Week 35... The Color of Hoarding

Hi, my name is Valerie and I am a hoarder.  I am so embarrassed to tell you that this is an actual picture of my garage.... 1/2 of it.  The other half is just as bad.  We have never been able to park either one of our cars in this 2 car garage.. .gulp.  In the garage dumping pit, you will find displays, old merchandise, seasonal products, stuff I bought to make things, furniture, etc.  My hoarding is now your gain because starting tomorrow we are participating in the annual Labor Day sidewalk sale in downtown Newnan!!!

Trust me.. you don't want to miss this event going on Friday and Saturday from 9am-5pm.  I will also have a few things in the shop marked down 30%!  Like this wing back chair,

 

gorgeous wood inlay bar,

 

carved mirror,

 

metal starburst,

 

pillows,

 

and a few items from our clothing collection.

 

If you come bright and early... bring me a chai tea latte with soy milk!  I'll need the energy to keep up with you all!! 

Enjoy!!

Making it Pretty.... Unique

The other day I got in two of these beautiful lamps at Gillyweed and thought they were pretty.... but unique???  No.  I have been wanting to try out a project that my friend Niki and I saw last month at the Scott's Antique Market.  These lamps were the perfect guinea pig!!!  Custom lamp finials!!  I mean look at the boring wood ball finial on the before shot.  Definitely not unique.

So at Scott's this wonderful booth had bottle toppers and lamp finials made out of shells.  The bottles were pretty costly and the finials were $20 each.... "You can so make that" Niki said. 

 

 

I thought if I could figure out the toppers.. the lamp project below would definitely be next!

I started by bonding my oyster shells to the existing boring wood finials.  I used Bondo which is an auto repair body filler.  This is a very stinky 2 part epoxy that will glue anything together.  Once the items are bonded, they can be sanded and painted.

For the next step, I dunked the wood ball finial and bottom of shell into a plaster mixture several times to build up the layers.  I wanted to end result to look like coral.  After that I sprinkled sand all over the wet plaster and let air dry.

What do you think??  Next time I think I might try Quickrete instead of the plaster.  Using cement might let me eliminate the bondo step and give the overall finial a more aged look.  In the  meantime, these are perfect and certainly unique.

For your eye candy... here are some more great looking finials.

 

 

Enjoy!!

Day trip to Atlanta

My friend Kenya, owner of Greenhouse Redesign, and I decided to have an adventure last Friday... and boy did we find one.  Have you ever been to South of Market in Atlanta???  Eye candy for the designer in all of us!  Kay Douglass has done an incredible job hunting down the most unique collection of furniture, pillows, architectural remnants, rugs, and lighting all under one roof.  Complete bliss....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
After that we decided to head to My Favorite Place.. I blogged about this gem back in 2010.  Kenya found the most beautiful Spanish plates and batik fabric.  I found some French spice pots and this gorgeous clock case from Seth Thomas!! 

This one is missing the actual clock component but the case is in almost perfect condition.  After researching it online I found that it was built between 1860-1880 and is called a Steeple Clock for its cathedral like towers.  In mint condition, it would fetch $450. Wow- I love finds like that!!  I can't wait to see what we find on our next adventure Kenya!

Enjoy!!

Week 34... The Color of My Hobby

I just love the beautiful colors that are on my paint brushes... doesn't it make you happy too??  Encaustic painting is definitely one of my favorite hobbies and I have many!  I don't call myself an artist because half the time I just wing it.  So I am happy every month that I get about 10-12 people in my "how to" class that enjoy my winging it and together we can whip out some amazing pieces of art.   Tomorrow we are doing this crab painting below.

Class is full for this one but always keep an eye out on the Gillyweed facebook page for upcoming classes.  It might just become one of your favorite hobbies too!!

Enjoy!!

