HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAN!

Happy Birthday to my hard working, loving, creative husband. Today is the day that Dan was born 55 years ago and I am so glad he was!

I am going to copy a blog post that Sandy of Rhubarb Reighn did this past year for Joe's birthday and list 5 things that you might not know about Dan.



#1 When Dan was a little boy he was fascinated with Indian lore and created a pair of moccasins for himself from salvaged leather from their dining room chair seats. His mother had recovered the chairs and that leather was just too intriguing. She taught him how to sew using the sewing machine and by hand. His first salvage project!

#2 Dan's favorite sandwich as a little boy was a ketchup sandwich!

#3 Dan's wood working shop is in a wonderful old industrial building on the second floor! with a huge old creaky elevator lift that all of the furniture goes up and down on. He refers to his work shop as Einstein's Hair! There are all kinds of wonderful salvaged pieces and parts just waiting to become "something".

#4 The antique shop that Dan owned a few years back was called Evergreen Lane, and Evergreen Lane was the name of his Grandfather Meyers farm in Minnesota. Grandpa Meyer was a German Immigrant and it was a beautiful farm. The only thing left standing today of that beautiful farm in the prairie are 2 huge wonderful cotton wood trees out at the road on either side of what used to be the driveway.

#5 Dan is the kindest, most loving, caring, creative, tender hearted man I have ever know and I love him dearly - OK maybe you already knew that!!!!

Fall Glorious Fall !!

This is the view from our front steps today. Fall is truly in full swing. We have had such wonderful sunny days, great temperatures, and we are starting to see some great color. I always love the Virginia Creeper crawling up the telephone pole and wire in this picture.

This great pumpkin colored bin cabinet I just finish making out of old parts and pieces just got put in Eastown Antique Mall this weekend. Bin/Storage cabinets continue to be hot items for us. Any cabinets I can find or make sell quickly.

This wonderful cabinet I just picked up last week. It is a beautiful vintage storage cabinet that came out of a sewing repair shop. I think I already have it sold. Something about all those drawers and storage that seems to draw everyone in for a look.

I have included this picture because the two pieces of wood trim on the right are old vintage casing. The pieces on the left are tongue and groove bead board. The reason I have these piece of trim pictured is because I use alot of that kind of trim in my repuposing projects and I am running low on my shop supply of this kind of wood. If any of you out there reading this have this kind of trim and would like to part with it please contact me.

Now time to get back to the shop and enjoyment of this beautiful sunny fall day!!

Petoskey-Then and Now

We are just loving the Fall feeling and Fall color this time of the year. We both find that October tends to be our favorite time of the year. So we look for any excuse to take drives this time of year. We are therefore pleased to announce that when in a few weeks we are going to be establishing some permanent space in Petoskey,Michigan at The and Now Antiques. For most of the summer we have had items there on consignment but now we will be establishing our own space which will give us a chance to create our own look at yet another location. So sometime in the next week or two we will be doing a drive up north to stock our product. Because the leaves are just starting to change we are anticipating experiencing some beautiful Fall color. Maybe we will even find some pumpkin pie along the way.

The Bluff's in St Joseph

Tomorrow we will be at the last antique show of the season for the Bluff's in St. Joseph, Michigan. We will be set up way at the southern end of the show. A few of the above treasures we purchased at the garage sale of a fellow antique dealer will be there with us. If you are in the area please stop in and say hi. It promises to be a nice Fall day.

More Tennesse State Fairgounds Fleamarket/ Fleamarkets in general, Nashville, Union Shaker Village

Flea markets are interesting places. They vary from your average antique show. Most antique shows are just antique shows. Flea markets can be abit of everything. You name it you can almost always find it at a flea market. Flea market are actually one of my favorite places to shop for antiques. Often, you find people who look like they have emptied out some basement or barn were it looks like their merchandise has been stored from the light of day for 30 years.

The Tennessee show we just went to was no exception. The above picture was one of those kind of booths. Although it was actual cleaner than most booths I like to paw through.

This booth keep changing all three days of the show. They would sell stuff and just kept bring more. The coolest thing I liked about this picture was the great rusty Indian motorcycle in the middle of the picture.

One of our many discoveries at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds was this great booth of outsider art by a woman by the name of T.R. White. We did decided that we loved her style so much that we decided to purchase a small canvas which is now hanging in our home.
The key to shopping any flea market is to get there early and don't be scare to dig. I find every flea market a grand adventure.

However, all of our discoveries were not just to be found at the fairgrounds. We spent one night visiting downtown Nashville.

There are lots of great old historic buildings.

Lots of nods to the thriving country music scene.

As well as one of our favorite Blues artists. The night life is truly something to be experienced with lots of great music and great food.

However, our favorite discovery was a visit we made on the way home to the South Union Shaker colony museum in Kentucky. We have both loved and studied the Shakers for years and both have visited a number of shaker museums.

There was a tranquil spiritual feeling to this place that we both felt and were deeply moved by.

There was a peacefulness we experienced as well as we walked through the buildings that had survived. The museum also houses one of the largest collections of shaker furniture made at South Union in North American

The simple philosophy of form following function was present everywhere.

After we walked through the buildings we walked down a lane on the westerly portion of the community and talked and reflected about our own lives and the show we had just participated in. It was a wonderful way to end our trip to the Nashville, Tennessee State Fair ground show.

Live is short. It is meant to be lived and experienced. Perhaps that is the best gift we can give those around us, to live our lives well. We certainly felt our weekend in Tennessee was well lived and time well spent.

Nashville

We got back from the show in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday. Spent the day yesterday unloading and getting product back into the malls here in Grand Rapids. There is so much news to bring back from our trip that we hardly now were to begin. So we will start with a brief blog this morning and add more this week as we get time.

This was the first time we did this show. It is a very large flea market located on the fairgrounds in Nashville. We loved meeting the people and feasting our eyes on all the many sights and sounds. We can not say enough good about the gracious hospitality of Tennessee folk. People are so warm and friendly in this part of the country. We felt well received and also managed to pick up some really wonderful product. The mannequin in the above picture of our booth at the show we picked up from someone that walked it into our booth the opening day of the show. She is a real beauty.

We sold small items as well as large furniture. Small industrial items such as wire baskets and small metal storage containers completely sold out. Ephemera packets of small vintage items that CJ had assembled were very popular.

This show and the people we meet really won our hearts. However, whenever we do a new show like this we set a minimum financial goal that we have to meet in order to continue to do the show and we are sad to say that we did not meet our goal. So at this point we have decided to not do this show again. We are hoping that some of the people we meet will stay in touch with us and we hope that maybe we have given some of them a good excuse to come north and pay us a visit.

As we get time this week we will also post more pictures and thoughts about some of the people we meet, downtown Nashville, flea markets in general, and a surprise visit on the way home to South Union Shaker village.

Tennessee State Fairgrounds

This has been such a busy week we have almost forgotten to blog before leaving town. This weekend we will not be at Allegan. We have decided instead to do a show in Nashville, Tennesse at the State Fairgrounds. If this turns out to be successful we will most likely do it all winter. The show begins this Friday and runs thru Sunday. As we get time we will post again this weekend and hopefully have more pictures.