Just Peachy

Is it crazy to be in love with a peach tree? Does it make me eccentric or a bit wacky? It hasn't been an easy relationship. We've certainly had our issues. I've put up with years of sporadic commitment issues from my tree. One year it would produce 3-4 big juicy peaches. What can you do with only 3-4 peaches? Another year it would be loaded with peaches and I would get my hopes up that it was finally going to be the peach tree of my dreams. But, the peaches wouldn't swell and I would be stuck with a bunch of scrawny little fruits.

Like all relationships, ours just took time. Even though Jeff, at one time, threatened to cut my tree down and replace it with a better one, I was patient. My constancy has paid off and this year my peach tree has rewarded me with about 100 beautiful, plump, juicy peaches! It makes me happy just looking at them! Hopefully this is just the beginning of a bright (and delicious) future for us.

Change is Good!

So Jeff and I tried something new this last weekend. We've shopped at Antique Faires many times, but we had never sold at one. On Sunday we stepped out of our quiet, sheltered, little shop into the hustle, bustle and WIND of the Alameda Antiques Faire. We loved it and I've already booked us for next month! Now I've only sold there once and I'm certainly not an expert, but here are my words of wisdom if you ever decide to sell your wares in Alameda:

1. 4:00 am (set up time) comes early. No caffine the night before!

2. As you're setting up in the dark, don't forget to gaze across the bay at the city of San Francisco all lit up. It's beautiful!

3. Going along with #2, when set up is over, sit and have your coffee while watching the sunrise. The bay and SF look beautiful again.

4. Portapotties are possibly the worst invention of all time. It's a terrible dilemma to need coffee (remember 4:00 am set up) and only have portapotties available. Uck!

5. Don't rely on the spf protection in your moisturizer and foundation to protect your face from a sunburn. It doesn't work.

6. Don't assume that all chapstick has spf protection.

7. Sunburned lips make you look like you've had collagen injections.

8. Spending the day with your favorite guy, lovely views, selling & chatting with interesting people, shopping for antiques and stopping for a nice dinner on the way home = can't wait for next month!

Buried Treasure

I love estate sales. Jeff likes them too, although he doesn't like getting out of bed early on a Saturday. I prodded him out of bed at a terrible hour this morning to go to a sale that had received a lot of hype, in an older, well-kept area of Sacramento. It was good. I picked up a few pictures, some vintage linens and some cool jewelry. Not a motherlode, but I would have gone home happy.

Heading back toward Lincoln, I hopped onto Jeff's Blackberry and found another estate sale in a very different area of Sacramento. On our way, we passed multiple, patrolling police cars, bars and check cashing centers. We arrived, locked our truck up tightly and went inside.

I wasn't expecting much and I pretty much got what I expected. After walking through the house, we were going out of the garage empty handed when I noticed that Jeff wasn't with me anymore. I turned around and noticed him looking intently at a pile of suitcases. A drawer pull under the luggage had caught his eye. Buried beneath the heap was this beautiful buffet. It has all of the orginal hardware, dove-tailed drawers, naturally distressed paint (in a great color), a velvet-lined silverware drawer and is in excellent condition. I was tempted to crawl on top of it and yell "MINE" before anyone else could see it. It turned out, that wasn't necessary. There were very few people who braved that part of town for an estate sale and the relatives facilitating the sale seemed happy to get rid of it.

Now it's nestled snugly in my shop where it is loved and admired. I would really like it to be nestled in my house but I try not to take home everything I want. Who knows, though, when the next customer comes in, I may crawl on top of it and yell "MINE".

Beautiful Eggs!!!

My mom, who recently retired, decided that she wanted to raise some chickens. My dad, like the good man that he is, dutifully went out and built my mom a chicken coop. Then they gathered up their grandchildren and took them to the feed store to pick out some baby chicks.

Two of my children picked out Americana chickens. I'd like to think that it's because they have good taste and knew that these chickens would lay beautiful eggs. In reality they probably just thought the Americanas were the cutest.

Just in time for Easter, the chickens finally began laying. One of the Americanas lays a lovely, light blue/green colored egg and the other lays a pale, moss green egg. Haley and I spent one afternoon blowing the insides out of several eggs. Well, actually, Haley did two and then I told her to stop because her ears were hurting. That would have been a fun doctor's appointment. "I'm sorry my daughter's ear drums are ruptured, but look at the pretty eggs I have for the wreath on my wall."

Flower Thieves

There is a darling house next to mine. When we moved in it still had the original hitching post in front and it has a great built-in buffet between the dining room and the kitchen. Unfortunately, the foundation under the house has completely deteriorated and so no one can live there. For the last couple of weeks, there has been a blanket of white flowers surrounding this cute little home.

On Monday, Haley and I decided to go over and pilfer some of them. While we were there, we noticed a beautiful purple lilac tree and pink rose bush covered in flora. The pilfering continued and pretty soon we had a enough flowers for my ironstone pitcher.

Tuesday morning I woke up to the sound of a lawn mower. I looked out the window and that beautiful carpet of flowers was being MOWED DOWN! So the moral of the story is when you have an opportunity to steal flowers, do it. You may not get another chance.

Shop Photos

I've just uploaded some photos of my shop on Flickr. You can see them my going here www.flickr.com/photos/sweetwatercottage. Hopefully I'll get some more on soon.

Tea Trouble

I thought it would be a great idea to have some French vanilla tea available for my customers to sip on while they shop. I picked out a spot, rearranged everything and set up cute cups and homemade pastries. Everything looked great and was ready to go until I tried to plug in the cord for the kettle. Tell me, who puts an 18" cord on a kettle? No worries, I figured I would just bring in an extension cord and the tea would be good to go!

I don't know if I've mentioned it or not, but my shop is in an old, historic building. It works really well when you sell vintage items to be in a place that has all of the charm that only comes with time. However, if you want to plug a kettle in, it helps to have modern outlets. Some of my outlets are old and unusable, some are new. I thought that the outlet I wanted to use was new....until I tried to plug in the extension cord. It wouldn't fit.

Now, my pastries are just about gone and my poor customers have had to eat them with no tea to quench their thirst. Hopefully I'll get this worked out before tomorrow. In the meantime, I still love my old building, quirks and all.