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Summer Garden Inspirations from the Hens

One of the many joys of summer may be sprucing up your yard in anticipation of fun-filled backyard barbecues or quiet summer evenings lazing on your patio, glass of wine in hand. Or perhaps the highlight of your summer days might be digging your hands into the soft, fragrant loam of your garden. Whatever your plans or passions may be, the time spent outdoors in the warm summer breeze can be so very satisfying.

Hen Carrie prepares for a backyard gathering with
an outdoor drink station.

Nobody takes on gardening projects better than Junkers! Junkers have the innate ability to look at a rusty, non-functioning item in their home or at a market and see a charming garden vessel that, when planted, becomes an objet d’art.

Our honorary hen, Lettice, adds a focal point to her garden.

Lettice's Objets D'Art

Hen Kathy's Repurposed Planter

Lettice's Tripod Planter

Lettice's Antique Stove-Turned-Planter

Magnificent hydrangeas planted in weathered wine barrels or olive buckets and tiny succulents growing in raised chicken feeders quickly become backyard scene-stealers. Antique crocks, old buckets, chipped aging pottery, and wire egg baskets all yearn to hold seasonal annuals.

Hen Kathy's Wine Barrel Planter

Hen Susi's Eye-catching Planter

Hen Kathy's Succulent Garden

Hen Susi's Succulent Garden

Hen Kathy's Antique Crocks

Antique Containers in Lettice's Yard

Galvanized tubs and wheelbarrows make great planters too!

Don’t forget vintage plaster or cement statues of all shapes and sizes. Squirrels, pigs, rabbits, chickens and ducks all add whimsy and charm to your planting beds. Vintage Mexican pottery is also a favorite of ours and acts as a colorful, amusing focal point when displayed in a succulent garden.

We love our garden statues. 

Lettice 'gnomes' how to decorate!

Don’t pass up old wooden crates, bins, and even furniture as receptacles for your plants. Use your imagination and have fun with your yard! For larger projects, try a mosaic approach for outdoor flooring to create a one-of-a-kind patio that is definitely a conversation starter. 

Hen Susi used an old wicker chair to display her herbs. 

Lettice's Colorful Accent Piece

Hen Carrie's Mosaic Patio

S'mores are bountiful in Carrie's outdoor fireplace. 

Planting what some may see as junk adds character and personality to your surroundings and truly makes a house feel like a home. There is no better place to add whimsy and fun than to your summer backyard. We look forward to hosting many family gatherings during those long-awaited summer evenings in our backyards and hope you plan to do the same! Happy summer!

The Hens

Friends of the Hens

Spring has officially sprung, and that means the Three Speckled Hens Antiques & Old Stuff Show is right around the corner. We hope you have saved the date for April 30-May 1 and are ready to grab your tickets when they go on sale April 1! Tickets can be purchased on our website at www.threespeckledhens.com. 

Grab your honey or your gal pals and make a fun-filled weekend out of our show in the gorgeous Paso Robles area. There is nothing in the world like shopping alongside good friends! Whether you are looking for home or garden décor, craft materials, jewelry or even that special piece for your wedding, the memories you share while shopping with your friends will forever be stamped on those items.

As you may know, we Hens share a tight bond. What you may not know is that the Hens’ circle of girlfriends goes beyond shopping sprees, flea markets and antiques shops. We also belong to an exceptional group of ladies who have been together for decades. The Hens and our favorite IT Chick, Lettice, all belong to a very special Bunco group. 

For the few of you who don’t know what Bunco is, it is a very easy dice game that is played by twelve people who rotate a set of three tables while trying to roll specific numbers on the dice, all while eating chocolate, drinking good wine, and sharing our ups and downs, worries and joys, and providing better advice than any professional ever could! This group has experienced having and raising children together, growing our careers and eventually retiring, and now enjoying the blessings of grandchildren and supporting each other through the aging and passing of our parents. 

Girlfriends are a huge MUST! How do women get by without the understanding, empathy and good advice from their women friends? Husbands and children are great sounding boards but, get real, only another woman can fully understand all of your nuances. Our Bunco group has been together for almost 20 years! We feel very blessed to have this extraordinary group of women in our lives, and we hope that all of you women of every age are lucky enough to share a similar bond with your closest buddies. 

Start making memories now and continue to grow that everlasting bond! We wanted to share some of our favorite photos of gal pals bonding at past shows. We hope to capture many more of these priceless moments at our spring show, so start planning that weekend getaway with the help of the Hens. You’ll even find some special offers on our Lodging Page to get the planning in motion!

P.S. Don't forget the Hens are going green. As a reminder, we will no longer be mailing out our event postcards. So if you haven't done so already, please be sure to sign up for our email list to receive the latest event updates and Hen news! Follow the link to join our email list and pass along to your friends! 

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST

Home Styling from Chicks of the '60s

The Hens are children of the '50s and '60s. Watch any movie or commercial depicting that era and you will see the decor of our childhoods!  Matchy, matchy, matchy! The long sofa had matching end tables, both holding identical lamps. The coffee table was usually part of a matched set to the end tables. The occasional chairs that rounded out the living room always matched in style and fabric and often duplicated the pattern on the drapes, nary a throw pillow in sight!

Then there were matching bedroom suites and dining sets; a sea of wood finish, identical in design. Kathy’s mother was thrilled to have ALL of the furniture in their house made of Hard Rock Maple. Kathy said it was like growing up in a caramel-hued womb!

