2019 Recap and Upcoming Events at Reinvented Delaware

Today, I am sharing a bit of our history, a recap of our business in 2019 and some exciting news for 2020!! Let’s get to it!

back from Christmas Holiday

Hope you had a great Christmas and Holiday Season! If you are anything like me, then I know you are ready to get back into the rhythm of life!

I have some exciting news to share with you but before I get to that, I wanted to recap a bit of what 2019 looked like for us here at Reinvented Delaware! Some of you may not know who the “us” is in Reinvented Delaware so I will share just a bit about us.

our story

My hubby and I have been married for 36 years, we have three adult children and one of them is married. We have both loved thrifting and antiquing for most of our married lives. Fixing up our finds has been a joint effort over the years.

A few years ago, one of our daughters suggested we start a business and offer the type of home decor we have reinvented and repurposed over the years. And just like that, we had a business!

(Wilderlove was originally named Gallery 16)

We have a vendor spot in Wilderlove Handmade and Vintage (previously named Gallery 16) located in the lovely downtown Greenwood, DE

That business has grown over the last 3 1/2 years from a small 3′ x 7′ vendor spot to our current 11′ x 12′ space. Our offerings have ranged from lighting to small home decor pieces to hand painted signs to farmhouse tables! And just about everything in between!

2019 highlights

That’s enough about us! Let’s get on to what 2019 looked like for our business!

beginning of the year

We started off 2019 with a total blog makeover! The amazing women at Restored 316 changed our look on the blog. The changes made getting around the blog easier than it had been.

spring

The spring provided lots of opportunities for shopping. Thrifting, yard sales and auctions. This is the typical haul from a shopping trip! Although unloading is not quite this fast! 😉

Hand made farm tables were popular this year! We had several custom orders for tables and matching benches just like this one! It just thrills our hearts to know that so many memories are being built around tables that we made 🙂

summer

Several upholstery projects spent time in the workshop this year including this gorgeous antique upholstered chair! Be sure and pop over to this post to see the finished project!

We have several more upholstery projects on the docket for this year too!

We had a sad time in our lives this year. Our little fella of 14 years breathed his last. He was such a joy and helped us both in our workshops over the years. Elmo, you are missed more than you will ever know. Sweet dreams little fella.

Two thousand nineteen gave us many custom pieces for clients. Among those pieces was this beautiful side by side secretary. All she needed was a good cleaning, a minor repair and lots of Miss Mustard Seed Hemp Oil.

fall

The year also brought new opportunities like vintage markets and craft shows! It was such an honor to be asked by my good friend Jenn over at Eight Hundred Furniture to help man her booth at The Witches Fly North Vintage Market in Lebanon, PA!

She also said to bring some of our offerings…..so we rented a uHaul and headed north!

Craft shows were a new adventure for us too! One of my daughters has her own business making signs and other adorable home decor pieces. We teamed up at a couple of craft shows and have already signed up for a few more in 2020!

The fall brought some challenging times for the behind the scenes of our business. I won’t go into all of the nitty gritty, but here is a sampling of what went wrong over a span of about two months during our busiest time of the year:

Lightroom (used to edit all the images you see on my blog) stopped playing nice on the playground with my computer and had to be upgraded to an online, subscription based version and relearned
Extremely slow internet that needed to be updated, restarted and finally fixed (sorta fixed) through the slowest customer service you can imagine
Quickbooks (software to manage biz income) no longer compatible with my computer and had to be upgraded to a subscription based service
Learn new Quickbooks software and new credit card payment options for my customers
Videos of project tutorials lost on my computer (including a slip-covered settee that I promised I would show you over on Instagram!) – I have no idea how that happened or where those videos are! Ten projects down the digital drain!
Back-end of the blog fell apart and had to find and switch to a new company to better handle all the behind the scenes needed to make the blog accessible to my readers
External Hard Drive stopped working and I couldn’t access all of the thousands of images and videos I have taken over the years
Accidentally erased some important info for image editing

Whew! It was a really tough couple of months around here! Not that I am complaining – we just continued to press on through the challenges 🙂

winter

Our business was also able to start hosting workshops! The Sweater Snowman Workshop was a hit! We taught women how to make these adorable little fellas 🙂

Our hand-painted watercolor cards were a success!! Our customers have to come to love sending our individually painted watercolor cards to their friends and family. We offered a new size of card this year and call them Pass It On cards. They measure 3″x 3″ and are meant to be passed on to someone out in the world that needs a little smile for the day – you know, like the Wal-mart cashier who has had a rough day 🙂

Here are a few of our Christmas cards. Aren’t they the cutest??

And that is what our year looked like in a nutshell! We are so excited for the coming year as we continue to provide repurposed home decor, furniture for our local customers and tutorials here on the blog!

exciting news!

Now on to the exciting news for this year! We are offering more workshops so you can learn to reinvent and create your own projects! I will have the workshops listed in the top menu of the blog soon but in the meantime, here are a couple of workshops we will be hosting:

Longaberger Refresh
Framed Vintage Style Chalkboards
Farmhouse Tray
Wood Cake Stand/Dessert Server
Watercolor Cards

I am super excited to offer these classes to you! Stay tuned for all the details 🙂 . Follow along our journey on Instagram and Facebook! And be sure to sign up on our email list so you don’t miss any of the fun!