Christmas Policies 2011

The past few days we have been working like crazy!  If you are waiting on an order and haven't received it yet, don't worry it's coming - we promise! We are waiting on a huge shipment of acrylic to arrive. Once it does we will be able to finish up our orders!

Besides filling orders from our shop, we have been preparing for 2 upcoming markets which we talked about in our previous post here. The Canton Flea Market is 6 weeks away from tomorrow (Thursday, Oct 13th). If you live near and have never been, this is a great outdoor market with tons of handmade items! We think you'll love it but we'd especially love for you to come shop with us! :)
The other market will be on Saturday, November 12th. It is the 4th annual Clinton Holiday Market. Of course if you live in Clinton, we want you to come visit and do some Christmas shopping! This market has grown so much in the past couple years and we love supporting our hometown!

We are gearing up for a very busy holiday season! To do so, we have already written our Christmas 2011 Shop Policies so you will know how to go about placing orders for Christmas! These policies are to help us and  help you make sure everything run smoothly and that you receive your orders on time for Christmas. The policies are listed below, but they can also be found on our website here.

Christmas 2011 Policies

To meet all the needs of our customers we have set policies for Christmas 2011 shopping. If you have a question that is not addressed within these policies, please feel free to contact us by sending us a convo via Etsy, or by emailing anna@jandadesigns.net.

When should I place my Christmas order by?
To make sure you receive your order by Christmas, place your order by Thursday, December 1, 2011. We plan to have all orders shipped out by Thursday, December 15, 2011 to make sure everyone has their packages by Christmas.

What if I need to order something after Friday, December 2, 2011?
You can order until Saturday, December 10, 2011. But, any orders placed between December 2^nd and December 10^th will have a Rush Fee applied if you want the order by Christmas.

How much is a Rush Fee?
$5 per small frame (Mini Chunky Clip, Chunky Clip, Mini 4x4 Chunky, Chunky 4x6, Large Chunky 4x6, Single 4x6, Single 5x7)
$10 per large frame ( Large 5x7, Single 8x10, Triple 4x4, Triple 4x6, Chalkboards, Corkboards)

What if I need an order before Christmas day- for a party, etc.?
PLEASE contact us! We can probably work with you, but you MUST contact us! You can convo us via Etsy, or you can email anna@jandadesigns.net.

What if I don’t need an order by Christmas?
You are welcome to place orders any time before or after these deadlines, but just specify in the “Note to Seller” message that you do not need your order by Christmas.

What if I want more than one of an item?
If you don’t see exactly what you want on our shop, just contact us! We’d be happy to help you with your Christmas shopping!

As soon as our shop reopens, you can start placing orders for Christmas! Just make sure you read all the policies so that there is no confusion! :)

Also, when our shop reopens our turnaround time will be 4-5 weeks. It is a little longer than normal due to the upcoming markets and just the holiday season in general. But if you need it sooner, contact us. We are happy to work with you, it just will probably include a rush fee (which moves your item up closer to the top of our to-do list and guarantees it will arrive sooner). As we have said before, we both work full time jobs and this is our night/weekend job. So we promise we get your orders out as fast as we can :)

It is Fall yet, ya'll?

Okay... we couldn't help using that tacky title. Oh well... So, you guessed it, this post is about FALL! Several of the blogs we typically read have been talking about Fall lately! And we are no different- we're ready for fall too. So we just wanted to share some reasons why and also share some things we found via Pinterest.

So...some of the reasons we love fall!

1. Hands down, fall WEATHER! This is more my (Jonathan) favorite part than Anna's considering when Fall comes around, Anna has to put her sandals and sundresses away. But I, on the other hand love putting on a pullover, putting my shorts away and spending more time outdoors when the weather is cooler! Especially considering the BRUTAL, hot summer we've had in Mississippi this year. And yes, we are still having heat indexes of 100 this week! The cooler weather also means the garage stays cooler when I'm out there making frames!

2. One of Anna's favorite parts of the Fall season are the decorations! Here's some inspiration she's been pinning on Pinterest. And of course they mostly involve pumpkins.

Check out these pumpkins with their Halloween masks on? 

This is such a cool look for a fall fireplace!

Anna loves candy corn so she loved these pumpkins, of course! 

 Check out these house number pumpkins!

 Pumpkin scarecrow!

Anna also loves these pilgrims and turkey that she ordered from this Etsy Shop not long ago.

Last year was the first time we ever tried carving pumpkins, but we'll hopefully get to try it out again this year!

3. One of our favorite parts about fall: FALL FOOD! You know... pumpkin pie, candy corn, homemade chex mix, halloween candy... yum!

Probably my favorite fall/winter snack: Chex Mix. The homemade kind- not the kind you buy in a bag. The great thing about is that you can put anything in Chex Mix you want. I like peanuts and pretzels, unlike my sister, Bekah, who will sit and eat everything in the bowl except the peanuts!

