Thursday 31 May 2012

Our Weekend at Scout


Wow, what a weekend! Scout Handmade + Vintage Market was a huge success and we couldn't be more proud of our amazing vendors. They truly pulled out all of the stops with each and every display. The one repeated "complaint" of the weekend was that there was just too much eye candy to be taken in all at once and it was too busy...a sign to us that we did our job well! As with each market we've hosted, we wished we could have had much more time to explore and shop from each booth but thankfully Sharalee Prang took some gorgeous photos for us to share of our market weekend. Rachel and I are utterly exhausted but feel so overwhelmed and blessed by all of the positive feedback that keeps streaming into our inbox. It makes all of our hard work feel very much worth while! Come take a peak through Sharalee's lens...more pictures will be posted very soon!

We started the weekend with a sold out wine + cheese night for ticket holders and invited guests, a 1st Dibs evening of shopping ahead of Saturday's crowds. Despite a few hiccups like blown breakers (we only had 3 power outlets to share between all 50 vendors, sound system, espresso machines and washroom trailer, ack!), it was such a fun and relaxed evening...we may have even had a local celebrity join us too! A huge thank you to Shape Properties for providing us with the perfect venue for our event and especially to Katie and Jessica for seeing our vision of a pop-up style market and believing in us!



Jessica of Trove Vintage Rentals provided a gorgeous vintage lounge, complete with an amazing handmade "chandelier", which was the perfect centrepiece to our space at The Parallel Marketplace. The live performances by husband and wife due Coalmont and jazz vocalist Sharla Sauder were fantastic and we can't wait to hear more from them at other local events like Jam in Jubilee this summer! If you got your photo taken at Jayme Lang's photo booth near the entrance, visit her blog link here to pick your picture out from the rest of the smiling faces there!



Our guests sipped on delicious wine from Hester Creeksampled gourmet cheeses prepared by Formaggio Fine Foods, and nibbled Tracycakes cupcakes (in our Scout colours, no less!) and yummy handmade marshmallow s'mores from thePink Spatula while they browsed. They also had a chance to enjoy hot coffee from Clayburn Gourmet Gallery, chilled tea from Karla's Specialteas and took home some sweet gift bags supplied by Paper Nation, with samples from many of our vendors tucked inside. It very much felt like a girls night out...with some lucky men in the mix too!



Some more important thank you's go out to Thrifty Foods for providing a delicious lunch for all of our vendors (and for being so patient with the parking lot craziness on Saturday!) and to all of our other generous sponsors for their donations to our silent auction benefitting Life Recovery. On Saturday, Parallel Yoga offered afternoon classes (one was even outdoors in the field!) by donation to Life Recovery and we are so excited to include their generous cheque with the rest of the admission and silent auction donations later this week!




We headed back to The Parallel Marketplace on Saturday for more vintage + handmade fun! There was a looong lineup of excited faces well before the doors opened at 10am and the lineup wrapped around the corner for almost 2 hours! We had to keep holding the line to give customers inside some breathing room but thankfully it was a gorgeous sunny and breezy day for the waiting visitors outside. Thank you to everyone who came out and patiently maneuvered the parking lot, the crowds and even their strollers to get a look inside at Scout! Come and get a small taste of what they saw inside...





Overall, I think it's safe to say that Scout was a huge success for our vendors...many booths were looking positively sparse by the time the doors closed! Between the sales of the weekend and the networking opportunities between sellers with customers and local business owners, we are so excited to watch our vendors and their small businesses grow. There was such a sense of community amongst all of the vendors and we all learned a lot over the weekend. Rachel and I definitely couldn't have pulled it off without a TONNE of help from our family and friends so we'll take a moment to give some well deserved shout outs, if you don't mind...Thank you so much to our parents, families and friends for helping us take care of our children (they didn't see much of us last week!), to my husband Brad for building the stage and being our overall handyman extraordinaire, to my sister Becky and Rachel's sister-in-law Angie for manning the Birch + Bird booth, to my brother-in-law Stephen for doing the sound, to Sarah of Hester Creek and our friend Andrea for pouring wine on Friday night, and to all of the friends and vendors who brought us coffee, food and treats to keep us going in the long days and nights spent setting up last week. Not to mention Wade at Shape Propertiesfor his help and for answering more than a few panicked phone calls this weekend! There are so many other hands who helped us decorate and cleanup as well and we truly appreciate all of your efforts and kind words of encouragement ever so much...we couldn't have done it without all of you! Now to get some rest and hug our sweet families...

Thank you for supporting local businesses and for shopping vintage + handmade!
Lily + Rachel

Friday 25 May 2012

It's Market Weekend!


