"Christmas Flip" Day Three

Panic is starting to set in!

I was expecting four pieces of display furniture to arrive yesterday and, by the time I left at 8pm last night, they hadn't.

Ugh!!

The store is coming along really nicely despite, but it just won't be complete until we have those pieces for the centre of the room.

But let's just focus on the positive shall we?

Our window displays are KILLER!

Sometimes when the store is quiet, I'll hunt the internet for funky product merchandising ideas, store layouts, window displays, signage etc, and I save the images in a file on my desktop.

Colleen and I LOVE Anthropologie and are always striving to give Blackbird a feel that's as eclectic as that of this lovely little shop, so we used it for our inspiration for a lot of our displays this year.

At busy times of year I like to keep merchandise out of our window displays as much as possible to avoid missing out on the sale of something we can't find so, with the help of a few Flickr albums, some folks who share our Anthropologie obsession, and, as always, Sadie and her tool belt, we came up with two gorgeous windows.

We were so in love with them that we decided to take the paper out of our blocked off windows (hanging curtains behind so you still can't see in!) and give you a sneak peek of the level of effort that's going in to this years' Blackbird Christmas.

Andrea (who used to own Fabulous, the shoppe of gorgeous things) helped me do the first one. It's an absolute mess of paper garland.

We almost lost her in the process of making it.

Inside the store...

...and outside the store.

By this time it was quite dark out, so the pictures aren't great. I may try to take new ones today when I get in.

While we were stapling little bits of paper, Sadie was busy on the floor doing this:

What ever is she making you ask?

Why a forest of course?!

This is something I've been wanting to do for at least a year now.

My uncle Steve cut these beauties down for me to use, Sadie and I picked them up yesterday, and she immediately got to work making bases for them.

What can't that girl do really?

Thanks to Sade's perseverance we got both windows completed last night.

I might have called it quits after such a long day, but not her!

This picture was taken just before we put up the curtain again to hide the store so it's a bit distracting, but you get the idea.

Behold the beauty that is our new window forest.

Besides being a busy decorating day, yesterday was also Remembrance Day.

As the parade of Veterans went down Mill Street yesterday, Colleen and I popped our heads out of the store to watch the action.

In doing so we accidentally let this Golden Retriever into the building.

He immediately started running around scoping out the place, winding up getting one of our grass woodpeckers entangled in his tail.

Of course, I had to take a picture.

He was pretty scuzzy looking and stinky, and even once we got him out of the store he wouldn't leave his spot on the sidewalk out front, so we checked his tags and began calling around to the vet, Animal Control, even the Fire Marshall. Of course, on Remembrance Day, everyone is closed so by the time we heard back from anyone, this little guy had wandered off again.

I hope someone found him and is helping him find his family.

I should have let him keep the woodpecker so at least he'd have a friend.

Another busy day ahead.

Let's hope that furniture arrives.