Turkey pop! 

 These look good! Pumpkin Cheesecake muffins! 

Two bundt cakes made in to a pumpkin!

And... this recipe which I actually already tried (because we're THAT ready for fall)! It's just a boxed cake mix and a can of pumpkin puree. It couldn't be easier. It also has a recipe for an apple cider glaze which I also tried- but it was still only 3 ingredients! Needless to say, we ate it all- it was good. :)

3. Fall Style. This is Anna's territory, so I'll let her take over this part of the post. 

Although I prefer summer clothes, I do appreciate Fall Style. One of my favorite things- darker colored nail polish appropriate for the changing season!

Like this gray color: 

 And this green color, which Jonathan actually picked out for me when he got his haircut today!

And I love all of these looks: the dress, the cardigan, purse and boots! I stole this from Sally Garcia!

It's Jonathan again... I'll throw in that my fall style usually involves some kind of Patagonia jacket, like this one that I got for Christmas last year!

4. Fall COLORS. Whether it's the changing colors of the trees or just colors in general, it's a different feel than other seasons. We have some frames that look good for fall! 

Mustard & Gray

 Dark Brown, Mustard & Antique White

 Dark Brown & Paprika

Frame Set in Celery Green, Dark Brown & Khaki

5. And one of the last reasons we love Fall so much... because you-know-what is around the corner... THE HOLIDAY SEASON! And who doesn't love Thanksgiving and Christmas?! Here's a few favorite pins from our Christmas Board!

A Burlap Wreath Tutorial that Anna wants to try from All Things Thrifty.

A cool ornament holder made from an old window!

And of course a J&A Designs stocking holder!

So... there's some of the reasons we love fall. We're also looking forward to some markets that J&A Designs will be at (mentioned in this post), and we're looking forward to something that we can hopefully share with you on here soon!

For more inspiration...

Click here to check out our complete "Everything Fall" board on Pinterest.

Click here to check out our "Christmas- Our favorite Holiday!" board on Pinterest.

And look around on Pinterest too- there's lots of good ideas being pinned all the time!

So, we hope we you're as excited as we are! If we can only get through this hot weather and stumble upon some nice, Fall temps!

Have a great rest of the week!

Our Shop Will Be Inactive for A While

Hello everyone!

We hope you're having a good week so far. We've had a really good week so far- for reasons we'll hopefully share sometime in the future! For those of you that found us through Perfectly Imperfect Blog, thank you so much for following our blog, liking us on Facebook, and entering the giveaway!

We wanted to let you know that starting on Thursday, August 25, 2011, although our shop will be visible and you will be able to contact us through our Etsy Shop, our products will be inactive while we take time to catch up on or current orders and get ready for markets coming up this fall.

So, what does it mean that your products will be inactive?

It means you won't be able to purchase anything in our shop. We are doing this to catch up on orders and crank out some inventory for upcoming markets.

But, what if I really need one of your frames?

We may be able to work it out with you! You can still see pictures of our items on our Facebook page and on our website. So, you can convo us on Etsy or email anna@jandadesigns.net and we'll see what we can do!

You said markets... what markets are you going to be at this fall?

We plan to be at the Canton Flea Market in Canton, MS on Thursday, October 13th and..

We plan to be at the Old Towne Holiday Market in Old Towne Clinton, MS on Saturday, November 12th! 

When will your shop re-open?

We plan to have our shop open again by Labor Day (Monday, September 5th)!

So, feel free to contact us if you need something while our shop is down! And, if you're currently waiting on a frame order from us, we are working as fast as we can to get these shipped out to you! Thank you for your patience!

Have a great week!

Item of the Week SALE - The Clip Frame

Well it's Monday again, which means back to work for most of us. Why does the weekend always go by so fast?!

We are so excited to say that our frames were featured Friday on one of our absolute favorite blogs - Perfectly Imperfect. Check out the post here, and if you haven't entered the giveaway yet, it's not too late to do that! We are giving away a Triple 4x4 frame, so don't miss out on your chance! If you are reading our blog or are our Facebook fan because you found us through Shaunna, thank you so much! We always love new customers and really appreciate you!

If this is your first time reading our blog, we try to feature one item each week and tell you why we love it, and sometimes even offer a sale on that item! This week, we are featuring one of our  newest items - our Clip frames, which we actually just introduced and featured a few weeks ago here. But we are bringing it back because we just think they are just too cute and make great gifts!

This frame makes it so easy to switch out your picture when you want to change it. It also is great for holding recipe cards in your kitchen! I always end up getting a recipe card dirty when I cook because I just lay it on the counter. This solves that problem in a fun way! And when you're done with that recipe, you can just replace it with a picture and leave the frame sitting on your counter! 

