Groundhog Rules! {and the rules}

Our biggest and only sale of the year is this Friday, Saturday & Sunday, February 3rd-5th, 10am to 5pm each day.  Yes, we can say this sale definitely rules... 

...and yes, the sale itself has its own rules {it's true, we really have Groundhog sale rules}.

After doing the Groundhog sale for all these years, you could say we’re kinda Groundhog Experts. We learned that to keep all our customers happiest and hooked up with the best stuff, there are a few rules that everyone needs to follow.

Wine tasting room

Taking pictures around the store each week for Fresh Off the Wagon is just like going shopping - except it's with a camera, and it's free.

Sometimes I come across items that I just love, and I tell myself I'll put them in my "Dream ______".   I fill in the blank with any and all of the following:  bedroom, living room, bathroom, guest room, great room... and today, I'm filling it in with wine tasting room.

Here are few things I would put in my dream wine tasting room.

Why the groundhog?

Coming to the realization the Groundhog sale is only a week away.

I was laying in bed the other night and as the usual ten thousand thoughts were flying through my head...

What do I have for school lunches tomorrow...
Crap, it's raining, I hope I didn't leave anything good outside...
Need to get my tailgate fixed....
Where should we go on vacation...
and I hope it's not too muddy for the Groundhog.........
THE GROUNDHOG!   OMG!   It's next week!

My brain started running down memory lane and wondering what started this event in the first place.  Before I knew it, it was midnight,  and I was laughing myself to sleep ......

The votes are in!

We just got the news that The Old Lucketts Store was voted Best Antiques Store in both Leesburg Today and Ashburn Today. 

We're very excited about this honor and thank everyone who voted for us in 2011!

We appreciate your business last year and look forward to seeing you at the shop again in 2012.

To see the full list of winners {click here}.

Antique dress form love

{1} Dress form holding scarf at our Design House.

We're totally in love with dress forms today and every day.

We get vintage dress forms in the shop, but even for us, the really old ones have just been getting more and more difficult to find.  Usually when we do have them, we're sure to post them on our website for Fresh Off the Wagon, since they're highly sought after by our customers.

We love looking at all the variations over time; you can really find some beautiful pieces with great age and patina.  We use them at the shop to display scarves and wraps, jewelry, and they just plain look cool in a room by themselves - so we do that too!

Where can you go when you want a vintage dress form fix?

Love is in the air

A few new items in the shop in time for Valentine's Day, and a sneak peek of "Lucketts before" at the end of this post.

A comfy red sofa from Anne

Artfully arranging books

{source}

A collection of books can really transform the look and feel of a room.  Warm and cozy to bright and modern, their spines and covers {not to mention the pages} can be so exciting.  Here are few favorite looks and a link to a tutorial to help arrange your bookcases at home.

Celebrating collections

We are great finders, and many times great keepers too.  We love to hunt for bargains and unusual items for the shop, but we also take a fair number of our treasures home to enjoy.
 
Many of us have some pretty impressive collections at home.  Some of the things we like to collect include silver, bread boxes, old books / prints, vintage clothing, and ironstone.  Since wrangling everyone around here to take pictures of their collections and send them in so we can post them on our blog would be a near impossible feat to coordinate, we've decided to feature a few of our favorite pictures of collections we'd love to own. Enjoy!

On the road again

Let the games begin!

What's new in Atlanta?  Sooz and Amy are finding the good the bad and the just plain crazy at the big home furnishings show in Atlanta this weekend.

Name that fair!

Lucketts Spring Market

Our Spring Market arrives the third weekend in May {May 19 & 20} and we need your help!  You see, the planning takes months {the permits, the vendor applications, the decorating, the building projects - to name a few} and at this point in the process, we don't want to get Spring-Marketed-out early!

We need your help!  Last year's fair tag line was "Bigger, Badder, Better" but we need a new idea, so we're asking our readers to help us. 

How to "do Lucketts" the right way

{photo courtesy of Marian Parsons}

The Old Lucketts Store has been called a treasure trove, the mother load, a rabbit warren of rooms, and my favorite... that the store makes people feel like they're Alice in Wonderland.  Based on questions we get at the counter, calls that come in, and conversations we overhear, we thought we'd pull together a few ideas on how to make the most of your visit to the shop.

Gettin' props!

Antiques and vintage finds are terrific ways to add interest to your photos.  We've spotted vintage props in engagement photos, family portraits, wedding photos, and pictures of children and pets.  Here are a few of our favorite finds that are help make photos more creative and beautiful.

Old shutters and doors add lots of color and are great backdrops for photos.

Vintage or painted frames can be wonderful in a photo shoot.  I've seen some really cute engagement photos with a couple holding an oversized frame.

{source:  Pinterest}

Vintage trunks always add instant character to any photo scene.

