Wine & Crafts & Blogs

I've been blogged about again (!) by local blogger Shenandoah Living. There's a really nice write-up about gathered on this website, so check it out if you're interested in reading about my shop from an outsider's perspective. Gathered was also recently written about in an article in the local Warren Sentinel paper. They're a small, old-fashioned kind of paper and don't have too much of a website, so I'll scan the article and post it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here's a pic of what my block looks like during the Virginia Wine & Craft Festival...

See my nifty new sandwich sign?

(Thank you David & Ann and Sally Mae & John Foster!!)

The hand is pointing all the drunken shoppers down the street to my store.

Extending the Definition of Embellishment

After spending a few weeks getting the feel for being a new business owner, I decided I finally needed to make time to craft some things for the store myself. Nothing extremely exceptional, but I thought they'd be a good fit for the shop. Besides, where else in Front Royal are you gonna find hair embellishments like these?

Beaded Leaf botanical hair clips in varying hues.

Find them on Etsy or the gathered website.

Vintage button hair clips.

Each bobby pin-style clip combines multiple vintage buttons or has one vintage button worthy of standing alone.

Spring Happenings

I think this might just be the first real spring I've ever experienced. Down in Savannah, we would have a window of 2-3 weeks of azalea-blooming weather (just nice enough for the sand gnats to swarm...) in between the 39 degree and the 109 degree weather. Then, after moving up to the Virginia mountains, it was one "out of the ordinary" spring after another. Either extremely dry, or floods, or late blizzards, or exceptionally short. But this year I'm thinking, So this is what spring is like...

See more photos about spring on my other blog post, Immortal Mountain, here.

Home improvement projects! I have been wanting to build this towel rack for about a year and a half now, and yesterday was the day I finally did it.

Salvaged wood from garage + old hooks + sweat + tears = pretty!

Drew's mom and I planned a surprise birthday/retirement party for David, my step-father-in-law/all-around-family-handyman. He deserved something special!

(It fell on Mother's Day, so the party was kind of for Ann, too... I wish my mom could have been here!! Happy Mother's Day, Mom!)

David's granddaughters twirling their hearts out.

And on another note...

I love love love this building, and it turns out some friends of mine are rehabilitating it and turning it into a coffee roasting shop. The best part is it's only a block away from my shop! I know where I'll be going when I flip that Out to Lunch sign... They're keeping the mural, of course.

Some recent finds during thrift store scouring...

OK, look at every aspect of this cover. The eyes! The screaming coming from the box! The little rabbit by the tree! The title alone!

I almost bought this. Almost. It's holographic! And they're carelessly chasing a butterfly on the edge of a cliff!

A Blog Post About Blogs

gathered has just been featured on a fellow blogger's site: Life, In Points of Light (above)! Read the article here, and stay tuned for her upcoming more detailed review of my shop on her other blog, Shenandoah Living.

I'm loving the ease of self-publication we all have at our fingertips now; technology has definitely allowed me to instantly get out information about my shop, and I really enjoy this whole blogging thing. No to mention reconnecting with friends I haven't been in touch with in over ten years. We just have to be careful and make sure to find that balance between spending hours connecting on a virtual level with getting out in the wild-- exploring streams, rocks, trees, sun, moon, and air.