Market day is only a few days away!  We couldn't be more excited and we are expecting a big turnout so it might be a good idea to be on the early side before those fabulous finds get snatched up.  Stop by the vendor page to see what's up for grabs and plan your attack.  We thought we'd put together a few tips to make your shopping experience at Scout Handmade + Vintage Market the best that it can be and be sure to invite your friends...the more the merrier!
 
image:  Design*Sponge

What to bring:
reusable tote bag(s)
bring CASH (most vendors will be CASH ONLY)
comfortable shoes
a truck (to carry home your new piece of furniture)
and friends, of course,

See you Saturday from 10am -4pm!












Monday 21 May 2012

The Final Countdown!

It's hard to believe that we're only days away from our big weekend! All of our amazing vendors are working their little tails off to make Scout Handmade + Vintage Market fantastic for everyone and we are beyond excited to watch everything fall into place! We'll be busy decorating our space at the Parallel Marketplace this week and think it is truly the perfect venue for our event...what's not to love about huge windows, sky-high ceilings and concrete floors! A huge thank you to Shape Properties for seeing our vision and jumping on board with our pop-up shop idea. Each of our events come together with a lot of help from our friends and family and we've heard nothing but gushing compliments for our beautiful poster and window designs, created by Jessica MacDonald. You'll be able to see more of Jessica's work at Scout, as Trove Vintage Rentals will be providing a lovely lounge area for guests to relax and/or recover in!


Window design by Jessica MacDonald of Trove Vintage Rentals & Handmade Affairs

We're thrilled to say that our wine + cheese 1st Dibs evening is SOLD OUT on Friday evening! For those of you who missed out on purchasing a ticket, Poppytalk is offering a giveaway and will draw a winner for two tickets on Wednesday, May 23rd so be sure to add your comment before then...


Have tickets for Friday but wondering what to expect? Hester Creek Estate Winery will be pouring a selection of their delicious wines alongside a variety of gourmet cheese, provided by Formaggio Fine Foods. Your sweet tooth will be satisfied by ooey-gooey-delicious handmade s'mores by the Pink Spatula and scrumptious cupcakes from Tracycakes. Hot coffee drinks will be made-to-order by Clayburn Gourmet Gallery and Karla's Specialteas will have refreshing chilled tea on hand. Each guest will receive a gift bag provided by Paper Nation which include a wide variety of samples and special trinkets from many of our talented vendors and sponsors. Entertainment for the evening will be performed by jazz vocalist Sharla Sauder and husband-and-wife duo, Coalmont. Remember your visit by getting your photo snapped with friends at Jayme Lang's fun photo booth, which will be set up near the entrance.

On Friday night, there will also be a silent auction with 100% of proceeds going to Life Recovery, a local women's rehabilitation program in Abbotsford. Donations from these generous local businesses and vendors will be up for grabs so don't miss out on placing bids for such a wonderful organization on Friday night:

What Wood You Say?

Sad to miss out on the fun on Friday? Not to worry! There will be plenty more fun and fabulous handmade + vintage treasures to be had on Saturday from 10am-4pm. Admission is $2 to enter, with 50% going to Life Recovery. A special thank you to Parallel Yoga who will generously be offering yoga classes at 1pm and 3pm by donation to Life Recovery so don't forget your workout gear! Call 604-746-7040 for more details. Thrifty Foods will be also be providing lunch for our lucky vendors, giving us all extra energy to make it through what's sure to be an exceptionally busy day! Live to far away to attend? Sharalee Prang will be taking photos of our vendors in action and we will her sure to post plenty of Scout pics over the next couple of weeks.


Delish Magazine has been featuring some truly inspirational interviews with many of our amazing vendors over the past few weeks so be sure to do some "homework" before meeting them in person this weekend! It is so motivating to hear how others create while juggling family life and we can't say a big enough thank you to Tamara & Cynthia for all of their hard work showcasing so many of our sellers!

Can you tell how excited we are for Scout Handmade + Vintage Market? We'd love for you all to come and visit us and be sure to share the news with your friends....see you very soon!

Lily + Rachel

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Singing their praises...

We are very excited to host Scout at The Parallel Marketplace with the soaring ceilings and wall to wall windows filled to the brim with 50 of the best vendors in the Lower Mainland.  We think it's the perfect place to host a pop-up market!  But the ambiance wouldn't be complete without some live entertainment so we are so pleased to have Coalmont and the lovely Sharla Sauder join us to set the mood all throughout the Scout market weekend.  

With only two and a half weeks left until Scout Handmade + Vintage Market, we're sure that the vendors will be putting in long nights tweaking their displays and taking stock of their inventory to be sure that there is enough to go around.  Because once it's gone, it's gone.  Most of the items up for grabs at the market are handpicked, handcrafted and one of a kind.  Our vendors put in a great deal of time between folding laundry and school drop off trying their best to grow their home business doing what they love most.  Delish Magazine, one of our sponsors, will be featuring a handful of Scout vendors from now up until May 25th, to give you a behind the scenes look into the life of a handmade or vintage vendor.  Prepare to be inspired.

FYI:  Tickets are selling steadily for the 1st Dibs Wine and Cheese Event so don't miss out and purchase yours today!