Summer Jewelry Pop-Up Sale Is On!

The decision has been made - I am going forward with an impromptu jewelry pop-up sale at home base the weekend of August 18-21. We have estate sales in Mount Prospect, Prospect Heights, Palatine and Glenview that weekend so the pop-up will be nicely situated in the middle of all the sales. At this time, I think I will close up the breezeway and only hold the sale in the garage. The breezeway is not air conditioned and it has been warm in there this summer. Also, I am in the middle of retagging all of the costume jewelry so it will be a good time to clear the rest of the jewelry out of the breezeway, present it all in the garage and then set up the breezeway with the newly tagged jewelry for the October sale. Mother had written the designer names on the front of the cards of the signed pieces but unfortunately the chalk has started to rub off. As I go, I am creating P-Touch labels with a script font to identify the designer. That way customers will know the designer at a glance and not have to bend the card to look at the back of the pieces to find hallmarks. There will be some extra furniture to contend with in the garage but I will declutter as much as possible and work around it!

The feeling about doing a pop-sale is bittersweet because Mother's health does not allow her to help out anymore. Setup will start next week - I will enlist Mike's help to get the layout down and then I should be able to take it the rest of the way. I will man the sale the first two days and Nicole will take the weekend but I will be a stone's throw away in case she needs help. It will not be fancy but it will be organized. The plan right now is to have the entire costume jewelry collection on hand at the pop-up sale and then I will see how much room there is for sterling jewelry. Any excess will go out to the estate sales. There is so much consignment jewelry right now which is a major reason for having the pop-up. Mother is finishing up the Oak Park jewelry so it will all be on hand. It is amazing that she was able to get through 300 pounds of jewelry in the amount of time that she did.

There is even more extra work to do these next 10 days as Mark is on vacation. Kuochun and I took a ride over to our Niles sale Sunday so we could deliver the cash wrap, Kuochun could shoot photos and I could price furniture and art. Paige met us over there to assist. Kuochun of course wanted to go out for lunch. Brunch Cafe was closing so I thought I would give Kappy's a try. Sunday was not a good day to go there though, it was crowded and quite a few people were outside waiting for a table. Kuochun did not feel comfortable with the number of people out and about so I decided to head for Pequod's Pizza. I had never been there but have heard over the years that it is one of the very best in Chicago, a close second to Lou Malnati's. As we were heading down Dempster, Kuochun said let's go to Cooper's Hawk. I took a quick right to get into their parking lot.

I guess it has been a while since I have been that way, a lot of improvements sure have been made to the area! My first "real" job was at Shoe-Town which was next to TJ Maxx. I was 15 and could not wait to go from babysitting at $2.00/hour to minimum wage at $3.35! The store manager used to leave me in charge and go shopping next door. I caught a shoplifter, got a raise and ended up with $3.55. Once I turned 16, I drove my very first car to work, a Datsun B210 4-speed sedan in royal blue with a plaid interior. I also worked at Phar-Mor and Marshalls which were in the area. I guess at the time Morton Grove was about the closest to Park Ridge as far as finding these types of jobs. I wanted to be a cashier at Marshalls but they put me in the linens department. That is a thankless job and I only lasted a couple of days. It was the only thing in my life I did not see through but the moment all the linens were folded and put away, customers would come along and mess them up again. Ironic that we deal with the same thing at estate sales now!

Cooper's Hawk is now located where Par-King mini golf used to be. It is not as large as some of the other locations I have seen but it is really nice. We had not been to a Cooper's Hawk in a long time. I remember going to the one in Wheeling with both my parents and to the one in Arlington Heights some years later. Kuochun ordered jambalaya and I selected country rigatoni. I used to love the country rigatoni from Go Roma, this version was not the same but was pretty good. The menu said it would be a creamy tomato sauce but it definitely seemed like a marsala sauce. Not the same! Entree prices are in the $20s and portions were not large enough to have any left over so I felt the value was a bit lacking. But I suppose people are there for the wine pairings with the food and not just the food like we were. We both loved the dessert, S'mores Budino. When I read the description I thought it was going to be frozen custard but it was regular salted caramel custard, with layers of chocolate, finely ground graham crackers and a toasted marshmallow top. Overall I would go back again as I loved the atmosphere and dessert but would order a different entree.

Due to working in Niles Sunday I was not able to post a jewelry lot but plan to showcase another turquoise lot next Sunday. One of my go-to resources will be paying me a visit next week and most likely there will be more new and interesting pieces to include. Since I have gotten back to Sunday night lot postings, I have been using my new branded packaging when shipping jewelry and the packaging will be available at the pop-up sale next week as well. This is something I have wanted to have in place for such a long time. Rachel helped with the bulk of the design but then she got to busy to finish. Luckily I was able to have VistaPrint take things the rest of the way. The white border on the stickers is wider than I would like it to be but that is the best they could do with the file formats I could provide and it is better than having no stickers. Even though Mother can no longer help on site, her name will always be on the business cards. She is the "Rie" in Brie's and she will hold that honorary position for life!