Bunting

This week a woman came in to the shop and told me my window display was ugly.

Okay.

What she really said was that she almost thought she had the wrong store due to the lack of anything interesting in the windows.

She's not wrong I guess.

Coming up short on the bedside manners perhaps, but not totally wrong.

If only she knew how many things were higher on my list of priorities.

In my defense, it's kind of a strange time of year.

I JUST did my fall display. A few items had sold out of it and it was looking a little sparse, so I had begun cleaning it out thinking I might do a Halloween something...but gosh.

That's a lot of work for only a couple weeks of display time.

I don't want to be lazy though.

I don't care how busy I get, Blackbird has to keep up with appearances.

I LOVE doing my window displays, but I do wish there was a window fairy, or a bunch of elves or something who could come in the night and take that one off my plate for a while.

Any volunteers?

(Seriously. I know some of you are designers. Want to come do my windows once and a while? Could be a fun way to advertise your business.)

Colleen and I are on a major bunting kick right now (expect to see an overload of it at Handmade Harvest), and since the craft show is just around the corner, I thought I might take advantage of the prime advertising real estate, and deck out the windows craft show style.

I zipped over to Textile Traditions after work and picked up a bunch of fat quarters (Kelly has amazing fabrics over there. If you've never been, that shop is an Almonte gem you should really check out) and promptly took them home to chop them up into little bunting triangles.

I had my assistant hand me triangles as I furiously sewed, and in no time I had yards and yards (and yards) of adorable bunting for my "atrocious" window display.

Ta da!

Birch trees and bunting.

I implore you. What could be cuter than that?

Incidentally, it made the perfect backdrop to our Thursday morning photoshoot with Tara from the EMC (local paper). Watch the paper for our article (next week I think).

We're getting loads of great publicity for the craft show.

I hope you're coming! Admission is free free free!

Here's a quick scan of what's in this month's Humm.

You can also find it here (page 15).

On the home front, the renovation of our back room is finally finished!

Save for another coat of paint. But I'm not waiting around for that to be finished to write about it.

For the time being we're going to use this as a kids playroom so we can de-clutter the family room and contain the madness that is all the toys and books and chalkboards and Play-Doh and kid stuff in general.

I told Brad I feel rich having that room done.

We've never really had more space than we need and it all just seems so excessive and luxurious.

Also, Brad paid for pretty much all of it so it feels like the biggest, best, most awesome present ever.

Now to decorate!

Just so happens one of my favourite blogs just did a big feature on playrooms.

Totally inspiring. Check it out here.

Here's another good storage idea which totally screams "Ikea", but also "doable" which always interests me.

I found it here.

And again with the bunting.

It's EVERYWHERE!

Via 6th Street

Via

Via

Going to an antiquing show with the divine Miss J tomorrow.

I'll be sure to bring the camera!

Em