"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.

"Christmas Flip" Day Two

Originally it was just going to be me coming in today since I have Clementine in the morning and her daycare doesn't start until 1:30...but after a relatively sleepless night dreaming about what I need to accomplish still, I decided to call in the troops.

Or troop rather, and phoned Colleen to see if she'd come in to help.

When we arrived, the store looked something like this:

A hot mess of Christmas stuff crammed in the middle of the store.

We hammered out quite a lot in the little time we had today.

Since much of the stuff that I order arrived as early as August, as we unpacked box after box, I rediscovered some handsome little devils I had forgotten all about.

Chubby little wooden penguins with kitchen prep bowls to match.

Cute ceramic covered mugs that almost smell like the hot chocolate that awaits them in the near future (all priced to make them perfect teacher gifts by the way!)

Funky retro signs and vintage inspired glass ornaments.

And "whoo" knows what else we'll find tomorrow?!

Only a few more days to prepare for the party.

I'm baking cupcakes as I type just for all of you.

Because what's a party without cupcakes?

"Christmas Flip" Day One

Thank GOD we're not renovating this year!

I don't know how we fit so much work in to one week last year.

Last night (Sunday) Colleen and I met at Blackbird at 3:30 to help Emily (and by "Emily" I mean the other Emily - let's make it clear that I'm not talking about myself in the 3rd person, which can be hilarious, but not always, and oh gosh I must be tired, I'm using commas inappropriately...) start clearing merchandise out of the windows so we could paper the suckers up.

Of course some people think we're closed permanently.

Ugh. Every year we get this feedback. Nevermind the fact that there are about 12 postcards announcing Friday's party in the front window, and cheerful sparkly little snowflakes hand painted on the kraft paper we used to cover them up.

Honestly.

If I'd closed for good, I would have painted something sad or evil on the paper if anything.

Like skull and crossbones. Or little frowning emoticons.

Or at least a happy face with a line through it.

Something far less joyous than glittered snowflakes.

Anyway.

My mom GENEROUSLY offered to take my little 9 month Clembot (it's her very merry un-birthday today) ALL day, freeing me up to meet Col and reek a little havoc on the store.

We started rearranging the layout and building our new displays, which look so adorable thanks to some ideas we've picked up over the past few months.

We cleaned Walmart out of twinkle lights (the white cord was VERY important to me this year and of course they were almost impossible to find. Colleen to the rescue on that one) and are incorporating them everywhere.

Who knew lights could look this cute jumbled up in a jar? Come on.

We found a whole new use for chicken wire.

And we started working our way from the front of the store to the back, loading up the shelves with yummy Christmas stuff.

Just look at all the stuff you didn't know you needed!

It was a great, fun day, but momma is tired.

Clemmie is 9 months old today and I really thought the kid would be sleeping through the night by now.

She. Is. Not.

She wakes up around 12:30am and again at 4:30...and again at 6:30 (if we're lucky enough to have her fall asleep again) and it's wearing me out.

Last night I tried to let her cry out the 12:30 wake up and there was just no winning.

She is SO strong-willed.

She cried for an hour "da da da DA, nuh nuh nuh NUH" (at least get my name right if you're going to wake me up in the dead of night. That's always been a strict rule of mine) until I finally broke and nursed her back to sleep.

I have found a new form of punishment that's working for me though.

A little something I call "humiliation through fashion".

Today I made her wear a onesie advertising her for sale.

You mess with the bull you get the horns Clem.

You get the horns.

And also my purse...and keys...and camera case apparently.

Night all.

Em

Christmasizing

It's Saturday night in the shop and I'm about the shut the doors, but before I do, I wanted to quickly post.

We're closed this week for what I like to call "the Christmas flip".

Tomorrow night after Emily closes for the day (yes, I have an employee named Emily. Just to make things extra complicated when vendors call), Colleen and I are coming in to paper up the windows and get started on the transformation to Christmas.

I love Christmas.

Everything sparkles. Including the customers.

So if you want a peek behind the curtain this week, stay glued to the blog.

Hope to see you ALL here Friday.

Em

Party Planning

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since we closed up shop for our reno.

We're not renovating this year, but we will be making some changes in the shop.

I love this time of year.

We get to clean off the shelves, do our annual vacuum (I know. Gross), spit shine the place and, my personal favourite, get all the Christmas stuff OUT of the back room.

You can't even breathe back there.

There's so much merchandising and Christmasizing to do we will be closing the store Monday November 9th through until the beginning of our Holiday Launch Party (Friday November 13th from 6pm - 10pm) just to prepare.

