 11:00 at night or so. I got my Rock n' Roll Buddy to help me schlep down a ginormous weathered eight foot long white weathered picnic table and benches down to the store, and then down to the basement. It was at this point we realized the picnic set was far to big for my booth.
Uh oh.
We decided to leave it in place, and headed back home, while I would try to decide what to do.
We then hopped back in the car and drove over the bridge to the airport, because The Other Tracey was flying in to lend her creative expertise. (Exciting, I know! It was so much fun, and I am still pinching myself that we coordinated her short, fabulous trip with only six days planning.)
Once The Other Tracey arrived, we ran back down to Camas Antiques to assess the giant table and bench situation, and tackle my ceiling idea for my booth. Agreeing that the table would indeed need to come back home, (After we would use it as a scaffolding for doing the ceiling work) we started with my newsprint with scalloped edges idea, up there by the black painted basement ceiling.
Sadly, what I envisioned in my head did not translate onto the joists of the low ceiling. The paper crumpled, and creased, and refused to cooperate. I tried the rag-tagged shabby twinkly lights with the bad paper and with out, and for some reason, it now more resembled more of a weird Hawaiian lei, or possibly a very long feather boa, but nothing even remotely close to what I was after.
Mildly frustrated and tired, (but having the times of our lives, if that makes any sense at all) we left the shop at 11:00 and headed to my home for the night, brainstorming about the challenges the ceiling presented. The Other Tracey had an idea. (She is a masterful visionary!) What if we replaced the newsprint with a ruffled bed skirt?
Oh. My.
Now you're talkin'.
(She's brilliant like that.)
I squealed as I envisioned it, and, thankyouJesus, I had a spare white ruffled bed skirt in the closet. We left my cottage at 8:00 or so the next morning, and whipped into Home Depot for a staple gun to attach the bed skirt to the ceiling.
Another fiasco, as we managed to have not one, but two staple guns (one electric, one manual) that malfunctioned.
Repeatedly.
Long story, getting longer here, we finally got one of the staple guns to cooperate and ...voila! The bed skirt idea was a success.
The rag twinkle lights were swagged across the beams as well. They looked even better than I had envisioned it to look originally! We both stood back admiring our work far longer than we probably should have, but we were so excited to see it beginning to come together that we couldn't help ourselves.
The Sewing Queen was on hand, (thanks Mom!) busily hand tying dictionary pages together for the side wall with small strips of embroidery thread.(I got this idea long ago from a post Debbie Dusenberry did on her Curious Sofa Blog.)
Before we hung the book pages, we first assembled the left side wall out of shredded sheets, with a printed vintage photo....
and then tackled the book page wall....
(Do you love it?)
We stopped many times to admire our work.
Many times.
Once the ceiling and walls were sufficiently foofified, we lugged the huge picnic table and benches upstairs and outside to sit for the day while we ran to my home to get my truck, loaded with large pieces for my booth.
A couple of trips later we were carrying in boxes and tubs of smaller items. (By this point it was well past 8:00 on Thursday night.)
Friday morning we were up and out the door at 8:00 to pick up some pillow forms at Walmart and get to Camas Antiques by 9:00 to price items and do a bit more tweaking before the anniversary sale began at 10:00.
(We did it!)
I was thrilled when on of the first shoppers in the store bought the charming sofa table across the back wall of my booth just ten minutes after the store opened. (Thankfully, she wasn't taking it until late in the day...) We left to hit a few thrift shops then and circled back to my home to pick up a sweet little wicker desk and chair to replace the table that sold.
We moved the sold table out and then loaded in the desk, and re-fluffed the booth as the store was getting ready to close Friday evening, and we felt pretty tickled with the work we had done.
I know none of this would have come together this way, were it not for my dear sweet friend, full of her over-the-top creativity and killer skills at putting things together in such a charming way.
