For the Love of Yakima...

Last weekend, Joe and I decided to head out on a little road trip to The Yakima Valley in search of treasures and inspiration. Also, as the BH Season Opening is only two months away, we really needed to do a lot of planning, prioritizing and strategizing on how we are going to get everything done in time. And there is nothing like locking yourself in a car with someone for many, many, many hours to talk about things that neither party is really quite ready to talk about. We invite you to try this experiment! You will either end up having really productive and fruitful discussions that result in a solid plan of attack...OR, you will end up just about killing each other. Can you guess what happened on our trip???? (for the answer, please see "the conclusion" below)

Let me start by saying that Yakima has some gorgeous places to shop! I don't know if we hit them all, but the shops we visited were Fantastique! We started our little adventure at The French Hen.
Kaye's store is one of the few located in Yakima's Historic Opera House and it is absolutely stunning!
We met Kaye last year at Leslee & Mark's Clayson Farm's American Primitives Show (another great reason to visit Yakima).
We have heard so many wonderful things about her store over the past year and visiting it was certainly a great way to kick off our Yakima tour.
Next we were off to visit the Garden Girl's shop...also located in the Opera House.
The minute we walked in, I was hit by one of my favorite smells...Jasmine vines in full bloom all over the store. THEN, everywhere we looked there were the most beautiful flowers in bloom...
We don't know how Lenette did it, but she had somehow orchestrated the most beautiful Spring displays throughout the shop...it was VERY magical...
and something tells us she must put on this show daily because her store was packed from the minute we walked in until the time we left.We have to admit, being there gave us a bit of anxiety about all of the work we need to do in our gardens over the next couple of months. Lenette, we may be calling to borrow that magic wand of yours!
After leaving the Garden Girl, we decided to find our way over to visit the Flutterby girls...where I fell in love with a Duck...
See, it's giving me "that look." I don't think I realized it when we were there, but when I saw the picture I knew this duck was meant for the BH Home Collection. And now I want to kick myself in the a$$ for leaving MY duck sitting there on that VERY cute rusty-iron-chippy-white rack. I will refrain from saying anything else about this very pretty duck because it may sound wierd...
BUT, I bet "my" duck loves this display as much as I do. ;o)
At every turn, there were beautiful vignettes...
We probably overstayed our welcome chatting with Denise, snapping pictures and asking a ton of questions about where to eat/shop/sleep in Yakima.
She eventually pushed us out the door so she could tend to her many real customers. Leaving us no choice but to finally find our way over to Pam's shop...There were so many beautiful things to see!!
Sylvi is probably going to kill us for not bringing this pink treasure back for her. No Duck for me, no Pink treasures for you, Sylvi!!
Like everywhere else we visited that day in Yakima, we found ourselves in the midst of many customers on the hunt.
It was a great pleasure chatting with Pam and taking in all that her store had to offer...
After all of that shopping and visiting, we found a place to stay and caused a little havoc on the Yakima night life!! HEE HAW! Well, I should really say the Yakima "late-afternoon life" because we called it quits by about 9pm. The older we get, the more more we realize..."It don't shake quite like it used to" (to say the least).

The conclusion: When the pressure is on, lock yourself in the car with your best friend and go on a road trip. We had several hours to discuss and process "The Purple Elephant" in the room (our seaon opening event). And yes, our discussions were very positive and productive! We only had to pull over and wrestle one time...and that was about the new "big elaborate structureS" Joe plans on having us build in AND around the barn. BUT, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY (Jermonne)so I would prefer not to discuss who won the road-side wrestling match!

More to come on what's next for BH...

J & J