Hen Carrie painted us a familiar picture with her description of the patio room in her childhood home. A tiki bar made of bamboo with skirting of fringed palm leaves, matching rattan sofa and chairs in corresponding Hawaiian bark cloth. A ceramic tiki mug collection complete with multicolored swizzle sticks and umbrellas along with tiki torches and anything and everything carved from coconuts (bar accessories, candle holders, wall art) were the touches that said “very hip party!”

Hen Susi also described her childhood home as the perfect advertisement for 1960’s style. Every wood piece from the living room, to the dining room, to the bedrooms came from the same manufacturer.

Like all questionable choices (leg warmers, big hair and bell-bottoms), styles and trends eventually come to an end. No longer do home designers showcase perfectly matched pieces. Maybe a few corresponding throw pillows with a complementing pattern on drapes, but gone are the days of purchasing furniture sets of the same style and finish.

We have now entered the generation of juxtaposition, focusing our style efforts on contrast and visual interest. The wow factor now comes from an eclectic combination of pieces whose color and style may blend but with enough contrast to make each piece stand out on its own. Susi’s living room is a case in point. She has a vintage red leather sofa, a grey sofa and a green sofa. Each has its own individual style and is displayed amongst cowhide occasional chairs, painted furniture, pine antiques and an authentic Native American totem pole! Nothing matches, but it all blends to create a beautiful cohesive look.

So mix it up and buy what makes you happy, be it a set of ghost chairs with a farmhouse table or a deer head hung above a modern sofa. If it makes you happy you have found your style. Embrace it!

P.S. Don't forget the Hens are going green. As a reminder, we will no longer be mailing out our event postcards. So if you haven't done so already, please be sure to sign up for our email list to receive the latest event updates and Hen news! Follow the link to join our email list and pass along to your friends! 

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST

Organizing Tips from Three Speckled Hens

The front cover of every publication on the racks right now screams, “Organize, Downsize, Clean Out and Start Fresh!” Some of us may look at those titles and inwardly scream, “No, never!” Does that make us hoarders? Heck no! We are collectors!

Dominos, whiskbrooms, vanity dolls, seashell boxes, doorstops... they are all great things to collect. So in our attempts to help you combat the feeling of clutter in the new year, here are our best tips for organizing your beloved collections.

Tip #1
It’s a common perception that three or five of anything makes a collection but any more than ten or fifteen is an obsession and difficult to display. That is not always the case. The rule of thumb is to display like things together. Three or four vintage egg beaters in an antique crock may create a cute display, but twelve vintage egg beaters hanging from the beam in the kitchen or strung across the kitchen window brings a wow-factor that definitely makes a statement!

Tip #2
Rather than looking at the first of the year as a time to clean out and downsize, try taking a fresh new look at your collections and figure out a new way to display them. Move your collection to another room or display them in an unusual way.

Tip #3
Start a new collection! We are always discovering unique items at the shows we visit throughout the year. There is no better motivator to organize than having a new collection that you want to display! We love how inspired we feel when we look at our new collections; it truly motivates us in many other aspects of life as well.

Below are some photos of Hen Kathy's personal collections that we hope will inspire you to follow these great tips. We wish you a very happy, prosperous and organized New Year. We cannot wait to see what is in store for 2016!

Blue Willow China

Antique Pincushion Dolls

Silhouette Collection

Vintage Crocks

Hens' Holiday Treasures

The Hens' obsession with antiques and old stuff is never more apparent than at Christmas. Between the three of us, there are approximately thirty-six plastic bins stuffed full of Christmas decor. No kidding!  

Among the treasures are the off-white celluloid reindeer that always graced the mantel in Kathy’s childhood home. There is a lace covered table showcasing the vintage snow globes that Susi’s mother collected as a child in the 1930s and 40s. Carrie’s collection of vintage bottle brush trees decorate her home as they did in her grandmother’s grand Victorian house in Washington many years ago.

Do you remember when women took old Christmas cards, strung them together into a star shape (1950s-1960?) and hung them from light fixtures? Kathy found one in a Cayucos antique shop and proudly hangs it from her living room ceiling fan every year. Carrie also has a fabulous collection of old plastic and felt elves that sprawl across her mantel every December.

Then there is the amazing collection of vintage Shiny Brites glass ornaments that all the Hens collect and cherish. They fill antique dough bowls on dining tables in all their homes. A bit of natural greenery, pinecones and Shiny Brites....you can’t go wrong.

Susi’s most amazing decoration is her display of antique and vintage Santas. All are very old, very delicate and make for a stunning focal point on her mantel.

Other Christmas treasures the Hens collect and display include old manger animals and manger characters, antique and vintage Christmas cards and postcards, hand blown and hand painted ornaments and figures from Germany, strings of old fashioned garland beads, beautiful vintage hand-decorated Christmas stockings and fabulous angels from every decade. And anything old and fabulously Christmas kitschy, of course!

There is nothing that brings warmth to your home and to your heart like the old fashioned Christmas decorations that take you back in time. The hunt for these treasures all year long is part of the Hens’ passion. Just look at some of these beautiful finds from our fall show!

Facebook us now and let us know of your most cherished holiday decoration. We are giving away 2 tickets to our spring show (April 30-May 1) AND a special holiday gift to one lucky winner THIS FRIDAY just for sharing your wonderful memories with us!

The Hens wish you a very Merry Christmas and happy hunting!