Saturday was the early day of the Lucketts Market, kicking things off at 8:00, so it meant another early morning after a full day Friday.  I also didn’t sleep very well the night before.  My mind was swimming with the events of the day and the tasks for the next.  Sometimes it’s just hard to shut it off. We drove down to Lucketts and it rained the entire way.  The forecast was so grim, I even packed magazines to read for the down times and scheduled a lunch with a reader Kriste and I connected with last year. When we arrived at the event, there was a hard, driving rain and standing water in our tent. There were a few leaks, but the good news was we were pretty snug with all of the tent sides up and we brought a couple bales of compressed straw to deal with the

Before I continue with the story of Lucketts 2016, let me rewind to one year ago, VIP Day 2015.  We had tons of help lined up, cameras at the ready to capture the frenzy that usually happened when the gates opened.  The anticipation was building as we neared 10:00.  The gates were opened and customers strolled in.  There wasn’t a rush at all.  Everyone was relaxed and took their time.  We had a steady stream of sales through the morning, but never a line, and the traffic slowed to a creep in the afternoon. So, we expected something similar this year. We were mistaken. The gates opened early for the VIP day of Lucketts 2016 and our booth started to fill with customers and it just kept filling.  And the line kept growing and growing until it spilled out of our tent and wrapped through the aisle between the two

My alarm went off at 5:15 am on Friday morning.  I don’t usually do 5:15 am (or anything before 8:30, if I can help it.)  It was like Christmas morning, though.  Your body feels energized instead of groggy.  Exciting things await, so let’s get to it. I showered and put on the linen shirt dress and jeans I set out the night before.  I usually wear a t-shirt to Lucketts, but I opted to wear a “real outfit” this year. I packed some berries and crackers to eat later in the day and took a few bites of a bagel.  I had too much nervous energy to eat very much.  I left the house at 6:15 in a van loaded with topiaries and plants and made it to Lucketts about 7:30. As soon as I arrived, I went into “Marian Lucketts Mode.”  I am not like this the other 364

I’m going to give a full recap of Lucketts once my brain solidifies once again.  It’s total mush at the moment. When I was driving home from the market on Friday, I was trying to articulate to my mom how “out of it” I felt after such a full day.  I almost didn’t recognize the exit for my house! She came up with a perfect analogy… “It like when you get off of roller skates.” I knew exactly what she meant.  On skates, you adjust to gliding with each step, the momentum carrying you forward.  When you take them off, you feel like your feet are getting stuck on the floor with each step. The pace of the last few days have been quick to say the least.  Now that the “skates are off”, I have to readjust to the slower speed and find my ground legs again.  The two hour

It’s so sad, but the Lucketts Spring Market has been canceled for Sunday.  There was heavy rain Friday night and it rained off an on all day on Saturday.  The parking fields are covered with mud and standing water, so there is nowhere for customers to park.  Just an FYI for those who were planning to stop by… Day one of the Lucketts Spring Market 2016 is in the books and I am totally pooped. I’ll give a full recap in a few days, but I will say that today was totally crazy and my biggest Lucketts day ever.  We sold more in one day than we did in last year’s entire event.  It was insane and unexpected, because things were pretty low key on VIP day last year. Today, there was a line out the tent for three straight hours.  We were totally overwhelmed. Here are a couple of pictures

When I arrived at Lucketts this morning, all of the 20′ truck had been unloaded and the smaller truck was half empty.  As I surveyed the tent and the jumble of furniture that was placed generally according to my map, I realized space planning on this scale is not my forte. 20′ x 40′ sounded huge to me.  Well, it is, but it shrinks when you try to fit the contents of a tightly packed 20′ truck and somewhat full 17′ truck inside. I stood with my hands on my hips, not sure even where to start.  I had a group of strong young guys and willing women, all waiting for my direction, and I froze.  Everyone was so understanding and I think they recognized that I was trying to fit 10 lbs of flour in a 5 lb sack.  They patiently waited as I thought through all of my options,

If you’ve been following my blog for even the past few weeks, you know that we’ve been getting ready for our biggest event of the year, the Lucketts Spring Market. I’ve received a lot of questions about the process of packing up all of this stuff, so I thought I’d share a behind-the-scenes post on it. It really is like moving a household.  We started packing up the small stuff a couple of weeks ago.  I set up a packing station in the middle of the studio with paper, boxes and shrink wrap. I arranged furniture and collected breakable things that needed to be wrapped and packed and brought them to the reproduction shoe carts.  My mom then wrapped everything in small boxes and some of the market baskets I’ve been buying. Once the box or basket was packed, I carried it over and added it to the “smalls pile”.  This