Recap of the Country Living Holiday Bazaar

Finally, I’ve got it together enough to show you some pictures from the Country Living Magazine Holiday Bazaar in Tarrytown, NY last weekend.

This is our tent!  And that’s my friend Phylliss waving at you.  This was the scene as we arrived the day before the show to set up.  As you can tell, it was pretty foggy.  But we were undeterred.

Our tent was #1 and it was directly across the driveway from the mansion.  Historic Lyndhurst Mansion, now owned by the National Trust.  It is set high on the banks of the Hudson River.  The last owner was Jay Gould, the famous railroad tycoon.  He passed it to his daughters and when they died, it was left to the Trust. You can read about it here.  The house was all decked out for Christmas.  Sadly, we never got the chance to tour it but we heard the holiday decorations were fantastic.

This is a better shot of what the house looks like.Here is a view of our tent from a little distance.  That trailer belongs to STASH, another vendor.  As you can see, the weather was a bit on the gloomy side.  But it was very festive inside.

That big empty space there?  That’s the future home of Glittermoon’s booth, #121.  We got there about 9:30 in the morning on set-up day. This is after we got some of our stuff unloaded.  You can see the wreath bags on the left.

And here we are partway through setting up.  It was going on 3:00 by this time and we were finally going to break for lunch.  We wanted to get the “skeleton” set –  always the hardest part.  Did you notice that Phylliss still has her coat on?  It was cold in there!

I had lain awake for many nights for months before the show trying to plan how the booth would be constructed and set up.  It was pretty complicated and not only because we had to create our own walls.  The light bulb finally went on one day and I realized I could take my tent, remove the canopy, and use that as a frame.  Then we just had to completely disguise it.

And….ta-da!  Here is the finished booth!  I am really proud of it.  It took us until 8:00 that night to get everything in place and ready to go.  We were tired but excited.  I took this picture the next morning before opening.

The show management was so impressed by how beautiful it looked they tweeted a picture of it the night before the show with the message: “OMG! @GlittermoonC Fabulous booth….” etc.  We puffed our chests out a bit.  After all, it is a trademark of the Country Living Fairs that the booths are phenomenal.  And as you know if you know retail, merchandising is everything.

I got so lucky with our booth location because we were on a corner which meant that I could decorate the outside of one wall.  So here is how the outside looked.

When I do the CL Fairs, I also take other things besides my work with me: vintage collectibles, interesting light fixtures, etc.  This time I also took some handcrafted signs by my friend Tony Turner of Richmond, owner of Feathernesters and some napkin rings embellished with vintage jewelry from my friend Beverly, The Water Gypsy.

So now I’m going to bore you with a bunch of pictures of our set-up and how everything looked.  Enjoy.

Never has there been assembled such a large collection of Glittermoon Vintage Christmas in one place.  I hope that I do not sound too much like I am tooting my own horn when I say that it made me feel very proud.

We sold 7 wreaths, the 2 large topiaries and a bunch of small ones on Friday.  By Sunday, things were looking pretty bare.  But that’s ok – less for us to bring home!

This is the view down the hill from us so you can see where the rest of the show was.  Those folks outside must have frozen their fingers to the bone. It was cold!  The brick building is the carriage house/barn.  There were lots of vendors in there, too.

So there you have it.  It you were not able to make it, perhaps we’ll see you next time!