A Three Speckled Hens Show: Behind the Scenes

Happy Friday to all of our lovely Hen groupies!! Can you believe that in just ONE week, we will be at the Paso Robles Event Center for the May show on 5/3-5/4? The past six months have just flown by since our last event in October. We can’t wait to see everyone, including our favorite dealers and those of you who return to the show year after year. 

Many of you know what the show is like – chock-full of amazing treasures, of course! But we thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite highlights and some of the “behind the scenes” moments from last years’ show season. How does a Three Speckled Hens show all come together?

On Saturday, the first show day, we wake up bright and early to get to the event center at 7:00 a.m. The line for the Early Bird ticket holders starts to form up soon thereafter and we get to chat with everyone in line. At 8:00 a.m. sharp, the floodgates open and everyone takes off!! 

 

During the show, you can find us all over the place: at the entrance, working the Hen House Mercantile where we sell all of our Hen goodies, or this year, maybe manning the new wine, beer, and mimosa station!! Silly Hens. Only one or two mimosas for us though, because we have to stay on our toes all the way up until the show day ends at 4:00. 

You may not know that when the gates close on Saturday, we continue to kick off the weekend with a Mexican Fiesta themed dinner that we host for our dealers. That’s right – out come the tortillas, rice, and margaritas and we have a big Saturday night party!! And yes, if you must know, those are gallon size containers of margarita mix in our truck picture above. This is always so much fun and gets the weekend off on the right foot for everyone who travels from near and far to participate in the show. The vendors get to re-stage their booths for Sunday while we prepare dinner, then we all get to relax for a bit before falling into bed that night. We are already getting our Mexican groove on just thinking about it!

On Sunday morning, we get to sleep in for an extra hour or so, then repeat starting at 10:00 a.m. These are hands down our craziest weekends of the year, but we LOVE what we do and wouldn’t have it any other way! 

See you at the show!! If you would like to buy tickets in advance, you can do so HERE.

May 2014 Vendors: Antiques, Creations & Vintage Galore!!

In our first blog post, we told the story of our show’s founding – a fateful antiquing adventure that resulted in a truck full of treasures and the wild idea to start our own antique show. Now, eight years later, it’s almost impossible to believe how things have changed! While our first show started with only a handful of vendors, we expect more than 100 to participate in the May 3-4 show just three weeks from now.

Our vendors are arguably the most important part of our show – the essential ingredient that make our shows the exciting, lively, one-of-a-kind treasure hunt that they are. While our love of junking and vintage is what got us hooked into the world of antique shows, you could say that it was our vendors that kept us (and you!) coming back for more each year. With their insatiable love of antiques and an unparalleled creative eye, each vendor brings something special to each show. And ultimately, we love nothing more than surrounding ourselves with like-minded antique addicts!!

In our recent Facebook contest post, you told us just how much you love and anticipate our vendors each year with comments like the following:

The little yellow typewriter! I follow them on Instagram! - Tammy Dunehew

Great show every year & amazing vendors all around...but looking forward to seeing the folks @The Rusty Bucket of Camarillo - their great picks, reasonable prices and super friendly service makes me keep going back - Leanne Afetian

Uber Chic, Atelier de Campagne, and Farm Girls Vintage!!!! Woohooo! - Marietta Elizaga-Carlin

We loved hearing from you last week, and wanted to give you a little extra preview of the amazing booths that will be at our upcoming show. Below is just a small sampling of the vendors and products that will make an appearance. Check out the vendors page on our website for a complete list!

TA Vintage Designs is headed by the wonderful Tammy Auther, who creates unique and individual jewelry pieces that are crafted from vintage and antique pendants, charms, brooches, baubles, beads and other found treasures.

The Gentleman Farmer and Gussied Up Antiques are more than ready for the next Speckled Hens Show. They have been scouring the countryside for old farmhouse, vintage country and unique garden pieces. They recently returned from a trip to Northern California with some great finds! For those of you who like old country, vintage farmhouse and a bit of old garden charm, you will find them in booth #106.

