As you can imagine, we’re still glowing from our weekend at Fieldstone Vintage Market. Many of you wished you could have been there so we asked the very talented Sharalee Prang to document our day and, boy, did she ever! Sharalee captured so many poignant moments of our vendors and customers alike, not to mention each of the incredible displays that our vendors worked so hard to put together. It was extremely difficult to choose which ones to post today so be sure to check out our Flickr account for many more stunning photos of our day in the field. Also visit our Fieldstone blog for another batch of Sharalee’s pictures…they’ll make you feel like you were actually with us at the EcoDairy last Saturday! In case you missed it, be sure to also her slideshow on vimeo.

Our morning started out with the field (and all of our tents!) wrapped in a heavy fog, making things just a wee bit damp. But after a beautiful sunrise, the fog lifted leaving nothing but blue skies and sunshine behind! It wasn’t long before the parking lot was full and customers were eagerly lined up for our 9am opening…

Look at their smiles! We saw a lot of smiles all day and I know that my cheeks were hurting by the time we packed up. Customers began pouring in and the hunt for treasures was on! You could see the EcoDairy and all of our tents for miles, from the freeway and beyond and, despite several hardworking parking attendants, cars were soon lined up as far as the eye could see!

The best part of my day was having the chance to see peoples’ eyes light up and even hear them gasp when they walked through the gates into the field. Many had never been to the property before and it was truly magical, with the open fields, horses and mountain views beyond. Our vendors went above and beyond to create the most gorgeous displays for their goods…

Like I said, their were happy smiles everywhere, our EcoDairy partners Helinda and Tanya included! Our only regret of the day was that Rachel and I were too busy scurrying around the property and manning our own booth to take any time to shop. But it was so fun watching customers triumphantly carry their new finds around the pathways…

See what I mean about all of the smiles? The kids all had tonnes of fun too…from pony rides, to live music, to a fantastic art station hosted by The Reach gallery, there was more than enough to keep them entertained while mom and dad shopped…and shopped!

We had live music performances by Hanna Williamson on the violin, local band Old Mare, and singer/songwriter Anna Vandas. They’re all so talented and it was fun watching people dance while they shopped or take a break and have a picnic lunch while enjoying the music…

Be sure to check out our list of all of our Fieldstone Vendors…most have links to webpages or online shops so you can continue your market shopping from home. The networking opportunities on Saturday were amazing, with customers coming from Victoria, Vancouver and beyond and we’ve been so excited to watch our vendors grow and expand their small businesses. After all, they’re the reason we chose to host another vintage and handmade market!

All photos by Sharalee Prang Photography for Fieldstone Vintage Market.

Yes, that’s Rachel and I looking a little melted at the end of the day…but still smiling! We’d like to take a moment to say a HUGE thank you to the Bakerview EcoDairy and our lovely partners Helinda Vanderkooi and Tanya Curtis for hosting such an amazing market and working so incredibly hard to have everything ready for our big day! Another HUGE thank you for our husbands, families and friends for patiently helping out behind the scenes on the home front and the odd building project (or 2)! More thanks to Canuck Place for manning the front gate and raising funds for the much needed children’s hospice in Abbotsford. If you forgot to give on Saturday, please help support this wonderful organization and visit the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice here.  The City of Abbotsford and Tourism Abbotsford also lent a hand, generously printing off hundreds of rack cards advertising Fieldstone and several other local business…thank you! And last but not least, another HUGE thank you to our amazingly talented vendors and thousands of happy customers…we could never have done this without you!

All photos by Sharalee Prang. See more at our Flickr page here and please always give credit where credit is due 🙂

What a weekend! I feel exactly the same way as Rachel…completely overwhelmed by how wonderful our day at the schoolhouse actually was and exhausted, but in a very good way! We still can’t believe that everything came together without a hitch and feel so blessed by the crowds of visitors who came to see our amazing vendors and their lovely wares. Each display was gorgeous and unique and obviously struck a chord with customers because everywhere we go we’re still hearing rave reviews and requests for when the next market day will be. As tired as we are, we can’t help but be excited about the next edition of The Old School Market and will be keeping you posted along the way, after a much needed spa day on Wednesday to work out the kinks!

With no extra wiggle room in our market day budget, we made all of the decorations and signs for our event ourselves. As you well know, we have a big thing for vintage maps and what better way to use up our stacks of old atlas’ than to make map bunting. It looked so cheerful strung along the blackboards of the schoolhouse! We’ll be posting more pictures in the next few days so you can get a closer look. But one of our favourite projects (which also happened to be the most time consuming!) were our homemade sandwich boards. We placed two at the main intersections leading to Clayburn Village and placed the largest in front of the schoolhouse. I came across Katie’s fabulous idea of using an old crib to create an easel on her blog, Notes from a Very Red Kitchen, and we thought it would be the perfect way to recycle an old piece into a sign board fitting for our vintage market. What do you think?

Lovella At Home

So here’s what we did. After scouring a few thrift shops and even putting a shout-out on Facebook for old cribs, we found one by chance at the back of a dingy junk barn stall. It wasn’t pretty! We left the rails behind and took only the headboard and footboard home with us.

1. We gave them a good hose down, scrubbed them with TSP and gave them a light sanding (Katie recommends another great product that we didn’t have time to source) before priming them with a stain blocking primer. 2. Once primed, we painted the frames with 2 coats of semi-gloss white paint. 3. Then, we taped off the frame and gave the centre square 2 coats of black chalkboard paint. Already looking pretty spiffy, right?

The detailed painting part was by far the most tedious and time consuming. First, we enlarged and printed off our logo in sections and taped them together to fit the chalkboard. Then, we rubbed chalk on the entire backside of the paper and shook off the excess. We carefully taped the image to our board and used a bamboo skewer to trace the entire image….be warned, it sounds as horrible as you would imagine! Once we’d traced all of the details we wanted (we left out the date and a some other wording so that we could use it again) we removed the paper and, voila, we had a chalk outline of our logo! (Sorry, it was late and I was cross-eyed and didn’t think to take photos of these steps!) Next, we used a fine tipped brush (use a good camel hair one) to paint over our chalk tracing with 2 coats of paint. And many hours and 2 sore backs later, here is the result…what do you think?

For our other two sandwich boards, Rachel had the great idea of using cabinet doors from our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. We used the same process as above, but just printed off words to transfer with chalk and painted the flag bunting freehand. All of the paint that we used was leftover from our own homes. My handy hubby attached the hinges for us and we saw more than a few happy customers posing for pictures with our crib sign outside of the schoolhouse on Saturday! The crib easel would be the perfect project for you to make for your own kids or even as a special gift, don’t you think?

Now it’s back to getting some order back into our lives and getting back into the domestic groove of things. It feels good to finally have food back on my shelves again! We’re so thankful to our families and friends for pulling up the while our focus has been on market planning and projects. From bringing kids home from school to babysitting and impromptu play dates….Thank You!

PS…I cannot believe that I failed to credit someone very important in the making of our signs when I was writing this post at midnight last night! A huge Thank You to Jessica MacDonald of Trove Vintage Rentals for getting into our heads and designing the perfect logo for The Old School Market…we LOVE it!