You're invited by the way.

Bring a friend. Bring twelve friends.

We'll be doing lots of fun stuff this night. Think free goodies, toe-tapping Christmas music, discounts of up to 40% (you'll draw a candy cane at the cash for this one), a little cider (a little rum if you promise not to tell) and holiday cheer in general.

If it's anything like last year, you'll see items here that night that you won't be able to get afterwards.

Thing go friends. Especially the really different stuff.

Like, did you even KNOW we had a huge wall-mounted wire reindeer head last Christmas?

Well we did.

And it was super cool.

And it was sold in the first 2 hours of being on the floor, never to be seen again.

I bought another one this year. Not to mention piles and piles of other great stuff.

Hope to see you here.

Em

Pumpkin Patches and other cute stuff

I FINALLY made some stuff this weekend.

I'm mildly obsessed with putting clips in Clemmie's hair but it's hard to find ones that aren't incredibly dorky.

So I decided to make some.

It's what I do okay?

Since I am useless at crocheting (it truly has become the bane of my existence), I trolled Etsy for cute appliques and, as usual, I was not disappointed in what I found.

I bought a bunch of appliques of all sizes, some dollar store grosgrain ribbon and a ton of alligator clips.

All for about $15.

And then I went to town.

This is just a few.

My favourites are actually the ones I made using the crocheted circles you can see in my supplies shot.

They are to-die-for-cute and I am SO going to sell them in the shop.

I may even hold a little workshop in the new year.

Colleen and I have been brainstorming (also as usual) and I think this could be a fun way to generate a little additional revenue during slower retail months.

But I digress.

Hey. Want to see a happy kid?

We took Clementine to the pumpkin patch this Sunday, and the girl loved herself some fall fun.

We toured the chicken coop...
Explored the corn maze...

Went on a hay ride...

And screamed at some pumpkins.

This last shot I took thinking I should try to take the same shot every year so we can watch her grow.

She doesn't look it really, but she's actually crying in this picture.

After I took it we realized we hadn't changed her diaper in about 5 hours.

Excellent.

Last on the cuteness list, shop stuff.

My friend Melissa designed me an adorable little logo to use on some reusable bags.

Yep. Blackbird has jumped on the reusable bag bandwagon finally.

Free with purchases over $50, or $2.99 each, we'll donate $.10 to the Almonte General Hospital every time you use one of these bags, or opt not to take one of our paper bags.

And that's it!

Christmas arrives here November 13th so stay tuned for info about our Open House, or join the mailing list at www.blackbirdshop.ca.

Regretsy

I have a new favourite website.

Meet Regretsy.

As you know I LOVE Etsy, but along with all the fabulousness, there's a lot of wacky shit on that site.

For example:

The life sized pizza brooch.

I thought I liked pizza as much as the next girl, but I guess that's really only if the next girl isn't wearing a freaking BROOCH in the shape of a slice.

(ps.anyone else hate that brooch has 2 o's? I don't know how I'd like to spell it, but it just looks so pretentious with that extra o.)

The best part? I found it in the SOLD section of Regretsy.

Someone bought this! Granted, it was only $7, but you could buy a slice of REAL pizza for $7.

A really good piece too.

Maybe even a little side salad.

There are some pretty sick items on this site too.

Like a pillow with a silk screened uterus on it, a lapel pin made from a real turtle foot, and a "real" mounted, taxidermy stuffed black unicorn.

Barf.

Who would kill a unicorn!? They're so rare!

I wish I had a picture of my friend Josie's "regretsy" to show you. (I'll add it if I can find the picture on my home computer - Found one! What you can't see is that the dress isn't actually zipped at the back, and those gorgeous fake flowers are hiding the best part, but at least you can get an idea of the quality of the fabric. Jos, please don't hate me for posting these!!)

A few months ago she bought what looked like a gorgeous wedding dress on Etsy for something like $150 US.

The pictures online showed a beautiful bride running through a busy city street wearing this gorgeous frock.

About a month later the piece of garbage showed up looking like an upchucked wedding cake...only acrylic.

Honestly.

It's atrocious.

The fabric is so cheap you'd be nervous to be in the same house as an open flame, and the sewing is wayyyy off.

The bust is all akimbo and there are seams in places there should be no seams.

Not to mention boobies.

The bright side of this story is that we definitely got at LEAST $150 worth of laughs out of the thing.

And it'll make a great addition to her kid's dress up trunk someday.

Anyway. Enjoy.

It's the write ups below the items that make this site hilarious beyond hilarious.

Welcome to my new addiction.

Em