New Year's Blessing for 2013

My Annual New Year's Blessing for You:

I hope this year that you have a life filled with peace and contentment, laughter and joy, love and solitude. I hope you get all that you could ever hope for.

I hope that you will be happy, and that you will prosper at whatever you do, and that your children will experience the same. I hope that you will be in good health, and if you're ailing, that your health will be restored.

I wish your life to be free of serious incident, and that you find provision for whatever your needs may be.

I wish you friends that offer you laughter in your life, and a place to turn for strength when you are in need.

I hope that you will seek out the good in every situation in your life. I hope you will find a way to see the positive in all matters.

I hope you will understand and accept God's will and direction in your life when you think things aren't going your way.

I hope that you will not have to struggle for any reason, but if you do, I hope that you will realize that it is temporary and will not let it get you down.

I hope that you set new goals for yourself, and achieve them.

And most of all, I hope that we can all be better than we were last year. I hope we can all have the opportunity to help others. I hope that we can look at the world a bit differently, and make a difference wherever possible.

May you have someone in your life that you love so much it makes you laugh and cry at the time, and may you be that person in someone else's life.

I hope that you are the person that someone else wants to be like.

I hope that you live your life with purpose.

Wishing you a year of new blessings for 2013.

With Ultimate Sincerity from me to you, Polly

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I am so thankful for all of the friends I have made through my blog.

I have been blessed with many great new prayer warriors in my life, and wonderful new sincere friendships, and people who make me laugh so hard I cry. I wouldn't trade you all for a shiny penny.

THANK YOU for enriching my life, and allowing ME to be a part of yours.

 I look forward to a fantastic new year of blogging together........which I pinkie swear to do more of this year!

Rats, and Bats, and Crows - Oh My! Halloween Mantle

I know I promised you Bella Rustica in the 'next' post, but I had to put that off until I get all my photos organized this weekend. For now, I interrupt that process to show you the Halloween Mantle at the shop.

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Being in retail, you have to keep up with the holidays, and fall is the beginning of all of my favorites. There's so much decorating opportunity - I just love it!

I really wanted a large mantle for my focal wall in the front room so that I could make an immediate impact in the shop when changing out the seasons and holidays. I never could find one that was big enough, so on a whim, I put a call out to my vendors in the chance that maybe somebody had one sitting around I could buy. I got back better than that! Josh from Vinewood Home Creations came through with a mantle his father had built as a display........and it was 6 feet wide and almost 5 feet tall. Did I want to use it?? Well YES please! :)

His dad was nice enough to let us use it for the shop, and in exchange, we'll promote his custom mantles. Sounds like a win-win to me! 

So, I sat about gathering things to start creating a Halloween mantle, and made a call to my handy dandy room stylist vendor, Mary Runger (of Oh So Lovely) and told her to bring what she had in her plethora of goodies, and we'd see what we could pull together overnight. (And it WAS overnight - we finished at 3 am!)

 If you refer to the previous post, this wall is the one that had the pattern paper on it. I started removing the pattern paper from the wall, and after 5 hours (!), I ended up with a wall that had torn drywall all over it. Ugh. Too tired to fix it since it was already 8pm (and we opened at 10am the next morning), I just started covering it up for now. Then we started pulling all of our supplies together and started putting things up at random. That's how the creative mind works, you know. ;) Once we decided the direction we were going and had things pretty much in order, we realized we still had to paint the giant unfinished mantle......so around 11pm we pulled out the paint brushes and got to it.

We got it painted finally, secured it to the wall, and then started putting it all in place. Here's the finished mantle. I'll let the pictures tell the story of the theme....graveyard.

 

A dead bride in her casket.

 Since we are a retail shop, we threw in a jewelry display featuring owls and crosses.

 

 

 Locks and keys and chains. 

There's lots of great jewelry pieces in this great window cabinet.

If you're local (Nashville/Murfreesboro area), please come and check it out.

So, what do you think?

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If you aren't already following our shop on Facebook, please click over and give us a like.

Our photo albums are full of great pictures of what we make for the shop - lots of ideas to be had.

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If you like what you see, please feel free to Pin It!

Linking up to Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage
Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors

More about Blackberry House, the Shop

In my last post I told you I opened a new shop. I kind of sprang that on you without a lot of detail, huh? Well, I'm finally back to fill in the gaps for you.

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I'm going to show you the whole process over the next couple of weeks, but I'm also going to scatter some before and afters in the process to show you what we've been doing, and so I can link up to some of the fabulous weekly parties I've been missing out on.  

Blackberry House - Part 2

I spent many years in Denver, and I always loved looking at the great little shops scattered all over the town. It was my respite to peruse those shops with my friends and get to know the owners and the artists who sold there. I also sat up and sold my finds and creations at the artisan events in the Denver area quite successfully. I always felt that I'd have my own shop one day, I just never knew when, and I especially never dreamed it would be where it is.

Through a series of circumstances, we ended up moving back to Tennessee almost 2 years ago. The only "Denver-esque" shopping I've found since coming back was in a little town named Nolensville. Historic Nolensville has a number of great little antique and vintage shops. I was so excited to find it, and it reignited my desire to open my own shop. I began looking for shop spaces in that area, but my gut kept telling me to stay closer to home. I came close to renting a space in that town, and then that space all of a sudden became unavailable due to some zoning regulations. I decided that if it was meant for me to have a shop, then God himself was going to have to drop a shop in my lap.

AND HE DID. :)
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I am so blessed to have found this particular location.  It's small 3 room cottage, and it has a kitchen and bathroom. In addition to that, I have my own parking lot with 8 spaces, and handicapped parking, a covered porch, and a large deck. It had had the perfect spot for me to have a storage shed placed. What a lifesaver that thing has been!
It has beautiful mature trees and shrubs.
I absolutely adore this little yellow cottage with black shutters. 
I couldn't be happier. And it's about time. :)

Don't worry, I cleaned all that mess up in the fence and I washed down the house.
And I had those green shutters painted black.

I can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to have my own parking lot. 
I had a storage shed put back there.

  It's a 16 x 20, so it's definitely bigger than it looks in this picture.

 

 As you can see, we put it to use immediately. It has stayed packed to the gills every day. 

Only now we have it organized so that we can actually tell what's in there.

Customers ask to shop the shed every weekend.

Love it, love it, love it.

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I'm going to show you a few pictures of the inside on opening day now, and in my next post about the shop, I'll tell you who all the vendors are and more about what type of shop we are, what we offer, and what we're willing to do.

(In the meantime, you can always click the facebook link on the sidebar and check out what we've got in the shop. There's a lot of great before and afters in our photo albums there, and unlike my blog, I DO post on the facebook page almost daily. )

Enjoy the tour!

Seems this table became wildly popular online. :) Took me enough time to paint it!

And to think, it was a total paint accident! Don't you love those good karma accidents?

I'm bring another similar one to Bella Rustica!

So there you have it, your official introduction.
We're a little bit Farmhouse, a dose of Shabby, a smidget of vintage, and a washing of Cottage.
Feel free to pin away! And if you do, please be kind enough to label it as Blackberry House Murfreesboro.
I sure would appreciate it.
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The next post is going to be all about Bella Rustica! We're almost loaded and ready to go. Almost. :)
Look for that post on Wednesday.

I hope you've enjoyed the shop. Be sure to check out our facebook page for much more detail.