Calm after the Storm

Finally!

A new shot of the storefront courtesy of the wonderful Shawn DeSalvo.

Shawn and his gorgeous wife Marta brought along some friends and a camera to last night's shindig and, moments ago, Shawn emailed me a link to some great pictures he took of the action at our Open House.

Thank goodness he did too, because I didn't take any!

I know. Not like me.

As I eluded to last night before bed, this year was our very best Open House yet.

We had steady customers, lots of minglers and plenty of Christmas cheer.

I'm always amazed at the generosity of my customers, friends and Mill Street neighbours.

Don St. John (of Don's Meat Market up the street) came by just after 6pm with a platter of cheeses, meats and olives for me to share with my customers and staff.

So unexpected and so much appreciated.

I would bet dollars to sausage links that Don doesn't read my blog, so I'll be sending him a proper "thank you", but I thought I might send him some virtual props as well.

If you like meat, and you like nice guys, go to Don's.

He's right beside the Beer Store in Almonte.

Perfectly located if you ask me.

Another customer brought me a flower. A red gerber daisy with gold twigs and red baubles tied to the stem.

She works at The Blossom Shop in Carleton Place and though we've only met a few times in the store, she's one of the more thoughtful people I've met.

Who gives flowers to strangers?

So nice.

I'm going to have to pay that one forward this week.

There's lots of tidying up to do in here today, so I better get to it.

But first, let me leave you with a few pictures from last night.

Thanks again Shawn.

Emily

Tonight

Success!

Thank you to everyone who came out tonight.

We came really close to doubling the sales of last year.

Thank you to my fabulous, patient staff for being (and looking) so lovely tonight.

Thank you to the gorgeous Josie for helping Em man the wrapping station.

Your friendship means so much to me. Who knew I could love you more than I already do?!

And thank you to Shawn for taking the pictures that I will post as soon as I get them.

For now, I'm off to bed.

xo Em

Party Day!

Oh my gosh I'm tired.

Yesterday was another busy day.

Drama-filled busy to make things worse.

It'll be fine. The store will be beautiful, and you won't know what's missing (if it is), but the furniture which should have arrived early this week, still isn't here!

I had to call the vendor as well as the delivery company about 7 times yesterday making threats and hissy fitting left and right until finally they agreed to send a truck to Almonte today.

First they said the stuff would be here Tuesday.

Then Wednesday, then suddenly MONDAY (I'm pretty sure I went through the five stages of grief and loss in the process) and that's pretty much when I lost it.

So I hope to SANTA that the pieces arrive in time because until they do, everything that isn't already on a shelf, is on the floor in the middle of the shop.

Including Clementine.

I really need to find a shelf for her.

Fabulous Andrea Fabricius came to help today and I put her to work in an area I knew she'd enjoy.

Jewelry!

Just look at the gorgeous display she created with all her merchandising know-how:

We've never had so much jewelry at one time! And we're still waiting (of course) on another new line of silver stuff from a company called Far Fetched that I hope hope hope comes today.

The next time I post I hope it's about how awesome tonight was and how the furniture arrived with more than enough time to prettify them and how I had to close the shop on Saturday because we ran out of merchandise...

Hope to see you all tonight!

Emily

"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