OffbeatAvenue

New Vintage Shop opening in Downtown Leominster this fall? Sign me up! This weekend up here in New England has been super hot--it hit 90 degrees yesterday! Seems like the perfect weather for going up on a hot tar roof to do some sign hanging, doesn't it? Well, that's what my husband did yesterday. There's a window on the second floor of our new shop that you can see from the street, so it seemed like the best place to put our Offbeat Avenue signage. Me and the hub hanging the sign. Believe it or not I got sunburned just from hanging out the window! My hub Steve got up on the roof and got to work, while Michelle stood on the street level to let us know if it was centered correctly. Steve used screws with washers to hold down the grommets on the vinyl sign. Once it was all set our sign was up! Hooray! It made it seem much more real now. And we're psyched people will be able to see our sign as they drive by. The sign looks great! The warm weather als...

Dressing Room: Idea to Reality Since my last post I'm happy to report that the dressing room is done! Dressing rooms can be tricky to set up because we needed it to be big enough to move around in and the curtain had to be tall enough for people of average height to get some privacy. We secured the wall which is actually two doors that are braced perpendicularly to the wall, screwed in the fixtures to hold the curtain rod, and hammered in our sign. Don't you love Michelle's hand painted Dressing Room sign? The pictures here show the panes in the doors, which we plan to cover with some graphics for privacy (no peeking as Bertrand says!). Dressing Up a Paneled Wall The other challenge we had was what to do with the paneled back wall? Our back wall is the first thing you see when you walk in and unfinished paneled wood was not the look we wanted. Michelle and I went back to the store and got a bolt of bright pink fabric to hang ove...

Great news vintage fans! Me and Michelle are opening up Offbeat Avenue shop here in Leominster MA in the fall! We're so excited to have a brick and mortar shop in addition to our online presence on Etsy and Ebay. This weekend we've been working on the space and getting it all set up in time for the grand opening. Michelle painted an arrow to use on our dressing room Dressing Room 101 Yesterday our challenge was to set up a dressing room in a room that didn't have one. The space itself has many windows, so we didn't want to block any of them with a dressing room, so originally we were going to set up a simple curtained dressing room near the cash and wrap. But we decided instead to put two free standing doors next to each other and place a curtain between them. Easy right? Not if the doors are different heights. So we had to find a finial to make the doors the same height so we could hang the curtain rod. We finally found a wooden arrow at the craft store ...

Hey Vintage Peeps! Me and Michelle are pumped. Summer is almost here and we have grown our Etsy shop to more than 1000 items! I'm happy to report we now have a Men's Vintage Section since we carry so many goodies for the guys including Hawaiian shirts, cufflinks, and smoking jackets. We've also added tons of vintage shoes   which we're psyched about. Vintage shoes tend to run a bit narrow but many of these have good widths that would fit on a modern foot. In other news we are expanding our reach out of the cloud onto the street: that's right we're going to open up a shop right here in downtown Leominster in Central MA sometime this fall. Don't worry, we'll still keep our Etsy shop open and running as always. Mozey on over to the right of this blog to join our mailing list to get an alert when we'll open. Back to the summertime fun!

Merry Christmas!   We hope, whatever you celebrate, you have special time with your family!   Love & Thanks for all the support :) Michelle and Marguerite  

This will be short, just an observation....   Yesterday morning, fed up with news and reality tv, I put on our local "retro" tv station. They had early (1972) 70's reruns of Sanford and Son, a show I have loved since I saw it back then, when I was a kid, at my Grandma's house.   It was Fred's birthday (Red Foxx, another Sagittarian), and Lamont wanted to treat him to a fancy night out, even bought him a special hat for the occasion.     (photo from www.tvdatabase.wikia.com )   The first place Lamont brought his Dad was to a fancy bar for a pre-theatre drink....and this is where I had to comment.   Lamont got a Martini and Fred, after not getting his much wanted draft beer, got an Old Fashioned ("where's the ice cream?"). The bartender went and made their drinks, returned and said "That'll be $2.50", to which Lamont gave him $3.00 "keep the change". Fred was in amazement that two drinks were that expe...