On our Etsy shop this week through Wednesday August 24th, our clip frames are on SALE!! Like I said earlier, these make great little gifts and it's never too early to get Christmas presents out of the way! 

The Clip Chunky which is pictured below is only $12 on sale! (normally $15). We currently only have photographs of it in Dark Brown & Antique White and Black & Soft White, but you can customize your own colors!

Our other Clip Frame, which is my personal favorite ( I just love the small size of it) is the Mini Clip Chunky Frame. This week it is only $8 (normally $10)! Just like the Clip Chunky,  you can purchase colors already seen in our store, but you can also customize your own color combination!

And as I mentioned... here is a picture of both frames used as a recipe holder. See how cute?!

To purchase the frame in a different color other than what is listed, you can simply purchase the style frame you'd like and at Checkout in the "Note to Seller" section list what colors you'd like! You can also message us on Etsy or email Anna@jandadesigns.net with any questions!

So now.. just head on over to our Etsy shop and get some of your Christmas shopping done... or even purchase for yourself! And while you're at it, check out everything else we have to offer! Remember the sale only lasts through Wednesday! Hope this post made your Monday a little better! :)

Making Vintage, Used & Antiques A Part of a Home

Happy Saturday!

We hope everyone out there reading this is having a great weekend so far! We're busy making frames, but we wanted to share a blog post with you about something that has become a hobby of ours! Before we moved in to our townhouse this past summer, we had started to enjoy searching for used furniture and home items. First, it's a great way to save money, and for us- we enjoy seeing a piece that may need some work and some TLC!

So, this blog post is a way for us to spotlight some items in our home and show you how we've taken some older and used items and made them our own! We'll also share some of our favorite places to shop for stuff like this in the Jackson area.

Up first, Forget Me Nots of Brandon. We've written about this store before in a post here. But since then, we've of course been back to Forget Me Nots AND they've moved to a bigger and better location in Brandon. They feature new items in (almost) daily Facebook albums on their fan page. Often, we see an item in these albums and call and have them hold it until we can make it out there later that day! The owner is Melanie and she is very nice- so if you go to Forget Me Nots- introduce yourself! You can probably tell we've been there several times, ha! So... some of the items in our home from Forget Me Nots:

First, the desk chair that we've previously blogged about. This chair sits in Jonathan's office and gets lots of use! Like I blogged about before, chairs like these sell at Pottery Barn for about $300. We paid about $65!

This trunk that we use as a coffee table. It looks great in our house and it has lots of storage inside for our DVD collection.

I got this hutch several months ago. we plan to paint it some day when we get around to it, but it is the perfect size in our current house. (Ignore the junk around it!)

We got this wicker chair recently instead of spending a lot of money on a bigger chair for our living room. We actually painted it not long ago! We'll blog about that process some day soon. It still needs a seat cushion, but it looks good in our living room (also ignore those ugly vertical blinds - one of the things I dislike about renting).

We also go this cool bench that we use when we go to markets with our picture frames (also previously blogged about). This picture is from our old apartment!

There are some other cool consignment stores in the area as well! The Orange Peel in Fondren gets interesting stuff and they specialize in clothing and have a lot of vintage clothing. We picked up this magazine rack there over a year ago. We gave it a coat of spray paint, but we may redo it in some other fun color some day soon.

Repeat Street in North Jackson has LOTS of furniture, home items, books and clothing! It's one of Jackson's biggest consignment shops. We've never gotten any furniture there, but we did pick up these bird prints on canvas for cheap (after we'd already purchased them somewhere else for retail price- we returned that set).

Okay...moving to some places to find antiques! We love antique shops, whether it be small ones or big antique flea market-type places. We have a couple favorites! Our favorite antique shop here in Clinton is When Pigs Fly. It's in Olde Town Clinton and the owners (The Gatewoods) are very nice! We've gotten a few things from When Pigs Fly.

 First, this vintage metal cart that we use in the office for storage and printers.

Second, another vintage metal cart that we use in our kitchen. We have a sort-of awkward window ledge in our kitchen, so we decided to utilize the space and put this cart on the ledge for our microwave and storage.

And lastly, one of our favorite pieces in our home is this antique dresser that was painted and distressed in red. We use it in our living room for our television to sit on. My mom says one day it will look great in a kid's room- ha!

Other antique places we like to shop? 

The Flea Market in Flowood has tons of vendors and lots of cool stuff! Warning though: it's in an old warehouse and there's no A/C. So, save this place for somewhere you go in a month, or so, when it starts to cool down!  We got this cool vintage mirror there! I love this mirror! We haven't decided where to put it in our house. When we do, the frame will probably get a coat of spray paint!