Polly Jane’s will be bringing her signature cashmere scarves, flower pins and cashmere headbands! She also has vintage glass insulators on candlesticks and lots of fun new goodies.

American Barn and Wood, a reclaimed lumber yard located in Paso Robles, is ready for the May show. They have an assortment of goodies they will be bringing, including barn wood, barn doors, windows, barn beams for fire place mantels, barn wood furniture, and of course their ever popular barn bits!

Bay Cottage Succulents and Antiques is ready to go! Master Gardener and owner S. Lee Olson will help to open your eyes to the wonder of succulents. Succulents are easy to grow, amazingly beautiful and offer endless varieties. With summer coming, what a wonderful time to learn about water conservation planting!

The Beginning of a Journey

Welcome to the Three Speckled Hens’ very first blog post! We are so excited to begin our blogging journey with you, and hope to fill this space with stories, antique treasures, and comments from our valued readers. Many of you have gotten to know us well over the years — from meeting us in person at our shows, following us on Facebook, and visiting our old website. However, we realized that we have never really told the whole story about how the Three Speckled Hens’ show was born. We’d like to tell that story today in honor of our very first blog post and our eighth season as a show.

So what do you tell your husband when you come back from a vacation with a 5ft x 10ft cargo trailer packed to the roof with junk? You tell him that you and your friends have decided to start an antique show, of course. The fact of the matter is in 2006, when we left for Spokane to attend the Farm Chicks Show, we were buying strictly for our own homes. We were driving Susi’s Honda Element because it got the best gas mileage and the back seats folded down in case any of us found a large piece we wanted to bring home. Silly Hens.

We left Templeton, CA early in the morning and over the course of several days we hit every antique store, junk store, salvage store and all interesting looking second hand stores between Templeton and Spokane. And of course, every coffee house and restroom. We stayed in nice motels and even indulged ourselves with a night in a lovely lodge on Oregon’s Rogue River. Our criteria for what constituted a nice motel was that it had to look good, it had to have a hot tub or Jacuzzi pool, and there had to be a nice restaurant with a bar within walking distance. Oprah had recently confessed her love of lemon drop martinis, and with a bar within walking distance, every evening we did a taste comparison of that motel’s beverage offerings. We consider ourselves official Lemon Drop Connoisseurs.

By the time we made it to Spokane, the entire car was stuffed with treasures. Wooden moldings, wire gym baskets, rugs, paintings and rusty garden urns were literally encasing whoever rode in the backseat. After the first day of shopping The Farm Chicks Show, we knew we were in trouble. Knowing we had barely scratched the surface of our buying frenzy, that night we rented a 4 x 8 foot trailer to pull behind Susi’s little Honda.

The second day of the show, we indulged our love of everything with a patina, or shabby, antique, or repurposed. At about three o’clock, we decided to start loading up our trailer. After piling up our wares—eyeballing Susi’s flower cart, Carrie’s upholstered vintage chair and my 6 foot high Calistoga wagon wheel among other things—we knew we were really in trouble. We could not begin to fit our fabulous finds into that little trailer. There was only one thing to do: rent a bigger trailer! To this day we praise the two young U-Haul shop attendants who stayed open after hours while we unloaded our trailer in the parking lot and reloaded everything back into the largest U-Haul trailer we could find. We made it home with God’s angels riding our bumpers and a vintage cement lawn jockey sitting between Carrie’s legs. But that’s a story for another blog. Silly Hens.

However, the greatest treasure we found on our maiden junking voyage together was the treasure of finding true friends. That friendship continues today, in our eighth year of producing the Three Speckled Hens Show. To that list we have added the close friendships of our many dealers and the wonderful people who wouldn’t miss a Hens show. We still have many new things up our sleeves, so stick with us. Maybe we’ll tell you the rest of our story.