HPMKT & more...

I had a super, super fun weekend!  My mother and I decided to visit Fearrington this weekend since its getting close to the time of year when Kyle and I will be married.  I wanted to check out the leaf color in late October, and then again in early November, so see if I like the date I picked, since I have time to change it, and also to see the color in all the different ceremony venues they offer.  We had lunch at the Granary, and it was ah-may-zing!!!!  I can't even image how good Fearrington House must be, since the less nice restaurant was so tasty.  It was a little of a gray day, but as usual, everything was beautiful out there.  I'm lucky Fearrington is beautiful no matter what the weather!

Outside the Granary

AMAZING salad!!

Tasty baby ivy things

Crab & Cauliflower risotto! SO good!

Look at her in her festive fall pants!

After Fearrington, the fun continued as we went to Southern Season to get a teapot & olive oil.  Mother was supa nice and bought me 2 bottle of reds wine from Languedoc!  I can't wait to try them!!

Kyle had plans with friends Saturday night, and my plans for Saturday fell through, so my mom and I went out to eat again - to Poole's downtown.  Poole's is always awesome, but holy moly they were extra on point on Saturday.  They had a lobster and avocado appetizer that was just killer.  I think I could have eaten my weight in that lobster.  I also had some rabbit liver pate - yummmmm.  I'm writing this at the end of the work day and I'm hungry... can you tell???

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My mother and I were lucky enough to gain passes to the High Point Furniture Market on Sunday.  You cannot get into HPMKT unless you have a tax ID for a business related to furniture or homewares.  Shout out to Mrs. Byerly and Emily for helping us borrow some passes!!  I'd been planning on going to HPMKT to see some furniture I'd noticed on the web and Pinterest, and Market was everything I expected and more!

The best part of the whole day, was going to our first showroom.  It was Stanford Furniture, of which, Julie Browning Bova (JBB) is a designer.  I'd seen a LOT of her stuff on Pinterest and it is all equestrian themed, so therefore, perfect.  We walked in and after a very embarrassing interaction regarding our passes (they were Sales passes, not Buyers passes, and didn't have our name on them... so they caused us a little bit of trouble) we were in!  A rep named Cindy showed us around a lot of the showroom, and we told her we were especially interested in Julie's furniture.  Cindy went to check to see if Julie was in the showroom at that moment and luckily she was!! She told us about all the pieces, her inspiration for some of them (because she and her daughters show horses as well), gave me one of her custom belt buckles, and told us about how things generally sell at shows.  It was SO informative and so exciting to meet her. It definitely started the day off right!  See a lot of her products below!

Two different versions of the "Harley" chair and the "Pacer" table

All of these are from JBB, except the saddle chair, which is from Halo

The "Gallop" mirror and "Yonkers" ottoman are JBB - the two tables are Halo

Julie and I!

After a great stop at Standford, which lasted almost a whole hour, we walked a few blocks down to Halo Furniture.  Halo is a UK-based furniture company that had two HUGE showrooms.  They are famous on Pinterest for the saddle chair (pictured above) but they had a lot of great thick wood and iron tables which would fit in a farmhouse (see above also).  Halo got on my good side too because they had all this English food like scones (and awesome clotted cream!) and finger sandwiches and tea!

After Halo, we went the the remaining three outdoor (ie not in a giant building filled with many furniture companies) showrooms I wanted to go to, but those three were not quite fits for what I need.  I thought Clubcu would be reclaimed barn wood, but it was weird and Indian styled. EJ Jarvis carried Ralph Lauren home collections, but they told me that RL usually only works with retailers who have a brick & mortar store, and not just online.  So maybe something for the future.  Finally, we went to Swaim, which looked like WEF-style furniture on their website but it was VERY pricey, and not quite as good of a fit in real life.

After we finished our outdoors showrooms we had a well deserved lunch break before exploring the accessories floor and up-and-coming-designers floor in the International Home Furnishing Center building.  We found some good artists with some equestrian offerings on the accessories level.  I got very excited when we went to the up-and-coming-designers floor because one vendor, Shiner, was selling coffee tables shaped like states, but even more so when we found a bar ware company, Zodax, that had an equestrian line.

2 Art companies I liked; First 3 by Art Classics LTD, Second 3 by French Linen by Tapestries LTD

Zodax equestrian bar collection - not even as awesome as what we saw at HPMKT

Overall Market was a success - I now have somewhat of an idea of pricing.  My next goals are: 1) Name!
2) Tax ID 3) get website & logo 4) get into Atlanta Gift Market.  The first 3 goals are necessary to register for the Atlanta market, as is an invoice for wholesale purchases in the gift industry.  The Atlanta market is in January, so I don't know if I can get everything done before then, but I'm certainly going to try!  I am so inspired after visiting the HP Market this past weekend, and more excited than ever.  Maybe I can actually pull off this thing???

*** NOTE: a lot of the pictures on the blog are from Google or the company websites.  I only took a few of the pictures from Market***