Week 33... The Color of Pomp and Circumstance

Believe it or not I am not the social chick... I prefer to be behind the scenes instead of in the center of it.  Alas one must do the obligatory ceremonies like The Ribbon Cutting when opening up a new business.  I seriously only expected 3 people to come, so I was shocked to see us all lined up in front of the Gillyweed shop going from one corner of the building to the other!! Even Luke made it out of his recovery crate for the special event... btw his knee is much better and will be back to work at Gillyweed next week.  Thank you to everyone that came yesterday.  Joann, with mainstreet, said that the ribbons' colors have special meaning.  Green for all the money you will make and yellow for all the friends you will make downtown.  All the smiling faces above definitely prove the later!!

Enjoy!!

Week 32... The Color of a Song

Several new product lines are now at Gillyweed including this piece from Lyricology.  Isn't it great.. Babe??

Enjoy!!

Peach State Pride

Did you know that there are 30 Olympic athletes at the 2012 games from Georgia??  Wow!!  We continue this week with our 20% off "Made in the USA" products at Gillyweed.... that certainly would include the Peach State Pride shirts, caps, and car decals!

Good Luck to all the Georgians at the Olympics!!

Enjoy!!

Week 31... The Color of Lingering Memories

Last week we spent some time at one of our favorite places... Tybee Island.  We love going here because of its' location (20 minutes from Savannah), great food (The Crab Shack, Uncle Bubba's), great history (light houses and forts) and the amazing beach!

Above is the picture of the smallest light house in Georgia.  The only way to get to it is by boat or jet ski.  We put that on our bucket list for the next visit along with jet ski rentals.  Tybee Island also has the tallest light house in Georgia as well and it happens to be the 2nd oldest in the United States.

Any beach town worth its' salt has an over sized shark for photo ops!!

One of our favorite hang outs is The Crab Shack on Tybee Island.  This place is as entertaining as the food is delicious.  It houses several alligators that you can feed with old fashion fishing poles, has a cat sanctuary, rescues exotic birds, and has the most unique drinks!!  Here is my BFF for the night "Monkey-Rita".  She was goooooooooooooooooooood.

Brice fooling around with the alligators.. this one is not real of course.

 

This is our 4th trip to Tybee and each time we try to discover something different.  Last time we explored Fort Pulaski which was incredible.  This time we decided to take a dolphin tour.

 

My handsome man Brice.

 

Olivia with Grizzly Adams... my husband decided to go the whole week w/o shaving!!

 

We did see lots of dolphins circling around the shrimp boats.

We played on the beach a lot this time around.  The wind happened to be just right on this trip because the waves were so high.  This brought the surfers out in droves.  In all my years going to the beach in Florida, I have never seen actual surfing.  Brice just stuck to the boogie board and Olivia worked on her tan.

 

We did discover a new restaurant which has quickly become one of my favorites called Tybee Island Social Club.  I can totally picture a 2nd Gillyweed store near them but with $6 gourmet tacos, I think I would weight as much as a whale!!  They were so good!!

The tacos that I gobbled up are:

FISH:   White fish with a crispy strip of bacon. Pear Puree with chorizo and fresh cilantro.  Ride’n a corn tortilla wave.

ORANGE PORK:  Boston Butt rubbed and roasted in orange zest and stripped in da goodness topped with carmelized onion, raisin, banana pepper, garlic aioli, toasted chopped almonds and cilantro

 Now you can see what I am talking about... YUMMY!  Once we left Tybee, we toured around Savannah for a few hours and then we headed to Macon for the Junior Tennis State Championships.  Here is our amazing team!!

 

 Amazing indeed but frankly, not very lucky.  Technically we should have been in the intermediate category but we were placed in the advanced category instead.

Our team (Chenowith) came in last place, everyone beating us by a landslide.  But I wanted to be a proud mama here and point out the little number "1" on team score sheet.  That # 1 belongs to the "individual win" category and thanks to this little girl, the team was able to win one game!!

 

You rock Olivia!!