The Garden Market - After Photos

Here are some after photos of The Garden Market. I tried to post them yesterday but Blogger wouldn't save them.




These pillars are very large and weigh about 500 lbs each. Gail's husband had to pour a concrete base for each of them after installing the 8 foot fence.


Gail will be adding more merchandise but it's looking great at this point!


The cafe area...

Do you see this beautiful French table? You should have seen it before I painted it - it was in rough shape. I can only imagine the fancy dinners it must have been used at as a buffet table.


Some of the plants for sale...

Gail's place is so full of charm and we've had nothing but positive feedback. Her grand opening is this weekend. Today is the first day I haven't worked in over a week and have enjoyed staying home!

The Garden Market is OPEN!

Finally, after so much hard work by a lot of folks, The Garden Market is officially open!! We had our first day of sales Friday and received nothing but positive comments about how nice the shop is. Please enjoy the pictures to see the transformation :) I apologize for the poor quality of some of them....I mistakenly changed the setting on my camera.

This building had been a bank and an Alltel store. The walls were orange and the celing was black. Everything had to be cleaned and painted before work could even begin.

Gail's antique garden cart. Gail asked Anthony to make this window in the wall, which repeats the arched windows in the main part of the cafe:


Gail's brother, Anthony, installing the freezer. Jo, Gail's mom, is supervising to make sure it gets done right! :)

Jo cleaning the dirty windows:

The kitchenette:

This is the area where customers can get their fountain drinks, coffee and tea. Do you see those long, glass doors up on the wall? I think they're 10 feet long each. Gail's husband made the iron scrolls. I painted all of the doors with two coats of paint and then scraped them. They were in really rough shape when Gail acquired them.




This is part of the main gift area:
Outside before....




The guys trying to assemble the plant display:


Gail helping the guys try to figure out how to put this monster together. The company failed to send instructions :) It was so hot that day!

The other side of the building:

At one time, this building was a bank. To make use of valuable space, the old drive through teller machine had to be removed.


I'll post the after photos by tomorrow. I've got to get ready for work now. Have a great day everybody!

Some Special Art Works

This is a quick post to share pictures of two special pieces of art work with you.

The first one is a true crazy quilt hand made by my paternal grandmother for my sister, Susan. Nanny did gorgeous needlework and always had a project going of some sort. I was trying to study this piece to understand how she put it together. All I can tell you is that she didn't use any of the methods a lot of folks use now! Note under the date of the picture of Susan's name hand embroidered.

This is a beautiful wall hanging my sister made for mom of a trillium - mom's favorite flower.

And I took pictures of a very, very special piece of art that Nanny also made but can't locate it. I'll have to ask Susan to send me another picture and will share
that one with you later.

On another note - no signs of the escaped baby dove. I'm sure she's been made a meal of by something. I'll post a picture of the remaining "baby" soon. Sarah and Alex want him/her out of their home so I'll be making that aviary very soon now!

Have a good day - I hope to get caught up on my visits by the weekend!!

Like A Bad Penny...

I keep coming back :)

What a great visit I had with my mom and sister! I was gone for a week, something I rarely do, but it was such a good visit. I had some goals and met them all. My sister took me to two really nice quilt shops in Maryland on my last day and I bought some gorgeous fabrics. Now for the breakdown of the trip...

Saturday morning my daughter, son-in-law and baby Ginny (now nicknamed by me as Doodlebug) picked my mom and me up and we drove to my sister's new home in New Market, MD. It's in the western part of the state only 35 minutes from Harper's Ferry, WVA. We got a tour of my sister's house and it is gorgeous....and enormous! All those stairs about killed me - ha ha! Then we strolled the streets and went into some shops to have a look around and had lunch together. What a quaint little town set in the gorgeous foothills of the Applachian Mountains! Afterwards my sister and I took mom to Lowes and Home Depot to get some things we would need to re-do her kitchen and front yard - the two big goals we wanted to accomplish while I was up there. Then we had dinner together, took mom home and drove back to my sisters - about an hour away.

Sunday morning we headed back to mom's to get busy on her kitchen makeover. Her kitchen is small but it took us two full days to paint it and get some reorganization done for her. Of course, the best laid plans always have a glitch and we made several trips to the home stores and Ikea to get more things we needed. Susan bought her new window treatments - a nice roman shade - and I replaced her old, large microwave with a small one to save some precious counter space. We installed a nice shelf above her stove and my sister installed some small lights on the under side of the shelf for some much needed lighting over the stove. There was a lot more we did but you get the idea. Here is the new window treatment with some small medallions on the window corners to cover holes from all the old hardware.
While my sister continued to work inside, I was determined to get mom's small front garden weeded and ready for her to plant some pretty annuals. I was able to get most of the work done before it started pouring rain but still got soaked. It rained most every day but it only made the soil softer to dig. It was dark by the time I got to take a few pictures, but the work paid off and her little front garden was on its way to looking more like what she wanted.
We made mom happy visiting her and giving her a "new" kitchen and front yard. It made us happy too!

I've got lots to do here today and I'll tell you all about the rest of the trip in another post. It's raining today and I won't be helping Gail till tomorrow so will get to sew and relax a little and enjoy being home.

I hope you all had a very nice Mother's Day yesterday...I sure did!

It's good to be home.

Travelling

hey everybody,

I'm in MD visiting with my mom and sister and will have lots of stuff to post about when I get home Thursday evening. Still no sign of my baby dove according to my daughter :(

My sister and I are going to Ginney (?) Byer's quilt and garden shop Wednesday - I cannot WAIT!!

ttfn