Sunday, January 17, 2010

OUR JANUARY ATLANTA MARKET TRIP











We braved the Atlanta ice & snow to attend this country's largest gift & home furnishings market. This is a market comprised of 4 buildings each with 14 to 20 floors of permanent & temporary showrooms. We found so many great treasures you are going to love! We added many great new lines that fit the Evelyn's experience. Our major goal was to buy Christmas 2010 and we succeeded with great style & panache. We bought with our Spring Open House (February 27th) and our 3rd Evening Of Design (late April) in mind. These are two events you love and we have outdone ourselves for these two events. The following is a snapshot of our week in Atlanta. I wish we would have had more pictures for you, but my camera's battery died on the 1st day. Hope you enjoy!

Day 1 (Friday)
We left Barnwell at 4:30am with much concern about the weather. I watched the weather channel all evening checking the Atlanta weather. The interstates were fine and we didn't get into any icy conditions until we reached our 14th street hotel. The sidewalks still had ice on them and our bus could not make it up the hills at the market. We got to the market by 9:00am to a market of yesteryear. There were so many buyers & everyone was so upbeat about their business. Showroom were full of buying customers & we were glad we had made appointments with our key vendors. The first day is usually set aside for getting a feel of the current trends, colors, & designs. We went to 2 seminars. Our first seminar was on holiday decorating. We picked up great ideas that we will share with you during our open house and evening of design. Our second seminar was with Kathryn Ireland (she was first to admit she was Not the swimsuit model) on entertaining. She is a designer who designs homes for the wealthy in California and many movie stars (Reese Witherspoon bought her home). I can't wait to share her ideas with you at our Evening of Design! We shopped until 7:00pm then went to the 10th Anniversary party for Willow Tree Angels designer Susan Lordi. We got back to the hotel around 8:30pm & I planned our agenda for Saturday.

Day 2 (Saturday)
We caught the 8:15am bus and arrived at the market by 8:30am. Not much traffic on the roads because of all the ice. I began by looking through several of my holiday showrooms to complete our holiday look. We had a 11:3o lunch appointment with my major holiday vendor and bought Christmas, Christmas, and more Christmas. Expect classy, elegant, & unique twists on Christmas this year from us. I had another appointment with a Halloween vendor that you all love! We added so many wonderfully creepy creatures from our Joe Spencer line. These will debut at our Fall/Halloween open house in September and they sell out FAST! We wrapped up our holiday buying and prepared ourselves for the many events planned by our vendors. We were lucky to see some of our favorites & some new people: Jim Shore & his wife, Tony Curtis, Meredith Baxter, Cinda Boomershine, Shelley Kyle, Susan Lordi, Kathryn Ireland, and many more. We stayed until 8:00pm and arrived back at the hotel by 8:30pm to go over invoices, budgets, & Sunday's appointments.

Day 3 (Sunday)
We once again took the 8:15am bus to arrive at the market by 8:30am. Today was the day to buy home accessories. You will love the colors of aqua, golden yellows, rustic reds, and worn whites that will be predominate this Spring. There were other "trendy" colors that we passed on (lavenders and oranges). Styles include vintage & time worn looks complete with Fleur De Li's & crowns. Our garden looks will include apple greens & mercury glass complimented with many bird and butterfly designs. You will love these looks and want to add pieces to your decor! We arrived back to our hotel by 6:30pm and went to our one of our favorite restaurants, Einstein's.

Day 4 (Monday)
We took the 8:30am bus and arrived at the market by 9:00am. This was a busy day for us since it was our last shopping day. Today we added to our delicious gourmet food lines including our famous martini mixes (the new watermelon martini is yum!). We then had an appointment with Caroline who showed us a great new line of entertaining & home decor items that we plan on using for our evening of design. We also added many new colors to our popular woven placemats & patterned fabric napkins. It was fun to see her & meet her mother & sister-in-law. We went to the temporaries and added to our popular J&I, and Susan Shaw jewelry lines. I hope these will arrive before Valentine's since I know you all would love to receive these from Cupid! We then did our tour of High Design. I love to go through this juried collection of vendors who show cutting edge designs. As mentioned before, the people are as unique as the product they sell & they didn't disappoint this market! We actually found a great line of handmade jewelry based on nature that we plan to introduce for Mother's Day. We constantly search out made in USA products and this new line in all made in USA. We wrapped up the day buying all those beautiful scarves you love in wonderful spring colors. We left the market by 6:00pm and went to another one of our favorite restaurants, Houston's.

Day 5 (Tuesday)
We left Atlanta exhausted, but excited about all the wonderful treasures we found. Please be sure to put Saturday, February 27th on your calendar for our Spring and Easter Open House. We will be serving our famous bellini's, and delicious munchies as you preview the best in Spring and Easter decor.

We hope to see you in the shop soon so you can see all the unique finds we found with you in mind! Also, check out our updated website for great gift ideas: www.evelynsjewelry.com

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