49 South Antiques & Flea Market is located on Highway 49 South (obviously) past Florence. There are (I think) 3 buildings FULL of antiques! We stopped by there a couple of weeks ago on our way back from Destin and we were amazed! So many antiques- a lot of the prices were REALLY good- and tons of pieces that would look awesome redone!

We got this cool magazine rack (yeah, we like magazines and magazine racks, obviously). It would also look good sitting on top of a buffet holding plates on each level. It might get a spray paint job sometime soon...

Some other cool stores you can visit to find cool used stuff? Thrift stores like Goodwill, the 4C's in Clinton or the Salvation Army. These places are completely hit or miss. Some days you can walk in and find awesome stuff, and some days you'll only find junk. The Salvation Army thrift store (located on Presto lane near County Line Road Target in Jackson) usually has a good selection of furniture. 

So... last but not least, one of our favorite places to find used stuff and get GREAT deals: CRAIGSLIST! Like a thrift store, Craigslist can be hit or miss... but people are always posting new stuff. We spend a lot of time looking at the furniture pages just to see what's out there.... but as you might know, you can search for most anything on Craigslist- furniture, cars, home rentals, etc. Here are some of our Craigslist finds:

This awesome, retro desk that we use in our office (we blogged about the office here). We only paid $50 for this desk! It's Jonathan favorite thing we've purchased used.

We bought our old kitchen table on Craigslist. We recently found one we liked better (on Craigslist), so we re-Craigslisted this one and sold it just a couple of weeks ago!

We also bought two of these bar stools for our kitchen. We had plans to paint these but haven't gotten around to it. We're actually going to probably re-Craigslist these very soon in favor of some bar stools that we think fit our style better!

We also purchased an antique radio cabinet off Craigslist for $30! The record player / radio no longer worked, but we bought it because we liked the way it looked. We had plans to use to hold our TV, but then the beautiful antique dresser came along. It's currently in the garage (actually being used to store picture frame materials) so I didn't get a picture of it.

Probably my favorite purchase we have ever found on Craigslist is our NEW dining room table. I had been wanting a farmhouse table for quite a while (even before we bought the first table)- but we couldn't find one at a decent price. This one popped up on Craigslist a couple weeks ago and we went out to Flowood to look at it. It turned out the table was brand new and handmade! So, we bought it and sold the old one on Craigslist. Now, to just find chairs we love!

We also found our current house on Craigslist! It turned out we (sort of) knew the landlords and knew the current tenants, but we still would have never found it without Craigistlist. I'm sure some of you reading have never bought or sold anything on Craigslist and you may be skeptical. We have some rules we go by that we want to recommend to you if you find something you want on Craigslist. 

1. When you find out the person's name who has the item- be a stalker! Look them up on Facebook- make sure they don't look completely creepy on Facebook. Although they could be creepy in real life, even if they look normal on Facebook- at least you can maybe see what they look like and find out a few things about them. 

2. If you decide to purchase something and you're going to pick it up at their house- look it up on Google maps. Find out what neighborhood it's in. Make sure you're not going to a sketchy area of town.

3. When you go to pick something up- take someone with you. Jonathan and I always go together or he takes someone with him to help him.

4. Tell some other people where you're going- in case anything did happen. Although, usually these transactions happen pretty smoothly- you'd better be safe than sorry. So let someone else know where you are headed to pick up an item, the person's name who has the item, etc.

So, we've definitely made a hobby out of antique and consignment shopping- whether it be in stores or online. We hope maybe some of our suggestions will encourage you to go searching for something for your home too!

Item of the Week: Triple 4x4

Good morning!

We hope you had a great weekend! We have a brand new frame as this week's "Item of the Week". It's the Triple 4x4! It holds three 4x4 pictures and it can be hung horizontally or vertically!

We have two of these frames completed already, but you can order them in the colors shown below or in any custom color! Normally, this frame will be $40, but this week the Triple 4x4 is only $35!

Triple 4x4 shown in Dark Brown, Light Blue, Paprika & Celery

Triple 4x4 shown in Aqua & Antique White

Check out the Triple 4x4 in our Shop here and here!

Help us hit 100 Sales!

As of 3:45 on Wednesday, August 3rd we have sold 90 items on our Etsy Shop, but we want to reach 100 sales!

To help us reach 100 we're offering 10% off your purchase! Just use code "100SALES" when you check out and you'll get 10% off your purchase!*

Why help us reach 100? Because you know you need a J&A Designs frame (or more than one) for your home! Or you can even give one as a gift! Or you can stock up for Christmas!

Here are just a few pictures of our current selection of frames available in our Shop

Triple 4x6!

Large Chunky 4x6 (Currently our "Item of the Week" and already on sale! Get an extra 10% off!)

Mini Chunky!

Single 5x7!

Stocking holders!

 Wall groupings!

*Our current turnaround time is 3-4 weeks.

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