{source:  Lucketts Store Design House}

Old crates are great to prop things on.  Vintage feed sacks are always popular in photos for their texture and typography.

{source:  The Old Lucketts Store}

Events in the City recently picked up some items at the shop for an engagement photo shoot including a peanut sack, a vintage mailbox, and a Love sign.

{source:  Events in the City}

Although they're getting tougher and tougher to find {even for us}, vintage dress forms are always beautiful and add so much to a photo shoot.

{source:  Lucketts Store Design House}

Vintage hats are always popular.  The styles vary so much that you really can match any mood or look that you're trying to portray in a photo shoot.

{source:  The Old Lucketts Store}

Who doesn't love a vintage suitcase?  Like the hats, there is so much variety with these and they can match any mood.  You can find a leather bound, manly-looking version {shown below}, or a very cute retro version in bright patent leather or cool print for very different looks.

{source:  The Old Lucketts Store}

Vintage bottles and books will instantly make any room {or photo subject} look studious.

{source:  The Old Lucketts Store}

What are your favorite vintage photo props?  

Leave us a comment and let us know!

Happy snapping!

Where it all goes...

We've had several posts that talk about where things go when they leave the shop. The stories are always interesting - we've had items end up in a tattoo parlor, with a famous horse trainer on his equestrian estate in Florida, and driven back up north to New York as a gift for an artist.  We love to hear where our finds will start the next chapter of their lives.

What a great weekend!  A fantastic and very talented local designer, Lauren Liess, stopped by.  Among her finds were some ironstone, a plaster architectural piece, and this very cool modern painting on wood from the 1950's that Pat had in her space {shown below}.

This clock {shown below} is actually several feet across and makes quite a statement.  It will make its home in a new pad in Washington, D.C.

 

 This great mirror {shown below} ended up back with one of our dealers.  Jennifer loved it so much when she saw it in Pete's space that she had to have it!  Hey, sometimes that happens.

 Have a great day!

New year, new sign

While we loved our old sign, the weather had gotten the best of it...

Marian took this picture for us before our Holiday Open House.

...and our website and print materials have been branded with our tagline, Vintage Hip.  We wanted to carry this theme through on to our new sign.

Website graphic.

Enter our new sign! A gift from one of our vendors made by a very talented significant other. We pulled the new sign out of the barn today and propped it up for this photo. You would have thought I would stage a better picture than propping the sign up against some holiday greenery, a metal cactus, a vintage bike, a fire pit and lawn chair, and a few trailers full of new finds. But hey, it was cold outside, and that sign was HEAVY!!! Focus on the sign, focus on the sign...

 The metal sign is painted and lettered entirely by hand - no stencils here.  Don't be confused, the wood frame you see is completely a faux finish wood painted on metal!  Here is a closeup of the hand lettering and a sweet robin in the corner.

The next step is getting county approval and switching out the signs.  We're VERY excited about this new sign.  We couldn't be happier!

Don't forget, our biggest sale of the year arrives February 3rd.

2012 color trends to look forward to

What color trends are expected for 2012?  We looked at a few paint company color previews to find out. Here are several schemes adapted from Pratt & Lambert's paint trend report.  Which colors do you like best?  What are you tired of seeing?  Take a look below and vote for your favorites!

Vote below and tell us what 2012 color palettes you like the most!

What the...What? (#8) Revealed!

We recently posted one of our items for our eighth installment of "What the...What?"  

We had a lot of responses and the jury was split --- was it a bird / suet feeder or a cricket cage?

After reading your comments, more Internet research, and some debate, we've settled on a cricket cage for fishermen.  This was mainly because the opening in the top was too small to fill the cage with much suet at once, and since the bottom was wooden, we didn't think it would hold up well outside as a bird feeder.  So that was our verdict, a cricket cage - thanks for playing with us!

Here is another look at the item:

   

Thanks for playing What the...What with us!  


Don't forget, our biggest sale of the year arrives in less than a month!

Who's visiting in February?

I hope everyone is recovering from the holidays and had a Happy New Year!

We have lots of events planned for 2012, including lots of new Design House events, and two of our signature events - our annual Groundhog SALE February 3rd, 4th & 5th and our Spring Market in May.  {For a full list of 2012 events, click here}

It's hard to believe, but we created our Annual Groundhog SALE 17 years ago!!!  You'll find thousands of our fabulous finds marked with our special Groundhog tags - which means they are marked down....waaaaay down.  And the best part is that our dealers restock each night, so there are new items to see each of the three days.  So get February 3rd, 4th, & 5th circled on your calendar now; it's only one month away!

* A note about the May Spring Market.  The 2012 market prep is already well underway.  The Spring Market will be May 19th & 20th this year.  Last year's vendors will receive sign up packets in the mail in January 2012.   New vendors can download an application on our website {click this link} starting in mid-February 2012.